“OK, we’ve found your wheelhouse”
I had never heard this before, despite growing up sailing and having a professional mariner for a father. I would say bridge on a ship or cockpit on a yacht.
It seems to have come into the language via baseball for reasons only known to Americans, although the person I was speaking to is Australian.
It just means your area of expertise and it’s rather literal, think of a ship’s captain and the area where they command the ship – it’s the wheelhouse. So if something is in my wheelhouse it’s in my area of competency and expertise.
It’s a cute idiom, and relatively easy to get from the context. For once it’s one I like, wonder what other nautical terms I can borrow; skeg, gudgeon and walty have potential.
Images: Wheelhouse of the S.S. Eureka, San Francisco, California | Scott Johnson | CC BY NC-ND 2.0
Change Meme 