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.
Crew Safety Briefing
You can avoid many emergencies by conducting a proper safety briefing before leaving the dock.
NED Sailing Simulator
Before you play with NED, the sailing simulator, read this first. The graphic below is representative of a real wind meter on...
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
More Basic Sail Twist
The wind at the top of the mast has more heeling leverage on the boat than the wind lower...
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.
Key Sailboat Instruments
Sailboat Instrumentation can be very sophisticated and intelligent. Most electronic displays provide a wide range of menus of useful information...
Alternating Current and Direct Current
In your house, your wall outlets deliver alternating current (AC) electricity. The electricity provided to your house and your marina from the national electric grid is AC. Most of the devices...
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.
Vessels in Restricted Visibility
What is the safe speed at night, in fog? As safe as it needs to be under good seamanship.
Latitude and Longitude
The latitude and longitude coordinate system is the key navigational concept for sailing. It is the mariner’s coordinate system.
Charter Provisioning
Many charter companies can stock and provision your boat before you arrive. This is a good idea for the basics but there is usually little imagination in the food that is supplied.
Tacking and Gybing Maneuvers
Tacking when you want to sail in a direction to exactly where the wind is coming from— guess what—you can’t! The best we can do is to follow a zig-zag course by sailing at about 30 to 40 degrees off the wind...
Crossing Situations Nav Rules
The Rule 15 (a) when two power-driven vessels are crossing so as to involve risk of collision, the vessel...
The Types of Sailing Charters
There are two types of sailing charters; captained and bareboat. The captained charters have a professional captain on board to navigate and operate the vessel, and usually...
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.
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...
Seasickness on a Bareboat Charter
Here is some education about sea sickness that can help you and your crew overcome it.
Air Conditioning on a Sailboat
Air conditioning is an enormous energy drain.
The Fuel System – Getting Familiar with a Charter Boat
While it is reasonably rare to have a fuel problem on a charter it can certainly happen and you should be prepared to apply the (sometimes simple) solution below.
Weighing Anchor
“Weighing the anchor” simply means raising it. If raising the anchor is to be done by hand...
Planning to use springlines when docking
Like a work of fine engineering, a spring maneuver requires a design. The key is to plan the maneuver by considering the wind, current, and other obstacles, then design the placement and directions of the forces and moments.
Securing Your Sailboat
It is convenient to have dock lines that are pre-set to the right length with loops on the end and are permanently mounted onto the marina cleats. Now, when you return to the dock you simply slip the loops over your vessel cleats.
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.
