Student
Anton Panferov
San Diego, CA, USA
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Skipper Small Sailboat Level I
Status: Sailor
Qualified days: 11
Wake bearing vs leeway
Posted 2026, Jun 15 01:20
The course says:
> Sight down the vessels wake with the HBC to determine that bearing. Now add or subtract 180 degrees to make that figure comparable with the ship's compass heading. Were there no leeway, the numbers would be the same. If the wake bearing is to port of the ship's bearing, the boat is making leeway to starboard in an amount equal to the difference between the bearings. A starboard-tending wake coincides with port leeway.
This phrasing is quite confusing: "If the wake bearing is to port of the ship's bearing, the boat is making leeway to starboard". If by “wake bearing” here assumed HBS of the wake + 180 (because it’s mentioned right before) then I would expect the leeway to be also to port. If “wake bearing” here refers to a raw wake bearing then the leeway will be to starboard but it’s very hard to infer it from the text because right before it says “Now add or subtract 180 degrees” so it would be expected that from that point on we operate on the converted wake bearing.