Grant Headifen

About Grant Headifen

My vision for NauticEd is to ensure that families and friends get out on the water not only safely but with true COMPETENCE, confidently savoring every moment of their valuable time.

Achieving this means being the pinnacle of sailing and boating education—offering comprehensive multi-media theoretical instruction coupled with hands-on, on-the-water training through our global network of American National Standards Instructors. We steadfastly avoid becoming a mere certification mill; our focus is on delivering genuine competence, ensuring our students are well-prepared for enjoyable, real-world boating experiences.

Entries by Grant Headifen

Join Your Local Yacht Club

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This is the 2012 New Years Resolution Sailing Tip This issue’s sailing tip is a pretty simple one. It will lead to you having more valuable practical sailing experience than you’d ever imagine. And it fits nicely in with any new years resolutions you might be considering. When I lived in Austin Texas, I raced […]

Coastal Navigation and Anchoring in Inland Waterways of Australia

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Where were you over the holidays? Sailing? If you tried to email us over the holidays, you would have gotten a polite “out of the office notice”. We were busy catching up with our Canadian friends who have been sailing the world with their three kids for the past four years on a 42 ft […]

When to reef a sailboat

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While all sailboat designs are different and will sail optimally at different heel angles and reef points, there are a few generalities that we’ll cover in this sailing blog. General reefing point number 1 through infinity: Don’t scare the beegeebees out of those on board by heeling the boat over too much. While you may […]

NauticEd Reviews

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At NauticEd Sailing School we’ve been collecting student reviews on our sailing courses for quite some time now and we’ve got to say a big thank-you to our students for submitting them all. It’s been awesome to see all the NauticEd reviews come in. By and large most all of the NauticEd reviews on our […]

How to dock a sailboat in heavy wind

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Docking a boat on to an end-tie or tee head with a strong wind blowing you off requires some knowledge on how to do it and it’s one of those things that you SHOULD practice for WHEN the time comes. Trying to just sidle up along side like you might do in a no wind […]

Simplistic Explanation of Latitude and Longitude Determination

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The posting here is not a course in celestial navigation by any means. However it’s meant to simplify a few principles for you so that you’ll at least have some sort of celestial orientation. And… perhaps it’ll inspire you to learn the aging art. This was written by Grant Headifen, Educational Director of NauticEd. NauticEd […]

Docking a Sailboat using Spring Lines

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Here’s a question from a student regarding docking a sailboat after they took the Maneuvering Under Power Sailing Course >>>>>>> Hello Grant, I have a question in reference to the maneuvering under power: Under the excersice end ties #3, wind from behind, once you have backed the boat to the dock and secured the stern spring […]

Reefing a Catamaran

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Here’s a question from a student. >>>>>>> Grant, I would like some clarification on the steps taken to reef a main sail on a cat.  I’m going out on a 48ft cat and prob want to reef the sail before i go out…. Do i reef it while at the dock or in the water […]

Short sailing tip with big sailing lesson and slight humor

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This is a real story with some details left out to protect the not so innocent. But it serves as a great sailing lesson to all of us and could save your boat from sinking. Read on!   It was a regular weekend yacht club regatta – that turned out to be not so regular. […]

More about Heaving-to in a sailboat

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This is an add on to the last post we did on heaving to. I was looking over our Storm Tactics online sailing course and found this image we created which best shows a boat in a heave-to situation in a storm. They say a pic is worth a thousand words so with this blog […]