Here is a youtube post by one of our talented students who gets a perfect score playing our Catamaran Maneuvering game. I’m guesssing a few hours were involved here but I’m pretty sure that given this amount of maneuvering experience in real life, Andrew would be an expert at maneuvering a catamaran around in a marina.
Here Andrew expertly maneuvers the catamaran through out the marina without one bonk or scratch. The game can be found online and is free to play when you log into NauticEd. The game is as realistic as possible and is controlled using the two throttles as would be found on a real catamaran. Play this game and you’re a long way to gaining some valuable experience for when you really get on a Catarmaran on your next sailing vacation.
Here is the latest list of courses associated with the NauticEd Captain’s License. Keep in mind that you must log a minimum of 50 days on the water – 25 of which at minimum must be as master of the vessel and 25 of which must be on a sailboat greater than 28 feet.
There is no other eLearning Captain’s sailing license that is as extensive in knowledge. The total investment in all of these certificate courses is just $us307 – an incredible value.
This license as with the NauticEd Bareboat Charter Master Certificate is recognized by yacht charter companies worldwide as having attained enough knowledge and experience to charter a yacht. Is it not a commercial sailing license. If you plan on commercially operating a vessel you must gain a country specific license for general operations of a vessel. In that case the country specific license will not require such extensive knowledge of sailing vessel operations. Thus if you’re looking for a home to gain proper education regarding operating a sailing vessel and recognition, it does not get any better than the NauticEd Captain’s License.
Posted by admin on April 10, 2013 under About NauticEd, Skipper | Comments are off for this article
This article is meant to be read after your first week or so with NauticEd familiarization. By now you’ll know quite a bit about NauticEd and that NauticEd International Sailing School is soooooooo much more than online sailing courses. So here, I thought I’d make a short list of some of the most important things to do to ensure you’re getting the best experience from us and growing your sailing lifestyle. Most of them are FREE.
On the START tab of NauticEd when you login, make sure you’ve watched all the daily training videos and read the attached articles. This is the best way to learn about everything we do.
Take our recommended sailing lessons personal survey so that you can see which are the best sailing lessons for you personally.
Fill out your experience logbook including your past experience under your EXPERIENCE tab. This helps you rise in Levels.
Complete the free Basic Sail Trim Course and the Free Navigation Rules course in your CURRICULUM.
Complete your profile under the PROFILE tab. Click on the question mark next to the slider bar showing your profile progress in your START tab, it will tell you what you are missing.
Tell us if you are interested in Bareboat Chartering under your PROFILE tab.
Add your own personal promocode under the REFERRALS tab and send this promocode out to sailing friends and post on facebook.
Take advantage of our badge and status program – this helps you learn the right activities to become a big time sailor and beyond. Go to the BADGES tab. Learn about sailing badges and status here.
When you’re ready to go chartering, we can help you discover a desired sailing destination and make the reservations/bookings for you for no fee. Visit our sailing vacations page.
Kinda like Bubba talking about the ways to do shrimp in the movie Forest Gump, that’s about all I can think of for now. Do the above and you’re well on your way to having an awesome and knowledgeable sailing lifestyle.
As the saying goes: How do you eat an elephant? – One bite at a time. Or more appropriately the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Get started properly and engage fully with NauticEd. I guarantee you’ll be a better sailor for it.
Sincerely
Grant Headifen
Director of Education
NauticEd International Sailing School
Posted by admin on March 7, 2013 under About NauticEd | Comments are off for this article
In the 2013 new era market, after the carnage and fall out from 2008, as with any business, sailboat dealers are finding new ways to nurture and secure a loyal following of customers and create diversified income streams attached to their primary dealership and brokerage business.
How? Just quickly, let’s look at the scuba diving industry. The diving industry is a pretty cool model and deserves some study by the sailing industry. The most respected diving brand in the industry is PADI. In the early 2000′s PADI recognized a declining market in diving and took the responsibility upon themselves to grow the market for all.
Here’s what they did which is awesome; they introduced online eLearning diving theory courses whilst pushing the practical side of the certification back out to their existing schools.
