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.
Understanding the Safety Position in Sailing
Learn how the Safety Position — a controlled, depowered close reach — helps sailors pause safely without losing steerage. Ideal for MOB drills, instruction, and more.
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...
Momentum on a Sailboat
While sailboats are primarily powered by wind, the use of an engine (technically your sailboat engine is “auxiliary power”) is crucial for certain maneuvers and situations. All of this begins with understanding the momentum of a sailboat!
Charter Local Area Familiarization
Once you’ve arrived at the charter base, the company will give you an extensive briefing on the local area, where to sail, where not to sail, and they’ll also give you a recommended route to take for the time that you have allotted.
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...
Clouds, Fog, Thunderstorms
Clouds can give a relatively easy and quick look at what might be coming in the future. These clouds then are a good indication of possible changing weather in the next few days.
Some Navigation Rules Terminology
Understanding Navigation Rules begins with learning some basic Navigation Rules terminology...
Using Prop Walk
You can use prop walk to turn your boat in a tight marina by applying forward and reverse gears at appropriate times, leaving the rudder locked to starboard.
Vessel Lights and Shapes
Nighttime can be a beautiful time to sail. However, night vision is not the same as day vision and so rules have been established to ensure safety.
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.
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...
Crew Overboard
Crew ("Man") Overboard (MOB) is fortunately relatively rare, but chances are that in your sailing career it will happen.
The Job of a Sail Trimmer
Sail trimmers in world-class regattas spend years reading and understanding the wind relative to the sails. Sometimes they trim the sheets only a few inches/cm...
Rigging
At boat shows, we see folks huddled down in the vessel’s salon oohing and aahing at the leather cushions to sit on, and at the electronic gadgets for navigation and entertainment.
Sea Anchor
Finally, there is something called a “sea anchor.” These can be a variety of devices used to slow down a vessel caught in high winds and turbulent seas.
Sailboats Under Power
A Sailboat Under Engine Power is a Power-Driven Vessel Rule 3(c) The term “sailing vessel” means any vessel under sail provided that propelling machinery...
Propwalk – The Wash Lift effect
The wash-lift effect has been documented heavily by Dave Geer who is one of the worlds leading propeller engineers.
Non-Electronic Communications
Sailing has been around for thousands of years. Electronic Communications has been around for less than 100 years (not counting the telegraph).
Sail TellTales
"Telltales" attached to the sail in strategic positions to "tell" us what the wind is doing at that exact location.
Sailboat Battery Charging
Like a water bucket, batteries have a specific storage capacity and must be refilled/recharged when their contents of energy are depleted.
Basic Sail Telltale Control
Controlling the Telltales by Trimming the Sail. The concept here is actually pretty simple. The golden rule is, when...
Leaving the Dock – End Ties
Wind pushing you away from the dock - This is the simplest scenario. Once you are confident of your plan, release and stow dock lines, then allow the wind to push the boat clear of other obstacles.
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...
The Nautical Chart
Safely maneuvering a vessel while using positions derived from various coastal and near coastal sources is called coastal navigation.
