Sailing Education Archives

James Cook Observation of Solar Transit of Mercury

January 30, 2012/by Grant Headifen

This weekend I visited a very special and historically significant celestial navigation place. It’s called Mercury Bay and it’s in the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand. Cooks beach lies on the edge of Mercury bay and is thus named after lt. James Cook, the famous world explorer of the 1700’s. Cook visited Mercury Bay in […]

Coastal Navigation and Anchoring in Inland Waterways of Australia

January 6, 2012/by Grant Headifen

Where were you over the holidays? Sailing? If you tried to email us over the holidays, you would have gotten a polite “out of the office notice”. We were busy catching up with our Canadian friends who have been sailing the world with their three kids for the past four years on a 42 ft […]

When to reef a sailboat

December 7, 2011/by Grant Headifen

While all sailboat designs are different and will sail optimally at different heel angles and reef points, there are a few generalities that we’ll cover in this sailing blog. General reefing point number 1 through infinity: Don’t scare the beegeebees out of those on board by heeling the boat over too much. While you may […]

How to dock a sailboat in heavy wind

October 31, 2011/by Grant Headifen

Docking a boat on to an end-tie or tee head with a strong wind blowing you off requires some knowledge on how to do it and it’s one of those things that you SHOULD practice for WHEN the time comes. Trying to just sidle up along side like you might do in a no wind […]

Simplistic Explanation of Latitude and Longitude Determination

October 3, 2011/by Grant Headifen

The posting here is not a course in celestial navigation by any means. However it’s meant to simplify a few principles for you so that you’ll at least have some sort of celestial orientation. And… perhaps it’ll inspire you to learn the aging art. This was written by Grant Headifen, Educational Director of NauticEd. NauticEd […]

Twist in the mainsail

September 14, 2011/by Grant Headifen

Here is a question from a student regarding letting out the main traveller in a gust. I referred them to this post https://www.nauticed.org/blog/sailtrim/stopping-rounding-up-dead-in-its-tracks/ which talks about moving the traveller upwind and letting out onthe mainsheet to increase twist at the top of the sail and thus reducing the forces aloft. >>>>>>>> Greetings from Northern Michigan […]

Docking a Sailboat using Spring Lines

September 14, 2011/by Grant Headifen

Here’s a question from a student regarding docking a sailboat after they took the Maneuvering Under Power Sailing Course >>>>>>> Hello Grant, I have a question in reference to the maneuvering under power: Under the excersice end ties #3, wind from behind, once you have backed the boat to the dock and secured the stern spring […]

Reefing a Catamaran

September 10, 2011/by Grant Headifen

Here’s a question from a student. >>>>>>> Grant, I would like some clarification on the steps taken to reef a main sail on a cat. I’m going out on a 48ft cat and prob want to reef the sail before i go out…. Do i reef it while at the dock or in the water […]

Short sailing tip with big sailing lesson and slight humor

August 29, 2011/by Grant Headifen

This is a real story with some details left out to protect the not so innocent. But it serves as a great sailing lesson to all of us and could save your boat from sinking. Read on! It was a regular weekend yacht club regatta – that turned out to be not so regular. […]

More about Heaving-to in a sailboat

August 18, 2011/by Grant Headifen

This is an add on to the last post we did on heaving to. I was looking over our Storm Tactics online sailing course and found this image we created which best shows a boat in a heave-to situation in a storm. They say a pic is worth a thousand words so with this blog […]