PADI The most respected Dive Certification
Picture this: Someone learns the theory of diving online – now they are excited about the possibilities and their intimidation about being 60 feet away from a normal supply of air has effectively diminished. Keep in mind at this stage, they haven’t even left their armchair, yet the industry now has a NEW super excited and committed potential customer. The student now must complete their training by going to do their practical – PADI now refers them to the closest practical school which btw also happens to be a dive shop and a dive vacation travel agency. Now the school takes over the sales process which is what they are good at and sells the practical pool and open-water time, a shopping basket full of new gear, several dive trips and attains that customer for life – assuming they treat them well. The new customer came from where? The armchair! Yet quite possibly that customer may have never have gotten out of the armchair had this progressive education process (desired by the customer btw) not taken place. THE RESULTS – a growing market place of new divers, a growing industry, happy dive shops, happy dive gear manufacturers and most important of ALL - happy and LOYAL customers.
Similarly, NauticEd has taken this responsibility to grow the sailing industry. NauticEd provides online eLearning Sailing Courses and Sailing Certifications. A sailboat dealer/broker now has exactly the same opportunity as PADI created. NauticEd has created a turnkey system for sailboat dealers to increase and nurture their customer base and develop a new stream of income. Already, to our tens of thousands of students from over 90 different countries, we are nurturing and developing our students to take practical sailing lessons, buy boats, join yacht clubs, buy sailing gear, maintain their boat properly and take sailing vacations. As with diving, many of these students would have never left the Internet had they not been injected with a bit of intimidation reduction education. Yet now, they are out their spending thousands – and happily and excitedly.
Gaining access to this type of powerful marketing through NauticEd is simple and can be done in two ways.
(A) Become a link affiliate – this is the simplest without any effort but with reduced overall effect. Simply, NauticEd will link to your dealership in exchange for a link back. You get the SEO power of a high ranking site linking to your which WILL enhance your SEO ranking. Plus you’ll get traffic from NauticEd. Dealers are listed on our searchable by category and location on our http://www.nauticed.org/sailing-industry-services page
(B) Use NauticEd’s turnkey Sailing School system to enhance or open a sailing school with out any administration efforts. Every dealership currently has access to reputable and qualified instructors, thus pluggin in NauticEd’s sailing school is as simple as placing a sailing school tab on your existing website then discussing how you work with NauticEd to provide the theory whilst your captains provide the local practical training. Administration wise, your captains simply log into NauticEd after they have successfully trained the student and check mark a box against the student. The student’s Sailing certificate and resume is then instantly upgraded with the practical stamp. There is no paperwork to fill out, no licking stamps, and no books to hold in inventory and mail out. It could not be simpler. NauticEd manages the student fully al the while your dealership has had the chance to open and nurture your own relationship with a new customer. A customer that you probably never would have had the chance to meet.
Many dealership already have a sailing school attached, mostly because of the realization that the sailing school DOES work to drive boat sales. YET the administration effort is high. Now, this does not need to be.
Take a quick look at NauticEd in the video below.
Below we list the advantages of engaging with NauticEd as your sailing school solution.
Cost: Let’s get this one out of the way first. We thought about how a proper relationship and co-marketing partnership should work. It seems a bit ludicrous for a international certifying body to charge a fee to the very people who we are partnering with. That would be like if Toyota charged their dealers a fee to sell Toyota cars – that would be pretty strange. So – there is no cost to associate your sailing school with NauticEd. However, like Toyota, there is immense value with the association. Read on.
Meeting modern day student’s time demands: These days we know most people are busy especially the ones with enough money to invest in sailing and the ones we’re interested in talking to. This has been one of the biggest reasons for the growth of online learning across many industries including recreational education such as scuba diving discussed above. Having the material presented in a student’s own time in a modular format so that the student can come and go under their own time constraints is much more conducive to their desires. The online -time-value-sensitive-education attracts a more affluent crowd to sailing so that we’re not living in the world of who is the “cheapest” supplier. Now we’re talking about delivering proper value oriented quality.
Removing the intimidation factors: Students that complete the NauticEd online sailing courses are more apt to sign up for practical lessons once they find out that this mysterious sailing phenomenon is actually not that difficult to understand after all. This gets more people off the Internet and into the hands of the schools and the dealerships.
