Sailing Education Archives

Mayday Mayday Mayday: Collision at Sea

April 26, 2012/by Grant Headifen

The more time you spend on the ocean the more incidences you will encounter. Here’s a life threatening event that happened to me this week.

Coastal Navigation: The Math Behind It

February 27, 2012/by Grant Headifen

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 […]

Tides and Tidal Currents

February 16, 2012/by Grant Headifen

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]