How to gybe with a dipping pole

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Last week we were out on a Beneteau First 45 to participate in a local regatta race series. Until now I’d been working the main and Genoa but this week I wanted to step up and run the spinnaker sheet. Not usually a problem because I’ve done it plenty of times before … but this […]

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Anchoring and going to the potty HTML5 animations

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Anchoring and going to the head animations With the introduction of iPad technology into the eLearning arena, animated gifs and flash files don’t work anymore and so we’re learning to use HTML animations and simulations instead and embed into our courses. The animations are fun to build but they do take a long time to […]

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Transit of Venus: Celestial Navigation

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This won’t happen again in our lifetimes apparently. Venus, as I write is transiting the sun and a few moments ago I got to see it. It’s a very small dot on the sun but viewable none the less unmagnified. But you HAVE TO wear eclipse glasses or welding glasses to protect your eye and […]

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How to Pull on a Line

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Here’s a quicky sailing tip that isn’t documented in too many places. And you might think it’s a bit basic but I’ve even seen old time sailing instructors doing this the wrong way. One day their luck is going to run out. Fortunately we got to you just in time. I was out racing last […]

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Coastal Navigation: The Math Behind It

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Currently we’re working on a cool project with SimRad to create a training simulator for a gps device. But to do that and to write the code and the statement of work for the programmer we had to be very clear about the math behind it all. At least to me, it’s all pretty interesting and […]

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Tides and Tidal Currents

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Tides and tidal currents came to mind today as I strolled along the harbor’s edge watching the behaviour of some sailboats racing. Remembering a recent race regatta series I participated in in the Auckland New Zealand harbor last winter also brought up this topic of tides and tidal current. In one race in the series, […]

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James Cook Observation of Solar Transit of Mercury

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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 […]

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