Brand loyalty: NauticEd has created a technology whereby students that visit NauticEd through a link from a sailing school or dealership are logged to that business and see the logo of that school/dealership on all pages through out the NauticEd site. This gives the student a brand recognition with that school and keeps them loyal to that school when selecting a school for practical training or discussing buying a boat.
Lead Generation: When viewing Google analytics on your site, if only 10% of vistors actually pick up the phone and call you, what happens to the other 90%? When students are logged on our site as coming from a dealership, the dealership has the ability to see all those student prospects. This creates a new lead generation system for the dealership.
Off Season training and selling: Seasonal loactions still have the ability to be offering sailing training and engaging in the selling process during off season times. Often during the winter, people are thinking about spring – yet they can’t get any training until the ice thaws. With NauticEd, a school can get and keep a student excited until they are ready to get on the water.
Consistency of training: When multiple students are being trained on one boat at the same time, often the instructor has to spend more time with one student because of the lack of theory understanding. This is frustrating to the faster students. When all students show up with the NauticEd skipper certificate then the instructor knows that all students have reached the same understanding level. Giving all students a better experience during the practical exercises.
Increased ranking in search engines: Google, yahoo etc base most of their page ranking on who is linking to you. A school with more high level links coming in is thus ranked better. And better means getting a listing above their competitors. NauticEd creates not only a link back to the school but also provides good tasty searchable keyword text back to the school – further increasing the school’s search engine ranking.
Taking nothing away and only adding: With an alliance to NauticEd, nothing is removed from the school’s ability to teach in a good and professional manner. Students show up more informed and their learning experience is enhanced.
More time spent “behind the wheel”: In a given amount of teaching time, focusing more on the practical exercises rather than having to re-cover the theory, gives students more practical understanding. Thus students showing up with the theory already under their belt improves everyone’s experience.
Instructors would rather be sailing: Face it – we’d all rather be on the water than in the classroom. Students that have taken NauticEd online sailing courses spend less time in the class room – good for them and good for the instructors.
Theory knowledge can still be built upon on the boat: Having a basis in theory knowledge whilst on the boat will undoubtedly lead to newer and higher level questions. These can be answered by the instructor on the boat, again giving everyone a higher level experience.
Taking nothing away from the current certifying bodies: NauticEd is taking nothing away from the current certifying bodies such as ASA, CSA, US Sailing, RYA, IYT. In fact NauticEd believes that when more education and practical training is made available, we will see less accidents and loss of life on our water ways. Via fair trade laws of virtually every country, certifying bodies CAN NOT demand a school to be exclusive to that certifying body.
Additional Income for the sailing school: All sales in all commerce is rewarded with a commission. It’s standard and accepted practice for moving products and services to the people who desire the product or service. NauticEd rewards the Sailing School/dealership who provided the NauticEd educational sailing service to the student. When a Student links through from that school and forever more – that school is rewarded on each and every NauticEd online sailing course taken by that student.
Realtime Feedback of Instructor Training Quality: When a sailing instructor trains a student, the NauticEd software automatically asks the student to rate the instructor. This rating is emailed back to the school. This provides a real-time built-in school quality assurance program. Prospects seeing this social quality feedback are more likely to select your school over a brochure type website. Instructors that become highly rated by schools are automatically posted to the top of the list on our sailing schools page, thus promoting your school further.
No administration: There is no paperwork to fill out, no books to inventory, no stamps to lick. All the administration of the student is taken care of digitally by NauticEd staff and NauticEd software
In summary, and in general, companies that use high tech – high tough systems will be able to engage their customers in a manner demanded by the customer and will be better positioned to compete.
Christian and Lucy at Performance Yacht Charter are a pretty impressive (and really nice) couple. They sail the world with their two charter yachts, Northern Child, a swan 51, and Smile and Wave, a Beneteau First 40, entering into world renown Yacht Regattas. They’re good friends of us at NauticEd. We first met them in St. Thomas in the USVI in 2011 at the International Rolex Regatta where they raced their sailboat, Northern Child with a combined group of NauticEd students and Safe Passage Sailing Clients.
