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.
Clothing for Sailing
Dressing appropriately for weather conditions is an important but often overlooked topic. Weather in the marina may be considerably different from weather beyond the marina and conditions can drastically change during your venture.
Crew Overboard
Crew ("Man") Overboard (MOB) is fortunately relatively rare, but chances are that in your sailing career it will happen.
Sailboat Battery Usage
Batteries are a vessel’s major source of power for many essential functions both when in the slip and while sailing.
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.
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.
Crew Safety Briefing
You can avoid many emergencies by conducting a proper safety briefing before leaving the dock.
Navigation Tools
No matter the chart in use, the navigator’s work largely involves the determination of direction and distances. The most useful tools for actual chart work are...
Risk of Collision when Sailing
The Rule of Risk of Collision is that every vessel shall use all available means appropriate to the prevailing circumstances...
Motor Sailing
If the wind is light and your time is short you might want to consider motor-sailing—using your auxiliary engine...
Overtaking Vessels
When overtaking another vessel, we quote the rules exactly because they are incredibly clear...
Mooring a Sailboat
Mooring a vessel means attaching it to a float that is firmly and permanently anchored to the sea bottom.
Using Multiple Anchors
There are occasions when more than one anchor will add safety and comfort. One possibility is to use one or two anchors...
Helpful Hints about Wind
Since the existence of wind is the primary reason we can sail, it is prudent to know all we can about it.
Sailing and Wind Forces
A sailboat moves in upwind and downwind directions. Downwind is intuitive; it just gets blown downwind. But just how does a sailboat move into the wind?
Sail Trim
While setting the sails to general rules of thumb will get you really close to a good sail set,
The Deck – Getting Familiar with a Charter Boat
Gaining knowledge about the boat, its systems, and its equipment is a great starting point for any sailing adventure.
Generators on a Charter Boat
Some charter boats have generators. These are small diesel engines that convert fossil fuel to DC electricity that is stored in the battery banks and AC electricity that is used to run the air conditioning, microwave, and AC outlet plugs around the boat.
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.
Bilge Pumps
An emergency bilge pump(s) is a very significant electrical device on any vessel. This pump is used to pump out water that may collect, for whatever reason, in the bilge.
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.
Propwalk factors – The p factor
There are two combined reasons that work in unison to create propwalk.
Vessels in Restricted Visibility
What is the safe speed at night, in fog? As safe as it needs to be under good seamanship.
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.
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!
