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.
Mooring on a Charter
Most developed chartering locations throughout the world have established zones in which mooring balls have been permanently implanted.
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.
Mediterranean Mooring Techniques
Mediterranean Mooring Techniques is where the rubber meets the road—or, in this case, where the gel coat does not touch the big bad hard concrete wall.
Weighing Anchor
“Weighing the anchor” simply means raising it. If raising the anchor is to be done by hand...
Key Sailboat Instruments
Sailboat Instrumentation can be very sophisticated and intelligent. Most electronic displays provide a wide range of menus of useful information...
Boat and Equipment Emergencies
The character MacGyver in the TV show of the same name would have made a great sailor. Why? Because he could fix anything and a boat is a concoction of a kajillion gadgets busting to rot...
Anchoring Basics
Anchoring is not simply throwing a "hook" and letting out a line. Although by watching some sailors this seems to be their theory. The best way to approach anchoring is to dissect it into a series of individual steps.
Sailboat Diesel Engine
Thanks go to Mr. Rudolf Diesel who years ago in Germany cleverly invented an engine that today bears his name (luckily, they chose to use his last name)—the sailboat diesel engine.
Boat Safety Sound Signals
Sound signals are defined and prescribed in the Navigation Rules for International and Inland Waters. Sound has an advantage over light signals, in that it can be used when vision fails.
Sailboat Solar Power
Solar panels produce DC power and are used to charge the batteries. A relatively small solar panel such as 1 square foot (0.1 m2) can produce about 1½ amps at...
Luffing and Backwinding Sails
Luffing is when the sail is flapping in the wind. Back winding happens usually right before luffing occurs.
Shore Power Connection
One of the more common sources of fire on a boat is a loose connection of the shore power to the receptacle plug on the stern of the boat.
Topping Up your Energy on a Sailboat
There are several methods to top-off your energy on a sailboat.
Magnetism
We begin with a phenomenon called magnetism. This phenomenon was known thousands of years before electricity. Magnetism was discovered...
Navigation Units
Sailors are forever measuring stuff. This brings us to the subject of navigation units. As we all remember from the good ol’ school days, measurement is the process of comparing something with an established standard.
Sail TellTales
"Telltales" attached to the sail in strategic positions to "tell" us what the wind is doing at that exact location.
Personal Flotation Devices
The terms “life jacket” and “PFD” are interchangeable, with the latter used in the USA and the former used in most of the rest of the world.
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.
Narrow Channels and Traffic Separation Schemes
Rules 9 and 10 deal with narrow channels and traffic separation schemes, and mainly refer to larger commercial traffic...
Advanced Catamaran Maneuvering – Using the Rudders
There are some other cool things you can do when you consider the propeller thrust over a Catamaran's rudders.
Heave To
Heave To in sailing is a way to stop the boat with full sails still up. You might do
Electric Windlass
An electric windlass is a powerful electric winch that greatly helps in the lowering and raising the anchor.
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.
Dock Slips Docking Techniques
Wind coming into the dock slip channel and your boat is to be docked stern-to, steer into the slip channel...