Provided you’re got a little bit of sailing experience you can VERY affordably join Christian and Lucy on one of their Regatta Charters. And at NauticEd we TOTALLY endorse this idea. You see at some point, as much as you enjoy our sailing courses you’ve got to get off the computer and get the wind in your face. Being in a charter race regatta is going to be an such an exhilaration that you’ll never forget it plus you’ll get a huge step jump in sailing knowledge from the emersion situation. CAUTION HOOKING UP WITH THESE GUYS WILL BE A LIFE CHANGER.
Christian and Lucy’s talents are proven by the many 1st line honors they taken at various regattas, so when you join them, you’re learning from some of the best.
Being the beginning of March 2013 right now – here’s the next opportunity to join and learn from this awesome couple/team:
40th International Rolex Regatta in St. Thomas 22nd -24th March
BVI Spring Regatta in the BVI 29th – 31st March
To make a reservation now call Christian or Lucy on their UK phone number at country code 44 number 7795 955702 or send an email to christian@performanceyachtcharter.com
But don’t let these dates stop you if your too busy to engage with life at this level. Visit Performance Yacht Charters website to learn more about opportunities.
COME ON – challenge yourself – send this blog to a friend or life partner right now and say – “Hey come on lets do this”.
Posted by admin on February 27, 2012 under About NauticEd | Comments are off for this article
This week we launched a new sailing video to help explain NauticEd sailing school; what we do and how we do it. Since so often we get seen as just online sailing courses we thought we might capture the browsers attention a little more by creating and posting this sailing video. It’ll get embedded into the main site shortly.
And here is the voice script:
NauticEd – the world’s most advanced sailing education and sailing certifications
If you’ve ever
wanted to learn to sail
wanted to contribute more as a crew member
wanted to captain a charter yacht on a sailing vacation to the Caribbean, Mediterranean or south pacific
wanted to do a coastal or offshore voyage
or just want others to be impressed with your boating skills
then NauticEd is your source for gaining sailing knowledge and qualifying for a globally recognized sailing certification.
We have beginner to advanced sailing courses online and on tablet devices from learning the basics like how the wind creates forces on a sail and how to back a boat into a tight slip to more advanced topics like how to out run a storm, how to navigate using a chart to what to do 1000 miles off shore if your mast snaps in half.
All the courses are in multimedia format so that you can learn with out having to slog through a boring ol paper book.
Then once you’ve got the theory down you just enter all your past history sailing experience in our free online sailors logbook.
You can update your logbook online or from your mobile device.
Then our proprietary algorithm matches your theory courses with your sailing experience and produces a sailing certification accepted by yacht charter companies world wide.
Imagine qualifying to captain your own charter boat on a tropical sailing vacation. And, if you want – we can suggest the most suitable sailing destination for you and set you up with the best yacht charter company in that area.
If you’re just getting started now and wanting to get professional sailing instruction then check out our network of affiliated sailing schools worldwide. Our instructors build on your theory knowledge you gained through our courses and then drill in the practical information on modern world class training boats.
So try us out right now – for FREE. Start with our interactive basic sail trim course or our free rules of the nautical road course. Even if you’re an advanced sailor, we bet you’ll learn something and be convinced that interactive multimedia learning with NauticEd is the best and most fun way to be safe and knowledgeable on the water.
Posted by admin on February 8, 2012 under About NauticEd, Crew, Skipper | Comments are off for this article
NauticEd’s sailing courses cover a wide range of sailing education. They cover from beginner information designed to help a new sailor become familiar with the goings on on a sailboat all the way to extremely advanced information like what to do if your mast breaks 1000 nautical miles off shore.
Saling courses availability
All the courses are online and available worldwide. The information has been internationalized meaning that as you travel around the world you’ll be able to adhere to the various standards. For example, the lighting and buoyage system covers both IALA-A and IALA-B information. In addition to that NauticEd is engaged in a project to make all the sailing courses available in multiple languages.
At first thoughts, some sailing instructors have been against the idea of using the Internet, citing such comments as “you can’t learn to sail online”. However once they start to interact with students who have done their theory work using NauticEd’s multimedia approach to learning, they have started to turn around.
