New Course on Celestial Navigation

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Well it is finally here – one of our most requested courses yet – focused entirely on Celestial Navigation. The Introductory course gives a good introduction to spherical geometry and also to the theory of a noon solar sight. It takes the student through an actual sighting and uses real tables to calculate the Latitude […]

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Anchoring a sailboat

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Learning to anchor a boat is an integral part of your learn to sail lessons. There are lots of considerations. Here we’ll cover one of those considerations – swing! Care must be given to swing. As the wind changes during the night your boat will move with the wind and can put you into a […]

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Docking continued

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In the previous blog we dealt with end ties. Now we get onto the more common configurations of boats in a slip. SLIPS (5) Wind coming into the slip channel. Your boat is stern to. This is best handled by steering out of the slip and then immediately down wind. Back out of the slip […]

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More on Docking

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This is the continued series on how to leave the dock in a sailboat (3) Wind pushing into the dock and current from behind. You can use exactly the same method as described in (2) above. (4) Wind pushing you onto the dock and current coming from forward. If the wind is light you can […]

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Leaving the Slip

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This is the first in a series of blogs on leaving the slip or end tie. Some combinations of wind and current can get complicated and some are easy. The first shown below is the easiest. Stay tuned to this series and we’ll show all.

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Momentum Discussion

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Here is an exercise that everyone should do. It’s taken from the Maneuvering a Sailboat Under Power course which gives 20 different exercises to be able to confidently maneuver a sailboat. Exercise 1: Under power, and going down wind, move towards a marker or buoy and stop the boat with the buoy abeam of the […]

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20 point plan to rig for heavy weather

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1. Reduce sail to the appropriate sail plan early. 2. Make storm sails ready. 3. Secure all deck gear 4. Fill fuel tanks from jerry jugs if necessary 5. Secure companionway slides and hatch closed and sealed from the deck. 6. There should also be a mechanism ready to secure the hatch from below. 7. […]

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Further elaboration of true vs apparent wind

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There has been a request for further elaboration of the wind vectors as to why the true wind is always behind the apparent wind. Previously we used this diagram and the confusion is that the true wind vector is in front of the apparent wind vector. The following diagram explains the vectors better perhaps. The […]

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Learning to hold a straight course

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One issue that appears most often with new sailors learning to sail is focusing too much attention on the electronic wind meter or the wind direction indicator (the pointy arrow thing at the top of the mast). The windmeter above which is installed on most modern sailboats shows that the wind is coming from 60 […]

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Understanding true vs apparent wind

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Here is an easy description of true wind and apparent wind. Put you hand outside the window of your car traveling at 60 miles per hour on a still day and your hand will feel a 60 mile per hour wind. That’s apparent wind yet the true wind is zero. What if the car was […]

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