05 / MAY / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
05 / MAY / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
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Finished Tuesday's puzzle? Try Monday's previous too
You're looking at the 05 / MAY / 2026 daily maritime crossword — a free nautical puzzle drawn from our 259-term corpus of COLREGs rules, VHF radio procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary. Every daily puzzle is deterministic — players worldwide saw exactly the same grid on 05 / MAY / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Tuesday grid, don't stop — 04 / MAY / 2026's puzzle is waiting with a fresh layout from the same nautical vocabulary. Warning: some clues lean on COLREGs Rule numbers and IALA buoyage — brush up if you're rusty.
Browse the full crossword archive to replay every past puzzle, or print this one to A4 using the 🖨️ Print button above — solutions are printed upside-down at the bottom of the page, newspaper-style.
Yesterday's clues & answers — 04 / MAY / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Monday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Monday's grid.
Across
- On a cutter, the inner headsail set on an inner forestay between the bow and the mast; more generally, any sail set on a stay (8) — STAYSAIL
- The vertical distance from the waterline to the deck edge (9) — FREEBOARD
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- The direction (usually in degrees true) in which a current flows (3) — SET
- Search and Rescue Transponder — an emergency device that, when triggered by an X-band radar pulse, replies with a 12-dot… (4) — SART
- The generic term at sea for any rope in use (4) — LINE
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- See jibe — a turn in which the stern passes through the wind (4) — GYBE
- Length Overall — the maximum fore-and-aft hull length, excluding bowsprits and pulpits unless specifically included (3) — LOA
- Outside the rail, or toward or beyond the sides of the boat (8) — OUTBOARD
- A secondary anchor, smaller than the bower, carried for manoeuvring or for kedging the boat off a grounding (5) — KEDGE
- The crew member steering the boat at a given moment (8) — HELMSMAN
- To sail a course that will clear a mark or obstacle without an additional tack (3) — LAY
- To let a sheet, halyard, or other line run out in a controlled manner (4) — EASE
- To put away neatly and securely (4) — STOW
- To hold, and keep tension on, the free end of a line while a winch grinder takes turns on the drum (4) — TAIL
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.