SailsSearch

03/11/2026

🍋Amalfi Coast by boat, on your dates and your budget. Seriously.

No fixed tours. No strangers on board. Just your crew, a catamaran and the most beautiful coastline in Italy 🍋

Here’s how it works: the base is the boat + a skipper. Everything else is up to you.

1. Private chef on board? Add it.
2. Want to cook together with your crew? Do it.
3. Rather eat out in a trattoria on every island? Easy.
4. More days, more stops, or a shorter escape? Your call.

Positano, Capri and the Faraglioni, Ischia’s hot springs, Sorrento, Maiori. Morning swims, sunsets on the net, limoncello o’clock.

Zero sailing experience needed. Just bring a swimsuit.

DM us «AMALFI» with your dates, crew size and budget, and we’ll make it work 🌊

03/11/2026

Amalfi on your dates. Your people. Nobody else on board.

Breakfast off Positano. Lunch under the Faraglioni. Sunset spritz on the catamaran net 🍊

We organise private catamaran trips on the Amalfi Coast, built entirely around you:

1. Your dates: any week of the season
2. Your crew: family, friends, partner or team
3. Your route: Amalfi, Positano, Capri, Ischia, Sorrento, Maiori
4. Skipper and chef on board, private en-suite cabins
5. Zero sailing experience needed

Morning swims in clear bays. Ischia’s thermal pools. Limoncello in Sorrento. Long lunches on deck while someone else does the cooking.

You just show up. We plan the sea.

Send us a DM with «AMALFI» and we’ll build your trip 🌊

03/11/2026

One fist above the horizon = one hour of daylight. Or is it? ✊

Hold your arm straight and put your fist between the sun and the sea. A fist at arm’s length is about 10 degrees, and the old rule says that’s about an hour of light left.

Same day in mid-November, same fist-high sun:
47 minutes off Phuket.
1 h 04 off the Azores.
2 h 24 in the Stockholm archipelago.

Your fist measures the sun’s height correctly in all three places. What changes is the angle of the sun’s path. Near the equator it drops almost straight down into the sea. Farther from the equator it slides along the horizon, so the same 10 degrees take much longer to lose.

The rule works best in mid-latitudes. In the tropics, expect less light than it promises. At high latitudes in winter, expect more, but the sun is low all day there anyway.

Plan your landfall before the light runs out. 🌅

⛵ Get your international skipper licence: theory online from anywhere, year-round. Sailing practice in Barcelona, Athens, Mallorca or the Canaries.
DM us or tap the link in bio.

02/11/2026

A hurricane looks the same all the way round. It isn’t. 🌀

It’s moving, and that splits it in two.

North of the equator, the storm’s own forward speed adds to the wind on its right side and takes some away on its left. Ahead of the storm, the wind on the right blows a boat into its path. On the left, it blows a boat away from it.

That’s why sailors call the left half the navigable semicircle. Less dangerous, not safe.

How to tell which half you’re in: hold still and watch the wind. If it shifts anticlockwise, you’re in the navigable half. If it shifts clockwise, you’re in the dangerous one.

Caught in the navigable half? The textbook move is wind on the starboard quarter and best speed away. South of the equator, everything is mirrored.

Know which half you’re in before the storm decides for you. 🧭

⛵ Get your international skipper licence: theory online from anywhere, year-round. Sailing practice in Barcelona, Athens, Mallorca or the Canaries.
DM us or tap the link in bio.

01/11/2026

Your anchor held all night. The tide is about to test it from behind. ⚓

It was dug in by a pull from one side. When the tide turns, that pull comes from the other.

As the stream eases, the breeze swings the boat round on her chain. The chain lying on the sand stays put at first. About an hour after slack, the new stream joins the breeze, drags the chain straight back over the anchor, and the anchor is pulled from behind.

That’s exactly how offshore crews free a buried anchor on purpose: they pull it out from the opposite side.

Often nothing goes wrong. In tests, many modern anchors back out, flip over and dig straight back in. But a clod of seabed jammed in the fluke changes everything. The anchor lands upside down and drags until the clod comes loose.