Virtual sailing instructor
As a practical sailing instructor for many years, in many instances I would battle with trying to have students really understand and “get” how the sails should be set for each wind direction. For that reason we invented NED. NED is a virtual sailing instructor that students can interact with to learn the set of the sail. They can see the boat speed up and slow down depending on the set of the sails and the different wind angles.
In other circumstances, we have created interactive educational animations that show how wind creates lift and how turbulence is created. When showing a student on an actual boat in real practice, the student can’t actually see the turbulence if the sail is over trimmed. These kind of things are best left to diagrams and even better than a diagram is an actual interactive animation where by the student can move the sails themselves and see wind spawning off into eddies.
Sailing certification
In addition to the sailing courses that NauticEd offers, we also worked with the world’s yacht charter companies to create a sailing certification that would be acceptable and desirable by them. What we overwhelmingly found during our interviews is that the bareboat yacht charter companies wanted to see lots of practical sailing experience in addition to theory knowledge. For this reason we created a free online sailors logbook allowing students to enter their past experience in a manner with which the charter companies were familiar and in a similar manner that the United States Coast Guard require when applying for a captain’s license. Then combining the theory courses that were completed with the practical experience we were able to electronically create and display a very useful sailing resume and thus sailing certification.
Thus the NauticEd sailing certification inherently contains more information about the student’s real knowledge than any other sailing certification because in order to get the certification, a student must fill out their practical experience logbook. With other certifications, if you do a weekend class you can get a certificate and the charter companies said to us that that was not enough to allow a client to take out a boat. The NauticEd certification covers everything a yacht charter company needs to know.
So in summary, and perhaps tooting our own horn a little, NauticEd has the best sailing courses available and the most useful sailing certification when it comes to chartering a bareboat yacht.
Posted by admin on November 24, 2011 under About NauticEd | Comments are off for this article
At NauticEd Sailing School we’ve been collecting student reviews on our sailing courses few quite some time now and we’ve got to say a big thank-you to our students for submitting them all. It’s been awesome to see all the NauticEd reviews come in.
By and large most all of the NauticEd reviews on our courses have been extremely positive and we’ll list some of them below. We’ve also had a few NauticEd Reviews that were constructive criticism which we value very much. Those ones were almost all related to spelling or typo issues. And just being honest here, a while back we did have one person even ask for their money back because of a number of typos that were found. Fortunately, not long after that one of our valued students who is a professional editor offered to review all the courses for those errors. We promptly accepted and he went through all of the courses to remove as many as he could find. Thanks Jim!
Still every now and then we get a student point another out and we promptly fix those. We encourage this feedback but those are very few now. Quite honestly I’m a better sailor than speller but we agree that that should not detract from the professionalism of the site.
Please note that we value every one of our NauticEd reviews by our students and act accordingly.
We did have two other students ask for their money back based on the courses that they took were too basic for them. However, one student then went on to purchase a more advanced course. We stand by our money back guarantee. It just makes sense to do this especially in this digital world where NauticEd reviews can appear anywhere on the internet and like any business we only want good ones.
Now to the good stuff – each of our sailing courses has embedded into it a third party piece of software from rating-system.com that allows our students to make comments and give a NauticEd review after they’ve completed the sailing course. These reviews and comments are then posted automatically to the specific sailing course page. For example to see the NauticEd Reviews of our skipper sailing course go directly to the skipper sailing course page. There you’ll see the NauticEd reviews.
Here are some of the NauticEd reviews on the skipper sailing course page.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Clarity
5
Informative
5
Quality
5
Recommend
5
19 October 2011
NauticEd Review:
A very thourgh basic understanding of sail boat knowledge.
Clarity
3
Informative
4
Quality
4
Recommend
4
13 August 2011
NauticEd Review:
To aid in remembering the different configurations for entering/leaving the slip, it would be good to say why the various approaches are recommended rather than just what to do in each situation.
Clarity
5
Informative
5
Quality
5
Recommend
5
13 August 2011
NauticEd Review:
In fog, I think Id motor for more control. But Im an amateur.
