[cyberax]

My shortcut: "port" and "left" have the same number of letters.

[Niksko]

And further, "port" wine is red, and the red beacon light is on the port side of an aeroplane (with the starboard side having green, and white on the tail)

[lamontcg]

the shorter word:

    port
    left
    red

the longer word;

    starboard
    right
    green

[dmckeon]

But if you are working with horses or other draft animals, you work them from the "near" (left) side, and not the "off" (right) side. Next up in directions trivia: shotgun, deasil, and widdershins.

[Yoofie]

This is the same method I use. I always wondered why they didn't use the cardinal directions (north, east, south, west) or why they didn't use the hours of a clock face to indicate direction. With the clock face, you get even more precision where exactly something happened. Man overboard, 4 o'clock!

[j5155]

In my experience with man overboard drills clock faces are used as you describe. Port/starboard is only for low precision things.

[aintgonnatakeit]

That’d be “3 points abaft the starboard beam”

[hinkley]

r and s are next to each other, l is closer to p than to anything else.