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

Types of Anchors and bottom types that they are best suited.

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As you learn to sail, you should be also learning about anchoring. There is more to tossing the hook so to speak. After doing some research on the internet and looking at some of the tests performed on holding power, I’ve made a quick summary of what I learned. Anchor types are selected based on […]

How the Tides Work

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As a new sailor, just learning to sail, the thought of figuring out how tides work can be quite intimidating. Let’s talk about them.

Slow Tack or Fast Tack – That is the question

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I once sailed with an ex-submarine captain who would turn the boat through a tack extremely slowly. When asked why, he had several good reasons. (1) Look behind you as you come about. If you are leaving swirling water eddies behind the rudder, these are a sum of kinetic energy that was previously in your […]

Leeway and a Bottle of Rum

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Leeway is just one of those things that is a law of the universe that we have to put up with. It’s just like gravity. Still with gravity – the advantage is that it’s highly predictable. And so then is leeway. Leeway is the sideways slip motion of our sailboat downwind from the pressure of […]

Stopping Rounding Up Dead in it’s Tracks

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Rounding up is caused by many factors. One is too much wind and force aloft which tends to heel the boat over. This reduces the amount of rudder in the water and thus the rudder’s effectiveness. Another factor in rounding up is the center of pressure of wind on the sails is too far aft […]

Sailing Certification Question

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Here is a question posted by one of our students today with our response following. On 6/4/10 1:54 PM, “Ted” wrote:   I have recently started through your courses in the hope of chartering next winter. My own boat is a 25′ Catalina. From your information it appears that I will not receive credit for […]

Clever Sailing Tip

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Ever had trouble trying to trim the genoa car forward or back whilst it is under load from the sail? We have the trick for you.

Day 6 of an introduction to NauticEd

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This is the final day of your introduction to NauticEd. Watch the video and/or read the text below. Today we’re discussing chartering a yacht on a sailing vacation and the NauticEd Post Graduation Sailing Trip. After having lead dozens of sailing trips all over the world including Greece, Croatia, The British Virgin Islands, Grenada, St. […]

Day 5 of 6 in an introduction to NauticEd

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This is day 5 of 6 in your introduction to NauticEd International Sailing School Watch the video and/or read the text below. Today we’re discussing practical sailing schools and how you can get a verified proficiency stamp added to your sailing certificate. The Verified Proficiency Mark is an acknowledgement that the student has had on […]