10 most difficult sailing riddles

Janszoon reached the Gulf of Carpentaira (north of Australia) and made a landfall in 1606. However, he found the land swampy and the people inhospitable. He called the land he had discovered “Nieu Zeland” after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but the name was not adopted and was later used by Abel Tasman for New Zealand.

This cold sea current circulates the globe in the far south. It creates a zone of very strong winds and storms, by which sailing Cape Horn is such a challenge for sailors. Depth of current exceeds 3000 m.

During his youth, it was not expected that William, being the third son, would become a king. He served in the Royal Navy in the Caribbean. He inherited the throne at the age of 64, after his two elder brothers died without leaving legitimate successors

The first person to complete a single handed circumnavigation was a retired Master Mariner, originally from Canada, but subsequently a citizen of the USA, Joshua Slocum. He sailed in 1895 on a route that took him across the Atlantic, down South America and through the Magellan passage, and then on to Australia, South Africa and home. He had rebuilt his 35 foot sloop Spray by himself before he sailed and proved a good and safe seaboat and brought him safely home in 1898.

John Cabot (Italian: Giovanni Caboto, Venetian: Zuan Chabotto) was a Venetian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England was the first European exploration of the mainland of North America.

When a piece of iceberg ice melts, it makes a fizzing sound called "Bergie Seltzer". This sound is made when the water-ice interface reaches compressed air bubbles trapped in the ice. As this happens, each bubble bursts, making a 'popping' sound. The bubbles contain air trapped in snow layers very early in the history of the ice, that eventually got buried to a given depth (up to several kilometers) and pressurized as it transformed into firn then to glacial ice.

On 15 February 1500, Cabral was appointed a commander of a fleet sailing for India. The fleet crossed the Equator on 9 April, and sailed westward as far as possible from the African continent in what was known as the Volta do mar (literally "turn of the sea") navigational technique. They landed in a land they took for an unknown island and named Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross), which in fact was Brazil.

In sailing, the great capes are three major capes of the continents in the Southern Ocean — Africa's Cape of Good Hope, Australia's Cape Leeuwin, and South America's Cape Horn. Cape Hafun is the extreme eastern point of Africa, not included in the list.

Queen Anne's Revenge was a fully rigged ship, most famously used as a flagship by the pirate Blackbeard (Edward Teach). Although the date and place of the ship's construction are unclear, it is believed she was built in Bristol in 1710 and named Concord. Blackbeard used the ship for less than a year,[5] but captured numerous prizes using her as his flagship.

The topping lift (more rarely known as an uphaul) is a line which applies upward force on a boom on a sailboat. Part of the running rigging, topping lifts are primarily used to hold a boom up when the sail is lowered. This line would run from near the free end of the boom forward to the top of the mast. The line may be run over a block at the top of the mast and down to the deck to allow it to be adjusted.