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.
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.
Sailboat Fire Extinguishers and Requirements
Fire Extinguishers Fire Extinguishers are given a letter rating that matches the type of fire they will be battling.
Types of Anchors
Anchor design has been the focus of much research over thousands of years, and as a result, there are
Basic Telltale Control continued
Controlling the telltales by making course adjustments - when making the woolies fly by making course adjustments the rule is...
How to Negotiate When Buying a Boat
Get expert tips on how to negotiate when buying a boat, helping you make an informed investment for your sailing experience.
Diesel Fuel
The search, discovery, refinement and resource control of fuel has a rich and very sordid history. But just like...
Dual Rudder Monohulls
When a monohull sailboat has dual rudders, the boat will act with different characteristics than with a single rudder. Thus, the point of this module is to help you maneuver a dual-rudder monohull sailboat.
Basic Surface Geometry
Below is a brief summary of how locations are commonly expressed on different surfaces.
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.
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.
Holding a Constant Heading while Adjusting the Sails
We're heading to a specific point on land or a compass heading. Thus we need to keep the sails flying effectively...
Hull and Keel
A sailboat’s hull and keel receive considerable attention from a sailboat designer since they determine the capacity of the vessel, how fast it will go, and the degree of safety and comfort.
Sailing Vessel Preparation
Sometimes it is a good idea to get nasty stuff out of the way first as well as prepare your boat and crew.
Lifts and Knocks in Sailing
Lifts and Knocks are technical terms for how the direction of the wind changes, requiring changes in how you respond while sailing...
Getting Familiar with the Charter Boat
Prior to releasing the boat to you, the charter company will give you a reasonably extensive walk through the boat.
Wind
Winds can be gentle, hardly felt, like zephyrs flitting about in a local area, or they can be vast movements of air moving swiftly across oceans and continents at low and high altitudes.
High Wind and Gust Management in Sailing
Professional sail trimmers deal with high winds and gusts by managing the traveler and mainsheet simultaneously. The fairlead position...
Operating the Engine – Getting Familiar with a Charter Boat
Many modern sailboats are equipped with integrated engine throttle and transmission shift systems; called the push-pull cabling system.
Air Flow over the Sails
Similar to steady flight, we've got to keep the air flowing over the sails smoothly...
True Wind vs. Apparent Wind
Learn the basic difference between True Wind and Apparent Wind...
Crew Overboard
Crew ("Man") Overboard (MOB) is fortunately relatively rare, but chances are that in your sailing career it will happen.
Winged Sail Vector Diagrams
Sail and Winged Sail Wind Force Vector Diagrams. And it's highly relevant right now because of the America's Cup AC45 catamarans using winged sails.
Maintaining a Lookout
The Rule Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as...
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.
