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.
Charter Local Area Familiarization
Once you’ve arrived at the charter base, the company will give you an extensive briefing on the local area, where to sail, where not to sail, and they’ll also give you a recommended route to take for the time that you have allotted.
Anchoring with multiple anchors
Setting multiple anchors has multiple advantages. It reduces swing, reduces the holding load required by each anchor, and can act as a backup.
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.
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.
Air Flow over the Sails
Similar to steady flight, we've got to keep the air flowing over the sails smoothly...
Mediterranean Mooring with an Anchor
Another factor when Mediterranean Mooring with an anchor is that the wind direction determines who is in control...
Electrical Measurements
To be prepared and understand electrical power usage on a modern vessel, it is important to learn a few basic terms and concepts.
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...
Sailboat Battery Usage
Batteries are a vessel’s major source of power for many essential functions both when in the slip and while sailing.
The Types of Sailing Charters
There are two types of sailing charters; captained and bareboat. The captained charters have a professional captain on board to navigate and operate the vessel, and usually...
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.
Crew Overboard
Crew ("Man") Overboard (MOB) is fortunately relatively rare, but chances are that in your sailing career it will happen.
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.
Running Aground
In the information age, running aground is usually caused by an amateur mistake, and besides the potential damage, it is also highly embarrassing.
Prop Walk Bests You
There is one situation where you are just going to have to suck it up, admit defeat, and work with the forces of nature.
Sailboat Wind Power Generators
Wind-power generators are typically installed only on ocean-crossing vessels, where the vessel is away from the marina for extended periods of time and where there is a need for conserving onboard fuel.
Non-Electronic Communications
Sailing has been around for thousands of years. Electronic Communications has been around for less than 100 years (not counting the telegraph).
Overtaking Vessels
When overtaking another vessel, we quote the rules exactly because they are incredibly clear...
Luffing and Backwinding Sails
Luffing is when the sail is flapping in the wind. Back winding happens usually right before luffing occurs.
Dinghy on a Bareboat Charter
Several things to note about the dinghy on a Bareboat Charter.
Clouds, Fog, Thunderstorms
Clouds can give a relatively easy and quick look at what might be coming in the future. These clouds then are a good indication of possible changing weather in the next few days.
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.
