Safety Archives

Tag Archive for: Safety

Sailboat Mast Height

March 9, 2011/by Grant Headifen

Know your sailboat mast height! Some lessons learned from encountering over-water power lines during a bareboat sailing trip.

Press Release – New Safety at Sea Online Sailing Course

November 24, 2010/by Grant Headifen

Today, NauticEd Sailing School announced the posting of its online Safety at Sea Course. Written by Captain Ed Mapes who has logged close to 100,000 miles on the ocean, the Safety at Sea course focuses on safety and rigging issues that sailors will experience at sea. In the introduction to the sailing course, Captain Mapes […]

Life Saving Tip for downwind sailing

May 10, 2010/by Grant Headifen

Some tips are long and some are short – This short one will save your life or one of your crew. As you know – sailing downwind has the dangerous potential of the accidental gybe. This can be quite a common occurrence if you have an inexperienced crew at the helm or perhaps with a […]

Emergency navigation lights on board

April 7, 2010/by Grant Headifen

Got a request from a student to point out more through out our courses the need to have on board emergency portable battery powered navigation lights in case of electrical failure – and we couldn’t agree more. An acquaintance of mine was nearly run down by a high speed ferry in the middle of the […]

Cool iPhone App

January 12, 2010/by Grant Headifen

Along with NauticEd’s iphone app to help sailors keep their logbook current, we’ve discovered a new iphone app which helps sailors identify boats at night from their lights they exhibit. It serves as an excellent and handy vessel light identification chart for sailing at night. The aqualights iphone app is very simple to use. It […]

What about COB – Captain overboard?

June 9, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Last week we made a pretty good point about using the engine as your first method of pick up when you have a man overboard while under sail. And it was quite well received by followers – thanks. Many sailing schools teach the figure 8 recovery method whilst under sail and this is correct we […]

Preventing an autotack in a sailboat

June 5, 2009/by Grant Headifen

In continuing our learn to sail series of blogs we discuss the annoying problem of autotacking. Scenario – A gust of wind comes ripping through and causes the sailboat to round up and autotack or you’ve given the helm to a novice, they’re not paying attention and sail too close to the wind and they […]

Man Over Board discussion

June 4, 2009/by Grant Headifen

Last evening we were sailing our Beneteau 373 under a pleasant Texas sky with 10 knots of wind. A very experienced sailor was on board with us albeit he had not sailed for about 15 years. His past experience was impressive with 10’s of thousands of miles in his logbook – mostly racing. One cringing […]

20 point plan to rig for heavy weather

February 8, 2009/by Grant Headifen

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. […]

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 […]