Informative
5
Clarity
4
Quality
5
Recommend
5
8 August 2011
NauticEd Review:
A nice course with a wide range of information. I would prefer printable PDF but Youtube movie would be impossible then.
(An example of how we listen to our NauticEd reviews is we have since gone through and added PDF downloads to most of our courses)
Clarity
4
Informative
4
Quality
4
Recommend
4
8 August 2011
NauticEd Review:
great intro
Clarity
5
Quality
5
19 July 2011
NauticEd Review:
You should periodically check your links to outside resources to see if they are broken. Otherwise, this is a very helpful module.
Clarity
5
Quality
5
5 July 2011
Review:I thought this course would be just a review of things I had learned while taking ASA 101,103 and 104. I was sooo wrong! This course adds a great deal of information to what I had already learned. I was very impressed with how up to date and in depth that information is. It was well worth taking.
Clarity
4
Quality
3
5 July 2011
NauticEd Review:
Worthwhile.
Clarity
4
9 June 2011
Review:maybe more detail will come in future units
Clarity
3
Quality
3
4 June 2011
NauticEd Review:
The tides and currents information, especially the charts and graphs are a bit overwhelming to a beginner. Obviously very important though, so would have liked to be more carefully immersed into it.
>>>>>>>>>>
You’ll also notice the Star ratings. on our sailing courses page, a summary of those stars is listed next to each sailing course and you’ll notice that there are no stars less than 4/5. We think thats pretty impressive and we hope you do to.
Our most popular sailing course is the NauticEd maneuvering and docking a sailboat under power sailing course
This course receives dozens and dozens of excellent NauticEd reviews and we’re very proud of this sailing course.
NauticEd Reviews Summary
In summary, we encourage NauticEd reviews of our courses, we listen to our students and we’re very excited to have received all the positive feedback.
If you join NauticEd Sailing School we encourage you to give us your feedback and NauticEd sailing school reviews when ever you can.
The posting here is not a course in celestial navigation by any means. However it’s meant to simplify a few principles for you so that you’ll at least have some sort of celestial orientation. And… perhaps it’ll inspire you to learn the aging art.
This was written by Grant Headifen, Educational Director of NauticEd. NauticEd provides online sailing courses and Sailing Certifications accepted by charter companies worldwide.
Latitude: In the northern hemisphere, finding latitude is simple using one of the greatest gifts to human kind – The North Star. What ever angle the northern star is at from the horizon, that’s your latitude.
Imagine you’re an ant sitting on the top of an apple looking at a spot directly above you on the ceiling then the spot is 90 degrees from the surface you’re standing on. If you’re standing half way around the apple then you’d barely see the spot but it would be horizontal to the surface you’re standing on and so the spot would be at zero degrees. And if you were ¼ of the way down the apple then the spot would be at 45 degrees etc. ie the northern star is the spot on the ceiling to us.
You can also find latitude using other celestial sightings but they involve table lookups and are slightly more complicated. Not meant for this post and also note that there are a few more complicated variables not taken into account during this simplistic explanation like the height of your eyeballs above the earths surface etc etc. But at least you’ve now got the principle.
Longitude: Now this is a fun one and in an incredibly easy principle. But years ago (early 1700′s) while the principle was easy then the execution was difficult. Read on to see why.
The earth rotates through 360 degrees in 24 hours. That’s 15 degrees per hour. By convention, when the sun is at it’s highest point in Greenwich, it is noon in Greenwich. That means that at a place that is 15 degrees to the West of Greenwich the sun will be at it’s highest point one hour later. Six hours after Greenwich the sun will be at it’s highest point somewhere in over the USA and 12 hours later the sun will be at it’s highest point in New Zealand.
Animation of time zones
So if we know the time in Greenwich and sun just reached its highest point where we are then we can calculate our longitude.
Lets do a few examples. If it is 6 pm in Greenwich and the sun just peaked overhead here, then I am 6 x15 degrees to the west of Greenwich which is 90 degrees West which is right near St Louis Mo.
If the sun peaked overhead in Los Angeles what time would it be in London.?Well LA is 118.15 degrees West (from Google earth). Divide that by 15 degrees per hour and we get 7 hrs 53 minutes. Now since the times zones are created in bands this would round up to 8 hours. Thus it would be 8pm in London.
