Sailing Education Archives

Transit of Venus: Celestial Navigation

June 5, 2012/by Grant Headifen

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 […]

Anchoring in a Regatta Race

May 27, 2012/by Grant Headifen

Best tactics and practices for properly anchoring while in a regatta race.

How to Pull on a Line

May 27, 2012/by Grant Headifen

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 […]

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 […]