The turn of the tide is worth waking up for. Before you sleep, set an anchor alarm with a drag radius that fits your swing. Check it once the new stream has built, about an hour after slack. 🌙

⛵ Get your international skipper licence: theory online from anywhere, year-round. Sailing practice in Barcelona, Athens, Mallorca or the Canaries.
DM us or tap the link in bio.

31/10/2026

Before GPS, a ship’s speed came from a piece of wood, a knotted line and a 28-second sandglass. ⏳

The chip is weighted to float upright, so it stays almost still in the water while the boat sails away from it. The line runs out over the stern, with a knot every 14.4 m (47 ft 3 in). That’s how far a boat doing one knot travels in 28 seconds.

So count the knots that run out before the sand is gone, and you have your speed in knots. Yes, that’s where the unit got its name.

Fractions were marked with white rags at every fifth of the gap: six knots out plus two rags reads 6.4.

The glass is just a timer. In 1574, William Bourne wrote that some crews timed the line by reciting a set number of words. A phone works too.

The run in this video is simulated with real physics. Under the pull of the line, the chip creeps back toward the boat a little, so the log reads about 4% under the boat’s speed through the water. Near enough to navigate by. 🧭

⛵ Get your international skipper licence: theory online from anywhere, year-round. Sailing practice in Barcelona, Athens, Mallorca or the Canaries.
DM us or tap the link in bio.

30/10/2026

Same 2 m forecast. Two completely different seas. 🌊

The difference is the period: the seconds between one wave and the next.

At 5 seconds, a 2 m wave is about 39 m long, less than three lengths of a 14 m boat. Its face slopes at about 9°, and NOAA’s buoy formula rates that sea very steep. The boat climbs every single wave.

At 12 seconds, the same 2 m wave is about 225 m long and slopes at under 2°. By the same formula, it would have to be over 14 m high to count as very steep. The boat just rises and falls.

But the long swell has a catch near the coast. A 12-second swell starts to feel the seabed in about 110 m of water, a 5-second sea only in about 20 m. In the shallows it steepens, and it carries roughly two and a half times the power.

Never read the height alone. Read the period next to it. ⏱️

⛵ Get your international skipper licence: theory online from anywhere, year-round. Sailing practice in Barcelona, Athens, Mallorca or the Canaries.
DM us or tap the link in bio.

30/10/2026

⛵ We've launched our SailsSearch YouTube channel!

Alongside our short videos, we're now publishing longer, more detailed explanations of sailing, navigation, weather, and seamanship.

🎥 We'd love you to check them out and tell us what you think!

Your feedback is really important to us. Let us know what you like, what we could improve, and what topics you'd like us to cover next.

👉 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4-rLjFI5bujHZ8U4oDRqKw

Fair winds! ⛵

Welcome to SailsSearch - a channel about sailing, yachts, routes, and life at sea. We create short, useful, and entertaining videos that explain how sailing works, share practical tips, explore beautiful sailing destinations, and answer common questions about life aboard. SailsSearch also helps trav...

27/10/2026

The wind is blowing 15 knots. This boat is doing 20. 💨

Sail dead downwind and you can never beat the wind. Your own speed is taken off it, and at 15 knots the sail feels nothing at all.

Turn across the wind and everything changes. At 20 knots the boat makes a wind of its own, straight from ahead. Add it to the true wind, tip to tail: 15 from the side, 20 from ahead. That makes a 3-4-5 triangle, so the sail feels 25 knots, 37° off the bow.

The faster she goes, the stronger that wind gets, because the true wind keeps crossing her path. What holds her back is drag in the water, and light, slim catamarans have very little of it. Racing cats hit 35 knots in 20 to 25 knots of wind.

The catch: she’s still slower than the wind she sails in. That wind is 25 knots. 🏁

⛵ Get your international skipper licence: theory online from anywhere, year-round. Sailing practice in Barcelona, Athens, Mallorca or the Canaries.
DM us or tap the link in bio.