# Two words undo the whole timetable above them > A ferry timetable lists five crossings as fact, then prints WEATHER PERMITTING beneath them in the same type — the one honest line on a card that pretends to certainty. August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/ferry-crossing-timetable A small printed card, five crossings ruled out in columns: 07:00 08:20 1h20, 09:30 10:50 1h20, 12:15 13:40 1h25, 15:45 17:10 1h25, 19:00 20:35 1h35. Under a rule at the bottom, four words: WEATHER PERMITTING. Everything above that rule is stated as fact. The rule itself says otherwise. ## Why does a ferry timetable print its own excuse in advance? Because the operator knows something every other timetable in this set doesn't have to admit: the sea gets a vote. A train runs on rails a company owns outright and a bus runs on a road that isn't going anywhere; a crossing runs across open water that can, on a given day, simply refuse. WEATHER PERMITTING isn't a disclaimer bolted on afterwards — it's the one honest line on the card, printed in the same typeface as the times because it belongs there just as much as they do. ## Why do the crossings get slower as the day goes on? Because the timetable is already telling you something before you reach the caveat at all. 07:00 to 09:30 both run 1h20, but by 12:15 the crossing has slipped to 1h25, and the last sailing at 19:00 takes 1h35 — longer than the first sailing of the day, on the same route, in the same boat. A crossing time that grows across the day is usually current running against the vessel by evening, or a longer approach once a tide has fallen. Either way, the timetable is conceding ground gradually, and WEATHER PERMITTING is only the last and largest concession. ## What's the actual decision in choosing which crossings to print? How many sailings a day earns a place on a card someone can read in one glance. Five is enough to show a full working day without turning the sheet into a dense grid — an early one, a late one, and enough in between that the gaps between them are themselves informative. Very few sailings would tell you almost nothing about the rhythm of the day; every departure a company runs in a week would stop being something you can read at speed. ## Can I put a real ferry operator's name and times on this? Not their actual schedule and livery without asking, though the format of a crossing table belongs to nobody. A real operator's route name, colours and published times are that business's own material, licensable the way any company's schedule is if a real crossing is the point of the shirt. An invented route, running between places that exist only for this card, is usually the better choice anyway — it can carry the exact five times that mattered on the day someone actually made the crossing, rather than whatever a real operator happens to publish this season. ## Does this work for a crossing that isn't a big passenger route? Yes — the small operators are often the ones worth remembering exactly: an island supply run, a foot-passenger hop to a lighthouse, a private charter that only sails on request. The five-row table works the same size whether it's describing a route most of a town relies on or one that exists for a single family's regular trip to their own island. WEATHER PERMITTING means the same thing either way. ## Isn't a timetable that admits it might not run just a useless timetable? No — it's a more accurate one, and the accuracy is the entire value of a printed schedule. A timetable that promised certainty on water would be lying, and anyone who's used a real crossing knows it. Printing the caveat in the same weight and size as the times is [the same honesty a tide table trades in](/stories/tide-table-page): both documents are predictions about the sea, and both are more useful for saying plainly where their own certainty runs out. ## Does it print well? Yes, as a plain ruled grid rather than anything with a gradient in it. Cream and yellow on slate blue keeps the card legible at a distance, the way it needs to be pinned to a wall by a harbour. The five rows want setting as a simple table with hard rules between them — the same treatment [a shipping forecast's ruled sea areas](/stories/shipping-forecast-areas) use to stay readable — and WEATHER PERMITTING earns the bottom line to itself rather than being squeezed in smaller than the times above it. ## How do I get one made? Describe the crossing at [JustOG](/) — the times, how many sailings a day, and whether the caveat stays on the card. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). The last sailing on the card is the slowest one, and it still says weather permitting.