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.
Sailing Heave To
When you have successfully hove-to (heaved-to), your sailboat will be in a stable situation with the mainsail and headsail still up. Your forward speed will be minimal and...
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.
Diesel Fuel
The search, discovery, refinement and resource control of fuel has a rich and very sordid history. But just like...
Air Conditioning on a Sailboat
Air conditioning is an enormous energy drain.
Names of Thingys in Sailing
There's a lot of terminology in sailing, and to get started with sail trim we recommend beginning with some key sailing "thingy" terms.
Keeping the Telltales Flying Steady
As a sailor we are doing one of two things when it comes to sail trim, either holding a course or trimming to our sails...
Sailboat Battery Usage
Batteries are a vessel’s major source of power for many essential functions both when in the slip and while sailing.
Boat Heading vs Sail Set and Forces on the Sail
The set of your sail depends on your sailing angle to the wind. You're working to maximize the aerodynamic forces on the sail.
Lights on ATONS
Lights are installed on some ATONS. The lights are usually alternating on and off on some consistent interval to distinguish one ATON from another.
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...
Head-on Nav Rules Situation
The Rule (a) Unless otherwise agreed when two power-driven vessels are meeting on reciprocal or nearly reciprocal...
Sail Twist Basics
How can the wind direction be different between the top of the mast and the bottom?
Sinking
A boat sits down in the water until it has displaced the same weight of water as the weight of the boat. It is a universal arrangement between boat and water...
Water and Water Making on Bareboat Charter
Aboard, drinkable water is indeed a limited supply - very limited.
Electric Windlass
An electric windlass is a powerful electric winch that greatly helps in the lowering and raising the anchor.
Fishing on a Charter
Bring a fishing rod and reel with a 20 lb break strength line. Even if you’re not typically a fisher, few things in life are better than catching a fish for your crew, cooking it, and serving it that evening. It will increase your hero status.
Sailboat Balance
Below is an animation that shows the balance of forces: actually it is technically the balance of a concept called “moments.”
Propeller Entanglement
If there is a sudden slowing or stopping of the engine while motoring it is possible that you have picked up some floating line, hopefully not from your vessel.
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
Springing a sailboat On and In
Coming up to a Tee-head is more the situation where you need to spring on. The need for accuracy in your maneuver is heightened when the space is tight.
Docking Force Alignment and Moment Balance
When you are docking, if your boat pulls on a line attached to the dock, the line pulls back on your boat. If the forces are aligned, then nothing really happens.
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.
Fairlead Control
The fairlead is the first control device that the jib sheet passes through on its way back to the cockpit. You can move the fair lead forward or backward.
Propwalk factors – The p factor
There are two combined reasons that work in unison to create propwalk.
