Family Website
Boating Information and Documents
by Ed Bottrell (Adobe Acrobat format)
- Essential Knots for Boating (v3)
- Washing Rope (v2)
- Chain Sinnet ('Daisy Chain') Knot
- Cutless Bearing Removal Tool
- Dock Line Guidelines (v2)
- Double Braid Eye-Splice (make your own dock lines)
- Using a Tack Ratio to Improve Racing Starts
- Marlinespike Terminology
- Boat Names (over 3,700)
- Lead Acid Battery Voltage - State of Charge Tables
- Guidelines for Varnishing Teak v3
- Preparing Your Boat for Mooring in High Winds and Waves
- Anchoring: How Much Line to let Out?
- Checklist for Spring Commissioning your Sail or Power Boat v6
- Checklist for Winterizing your Sail or Power Boat v8
A MS Excel-based Trapezoid, Windward-Leeward, Triangle, Optimist, & Lipton Cup Regatta Course Planner for Race Officers - Instant Latitudes & Longitudes of all Marks & Pins. Now supporting Yacht Club Racing with fixed and/or moveable marks, and RS:X Windsurfer slalom courses (new for 2011!). ezTrap is available for Excel 2003 and 2007/2010.
| Boater's Tip: Port & Starboard terms are only valid for boats. Buoys, docks, islands, rivers, etc. do not have a port or starboard side. When you operate your boat astern, port & starboard do not change. |
| Boater's Tip: When working with a nautical chart, always use the left or right scales, which show Latitude. One minute of Latitude (1') is equal to 1.0 nautical mile (nm). The top & bottom scales show degrees and minutes of Longitude but the scale is not appropriate for measuring distance. |
| Boater's Tip: POW mnemonic - Boats under sail are 'stand on' vessels that have 'right of way' over power boats except vessels restricted in their maneuverability such as ferries, warships, kayaks, container ships, etc. Sailboats under power (even with sails up) are still power boats. For sailboats underway, the 'Give Way' vessel is the sailboat on port-tack ("P"), or overtaking ("O"), or windward ("W"). |
Links and Boating Resources
| CS30 Links |
Make Your Own Wall Calendar
Since 2005, Ed's been making personalized wall calendars for family and organizations such as the St. Margaret Sailing Club. These 11x8.5" calendars are suitable for hanging on the wall, especially when printed on cover weight stock (about 67lb paper). Further, 11x8.5" pictures, advertising, or other information can be taped to each month to make them even more attractive and useful.
All the hard work is done in MS Excel 2007/2010 - all you need to do is type the information you want to appear in any date into a simple table. The spreadsheet uses a simple macro to format all the months, so be sure to enable macros to allow this function to work.
Click on the icon to download a free version of this MS Excel 2007/2010 template.