You’re sailing in the Greek islands in the Mediterranean and a little bird just told you your latitude is 34 deg 54 minutes north but failed to tell you the longitude. Fortunately you have your handy sextant and just as you take a shot, the sun just reached its apex overhead. You look at your watch and the local time is 12:10:48 pm. Where are you?
Since you’re in time zone B you are 2 hours ahead of Greenwich. Thus the time in Greenwich is 10:10:48 am. And since the sun peaked just now (=noon) then you are 12:00:00 minus 10:10:48 = 1 hour 49 minutes and 12 seconds from Greenwich. Putting this into decimal time this is 1.82 hours. Multiply this by 15 degrees per hour and we have 27.3 degrees East or 27 degrees, 18 minutes East.
You’re in the harbor north of the town of Kos on the Island of Kos.
That was incredibly easy, so why all the hoopla back in the 1700′s? The King of England even offered up a ₤10,000 reward to anyone who could solve the issue of Longitude. The above math was well known but the issue was telling the time. No one could accurately keep time at sea. After 27 years of work on the project, John Harrison, finally invented the Chronometer more commonly known as the watch. The watch was not susceptible to the sudden crashes of waves at sea and thus kept proper time.
James Cook on his second trip around the world in 1772 sailing on Rendezvous, took Harrison’s watch with initially much skepticism. Stating that he’d give it a try. After six months at sea, Cook stated that the Chronometer would almost certainly become the way of the future for Navigators. Cook then went on to reposition many of the Islands in the Pacific including Tahiti, his favorite island. His map of New Zealand astounds people even today with its accuracy.
Again there were a few simplistic assumptions taken in that explanation. But now, at least you understand the principle of longitude determination from a noon shot of the sun. You can also determine your latitude from a noon shot of the sun as well using tables and a bit of math. Again beyond this posting.
If you’d like to delve deeper into these topics, NauticEd provides online sailing lessons and an Introductory Celestial Navigation Sailing Course, or maybe you’re just happy with your handy boring ol GPS.
On-line product reviews are in demand these days by consumers prior to making a purchase. A recent Nielsen report stated that forty-nine percent of online shoppers said they trusted consumer opinions posted online.
Investing your time, money and well-being in a professional sailing school instructor is serious business. So wouldn’t it be great to know what other students thought about the sailing instructor you’re about to choose?
Now NauticEd Sailing School has stepped up to be the first to provide on-line reviews of sailing school instructors.
Sailing School Instructor feedback form
How On-Line Sailing Instructor Reviews Work
When a NauticEd student takes practical training from one of it’s hands-on sailing schools, the student now has the opportunity to rate their learning experience with the instructor. When the student logs back in to NauticEd after their hands-on learning experience, a popup window appears. Sailing Instructors are rated on: Teaching Ability, Depth of Knowledge, Friendliness, Condition of the Vessel and their Professionalism. If the review is negative, the instructor has the opportunity to contact the student and resolve any issue. The student can then edit their review.
To view other student reviews of instructors, the browser clicks on the Sailing Schools link on the NauticEd website and then selects the sailing school in the Country, State or Province of their choice. There, each affiliated sailing school has a webpage where there is a listing of all the instructors associated with that sailing school. Each profile of the instructor shows a friendly photo, their contact information, their instructor credentials, their specialty and all of the past reviews by other students.
Each NauticEd student’s Sailing Certification is held digitally online. It displays all the online theory courses passed by the student as well as practical experience and practical school training. When a student completes their practical proficiency exam on the water, the sailing school instructor logs in, securely locates their student and then clicks on the “Proficient” button. This updates the student’s Sailing Certification instantly and also posts against the student’s sailing resume. Both can be reviewed by charter companies worldwide on-line, given a secret logbook code from the student.
Grant Headifen, Director of Education for NauticEd says that their professional Sailing Schools are serious about quality but for them it’s hard to be recognized and stand out for providing such quality. Now, potential sailing school students doing their online shopping research will more than likely choose a school with this form of social proof giving NauticEd Sailing Schools the competitive edge.
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