Boating Knowledge Base
Have a sailing question? Access NauticEd’s sailing and boating knowledge base, and gain in-depth answers to your sailing questions. If you’re interested in powerboating, visit our new powerboating blog.
Key Sailboat Instruments
Sailboat Instrumentation can be very sophisticated and intelligent. Most electronic displays provide a wide range of menus of useful information...
Sailing Safety Equipment
There is a plethora of equipment specially designed for a variety of emergencies at sea. Some are inexpensive...
Sailboat Generator or Large Battery Bank?
Dedicated electric generators on board sailboats are usually only reserved for large sailboats because of their weight and size. Unless there is a desire for large amounts of electricity...
Diesel Raw-Water System
Raw-water means that the water is straight from outside the boat. It might be seawater - it might be
Sailboat Diesel Closed Water System
The second sailboat cooling system fluid is called the closed or coolant water system.
Anchoring with Propwalk on a Sailboat
Without proper knowledge of how the boat reacts to the wind and propwalk, anchoring can be a real challenge.
Understanding Weather Systems
Weather is a highly complex natural phenomenon. Globally, it is all connected and operates on a multitude of physical laws.
Sailboat Inverters
Sailboat Inverters are devices used to convert 12-volt DC battery electricity to AC 110-volt or 220-volt electricity. Special electronics in
The Complete Guide to Boat Footwear
Find the best tips in The Guide to Boat Footwear for choosing the perfect boat shoes for your boat outings.
Docking Maneuvers with Dual Rudders
With Dual Rudders there is no ability to spring the boat onto or off the dock! You have no water velocity over the rudders from either boat velocity or propwash.
Catamaran Maneuvering Mastery
As now learned, Cats can turn inside their own length, they can vector sideways, and using the bulldozer effect you can instantly rotate the Cat to point in any direction, you can do almost anything.
Personal Flotation Devices
The terms “life jacket” and “PFD” are interchangeable, with the latter used in the USA and the former used in most of the rest of the world.
Seacocks – Getting Familiar with a Charter Boat
Seacocks are designed to let water flow out of the hull safely. They are not one-way valves so any loose clamps around the seacock itself create leaks around the hoses and can allow water to enter into the boat. This is usually bad – right?
Sailboat Maneuvering Topics
With practice, wind direction and current direction are not too much of a problem. But what can get you into trouble is extremely high winds. Be prepared to change...
Weather Predictions
While we have touched on weather concepts in this Module, no one can expect you to be a meteorologist (unless you are one) and do a good enough job at predicting the weather with enough quality to guarantee your safety.
Available Energy Stored in a Battery
You don’t actually run all of the electron charge out of a battery when it is considered empty.
Navigation Units
Sailors are forever measuring stuff. This brings us to the subject of navigation units. As we all remember from the good ol’ school days, measurement is the process of comparing something with an established standard.
Sails
Sails are sophisticated objects. It is not only the materials they are made from that are important, but also, the way they are cut and sewn.
Know Your Chart!
Always familiarize yourself with any chart before using it for navigation and plotting of positions; there are significant differences between charts that could lead to mistakes.
Marine Radio Licensing
To operate a marine radio lawfully, you must comply with the laws of the country in which you are operating the radio.
Crew Briefing Video
It is important to know how much experience your crew has before you embark on any sailing adventure. For our boat, we created a video walkaround introduction to the boat covering safety items and also just general items on how we want our boat looked after.
Take Note When the Boat Heels Over or Stands Up
At a sailing group meeting, someone mentioned they were having trouble determining if the boat was pinching or not.
Responsibility between Vessels Nav Rules
Every vessel has a definition of being one and only one of the below at all times. And each vessel has the ability to morph from one to the other.
Global Positioning System
GPS stands for global positioning system. It uses a network of satellites in orbit. Although the GPS is used as a navigation device, it is also a form of communication to the vessel.
