Sailing Education Archives

Sailing Schools and Sailing Experience.

January 26, 2009/by Grant Headifen

What do you do when you have finished with the NauticEd online sailing classes? Well, we recommend that you get with one of our practical hands on sailing schools as soon as possible to burn in your new theory knowledge with practical sailing skills. Sailing schools typically have a selection of sailboats for you to […]

A few rules and signs and lights to learn when sailing

January 25, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Once you’ve decided that you like it and you now want to learn to sail for yourself, there are just a few things to learn, actually quite a lot but don’t be intimidated – we all started sailing somewhere – sometime. The rules of right of way can be a bit daunting so that’s why […]

Sailboat Rigging and Some Nomenclature

January 24, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Learning to sail can be a bit overwhelming at the start because of the nomenclature. But don’t worry it’s just a matter of learning a few at the start then adding to them as you progress in your sailing education. The following illustration shows the parts of the sail and associated control lines. Of note […]

Learn to Sail

January 23, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Just how hard is it to learn to sail. I meet people on airplanes all the time and their comment is many times “sailing? Isn’t that hard”. Well, was it hard learning to ride a bike? Kinda. Is it easy riding a bike now? well … yes. So learning to sail is similar. There are […]

Where is the storm center?

January 16, 2009/by Grant Headifen

We’ve received a few questions on clarification of the mechanics of determining the direction of the center of a weather system either a high or a low. So we added it to Module 4 of the weather course and we’re also describing it here. The graphic below shows a weather map in the northern pacific […]

Cirrus clouds

January 11, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Perfect example of cirrus clouds this morning in Austin Texas. Cirrus clouds typically mean that weather is changing in about 2 – 3 days. Many times it can mean the approach of a warm front – but not necessarily.

Moving the car forward under tension

January 6, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Moving the jib sheet car forward when the jib sheet is under tension presents a bit of a problem and many times you’ll just wait until you tack to the other side to move it. Or more dangerously, you can release the tension a little then put your foot on the jibsheet forward of the […]

Reef un reef reef unreef

January 3, 2009/by Grant Headifen

When you’re racing you need to get the most out of your rig and that’s exactly what we had to do in the Austin Yacht Club Red Eye January 1st Race event. While one weather channel was predicting 6-8 knots another was saying 15-20. In the last sailing blog I’d mentioned that we were going […]

Happy New Year – learn to sail in light winds

January 1, 2009/by Grant Headifen

What better way for NauticEd online sailing classes to start off the year by going sailing. The NauticEd crew will be racing their Beneteau 373 on lake Travis in the Red eye regatta today. Winds are predicted to be light at 6-10mph. So it’s going to be a light wind sailing day. Light wind sailing […]

FREE Rules of Right of Way Course for Sailboats

December 29, 2008/by Grant Headifen

Since we have just launched this new FREE rules of right of way for sailing vessels course, this is the first blog. The free online sailing course has many visuals of right of way situations as depicted here. There is a lot of thought out there that sailboats have right of way when in actual […]