15 / MAY / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
15 / MAY / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
Down
Finished Friday's puzzle? Try Thursday's previous too
You're looking at the 15 / 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 15 / MAY / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Friday grid, don't stop — 14 / 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 — 14 / MAY / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Thursday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Thursday's grid.
Across
- The recessed working area of the deck where the helm, sheets, and instruments are usually grouped (7) — COCKPIT
- A pyrotechnic distress signal — handheld red flares are for close-range visibility, parachute red flares for long-range,… (5) — FLARE
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- A thin strip of timber, fibreglass, or carbon inserted into a pocket along the leech of a sail to maintain its aerodynamic shape (6) — BATTEN
- To sail close to the wind (5) — POINT
- A permanent ground tackle — anchor, chain, and buoy — to which a vessel can secure instead of deploying her own anchor (7) — MOORING
- See jibe — a turn in which the stern passes through the wind (4) — GYBE
Down
- A short-lived increase in wind strength (4) — PUFF
- The floor of a cockpit or cabin (4) — SOLE
- The condition of a vessel whose keel or hull is in contact with the seabed (7) — AGROUND
- The ratio between the length of anchor rode paid out and the depth of water (plus bow height), e (5) — SCOPE
- A microwave ranging system that bounces a rotating pulse off targets and displays their bearing and range; modern broadb… (5) — RADAR
- The right side of the boat when facing forward (9) — STARBOARD
- A raised lip around the edge of the cockpit or a hatch, designed to keep out water (7) — COAMING
- In the IALA Region B system, a red even-numbered conical buoy marking the starboard side of a channel when entering from… (3) — NUN
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.