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.
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.
Fire on a Sailboat
Putting out fires quickly is essential. The sooner you find the source the quicker the fire can be extinguished.
Sailboat Mooring Procedures
The procedure for tying to a mooring is theoretically very easy. You simply motor up and using a boat hook, grab the float and attach to it to your boat. It sounds simple but you will see many dismal failures when watching others try it.
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.
Vessels in Restricted Visibility
What is the safe speed at night, in fog? As safe as it needs to be under good seamanship.
Galley Stove on a Charter Boat
The vast majority of vessels in charter fleets are equipped with propane-burning galley stoves.
Seamanship Nav Rules
Navigation rules refer many times to good seamanship, The best advice we can give here around seamanship is to get experience...
Bilge Pumps on a Charter Boat
Boats have two types of pumps to empty bilge water; electronic and manually operated.
Using Spring Lines for Docking
A spring line is just a dockline that is placed strategically from the boat to the dock to help maneuver and turn the boat in place - get it safely into the dock or safely away.
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.
DC Electrical System on a Charter Boat
Batteries power the 12 Volt DC “house” electrical system. There may be one or several batteries linked together to supply power...
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...
Key Sailboat Instruments
Sailboat Instrumentation can be very sophisticated and intelligent. Most electronic displays provide a wide range of menus of useful information...
Responsibility between Vessels Nav Rules
Every vessel has a definition of being one and only one of the below at all times. And each vessel has the ability to morph from one to the other.
Action by a Stand-On Vessel Nav Rule
Strangely enough, the written text for the action of a Stand-On vessel is longer than that of a Give-Way vessel.
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.
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.
Good Captainship
Being a good captain on a bareboat charter is a real skill. It is very unlike being a good captain on a military or commercial ship or even a captain in a local yacht race.
Anchoring with Propwalk on a Sailboat
Without proper knowledge of how the boat reacts to the wind and propwalk, anchoring can be a real challenge.
Electronic Communications
Nowadays, gigabytes of data can be sent in a second as a digital signal. It is all a complete Wow!
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...
Propwalk factors – The p factor
There are two combined reasons that work in unison to create propwalk.
