What is a Great Circle I hear you ask!? Well I didn’t know much about them either UNTIL NOW! So if you are excited to learn new things about circles and sailing, then please dear reader – carry on and be enlightened! A Great Circle is a circle whose plain intersects with the centre of…
The Ocean Yachtmaster syllabus requires that you know a few things about compasses – how they work and how to use one. The Earth’s Magnetic Field Imagine that inside the earth is a powerful bar magnet. This lies with its blue end toward North and its red end towards South. It’s axis is not exactly…
I have recently completed the Coastguard Boating Education GPS Operator course. ** Warning ** this is a long wordy post – mainly for my own benefit of storing my study notes online – so read on if you are interested in learning more about GPS – but if you are looking for gossip and photos…
Tonight I am starting a Celestial Navigation Course at Naval Point Club Lyttelton. I am a bit apprehensive as I don’t enjoy working with numbers and calculations, so we shall see how we go! I am planning on taking notes and writing them up here on my blog so that I can refer back to…
It was my New Years resolution to learn some new knots, and I haven’t done anything about it – yet! I am lucky enough to have a boyfriend who is a great at knots, so it is easy to be lazy and just get him to do them for me. I appreciate tidy lines and…
A barometer reads air pressure – basically the weight of the column of air above it. Learning how to read a barometer can really help read changes in the weather as the barometer identifies areas of high and low pressure systems. Air naturally wants to travel from areas of high pressure to areas of low…
I bought my yacht Wildwood the year before Seth was born, so he has been around yachts all his life. I remember being heavily pregnant and climbing up ladders in the haul out yard much to my mothers horror! I think Seth was about three weeks old the first time he went out in a…
The Yachting NZ Cat 1 regulations say that you must have a drogue or sea anchor of some description on board. I have been doing a bit of research and have asked on various Facebook forums what other people use and have come up with some ideas. The Jordan Series Drogue is a long line…
Some handy hints in here from the latest RYA newsletter that I wanted to keep – so here they are: Creek crawling tips Top tips to help you explore the upper reaches of the river. The upper reaches of a river often go unexplored but usually offer stunning scenery, great waterside pubs and interesting…
Well what can I say… I LOVE my new boots!! After enviously eyeing up my friends Aaron and Juliet sporting these sexy boots at the club during a recent regatta, I started doing some research. Dubarry boots are made in Ireland and they do all sorts of outdoor clothing and footwear. From what I can…
Astrolabe Sailing 