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.
Sailing Personnel Emergencies
As the skipper of a vessel, you are expected to be able to handle situations thrust upon you at a moment’s notice. Many of these situations are boat-related issues, but there are also crew injury issues for which you should be prepared to assess and handle at least enough until professional assistance arrives.
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...
Typical Sailboat Energy Usage
Here we show the devices and how much energy you would typically use on a sailing boat on a sailing vacation each day.
Air Conditioning on a Sailboat
Air conditioning is an enormous energy drain.
Basic Surface Geometry
Below is a brief summary of how locations are commonly expressed on different surfaces.
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.
Anchoring
Anchoring is not simply throwing a “hook” and letting out a line. However, after watching some sailors, this seems to be their theory. Successful anchoring requires a plan considering all the factors.
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...
The Complete Guide to Boat Footwear
Find the best tips in The Guide to Boat Footwear for choosing the perfect boat shoes for your boat outings.
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...
Basic Telltale Control continued
Controlling the telltales by making course adjustments - when making the woolies fly by making course adjustments the rule is...
Key Sailboat Instruments
Sailboat Instrumentation can be very sophisticated and intelligent. Most electronic displays provide a wide range of menus of useful information...
Sailing Safety Equipment
There is a plethora of equipment specially designed for a variety of emergencies at sea. Some are inexpensive...
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...
Sailboat Diesel Closed Water System
The second sailboat cooling system fluid is called the closed or coolant water system.
Air Flow over the Sails
Similar to steady flight, we've got to keep the air flowing over the sails smoothly...
Experience ≠ Competency
Years on the water don't automatically make someone a competent sailor. Discover why objective assessments, continuous learning, and practical skills are the real indicators of safe seamanship.
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...
The Nautical Chart
Safely maneuvering a vessel while using positions derived from various coastal and near coastal sources is called coastal navigation.
Sailboat Maneuvering Topics
With practice, wind direction and current direction are not too much of a problem. But what can get you into trouble is extremely high winds. Be prepared to change...
Sailboat Running Rigging
A sailboat’s running rigging consists of those items controlling the sails and helping the sails to capture the wind’s energy.
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.
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.
Crew Safety Briefing
You can avoid many emergencies by conducting a proper safety briefing before leaving the dock.
