17 / MAY / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
17 / MAY / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
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You're looking at the 17 / 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 17 / MAY / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Sunday grid, don't stop — 16 / 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 — 16 / MAY / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Saturday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Saturday's grid.
Across
- Personal Locator Beacon — a small 406 MHz satellite distress beacon registered to an individual (not a vessel), carried… (3) — PLB
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- An aramid fibre used in high-performance laminate sails and safety gear; it is strong and resists stretch, but degrades with UV exposure (6) — KEVLAR
- Toward, at, or behind the stern (3) — AFT
- The cooking area below decks, typically containing a gimballed stove, sink, refrigeration, and lockers (6) — GALLEY
- A traditional Arabian sailing craft, typically single- or twin-masted and carrying lateen sails, still seen throughout t… (4) — DHOW
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- Short, steep, broken waves — typically caused by wind over a shallow or restricted fetch (4) — CHOP
- A large, usually closable opening in the deck or coachroof for access, ventilation, or light (5) — HATCH
- A buoyant horseshoe-shaped sling on a floating line, deployed to trail astern during a man-overboard recovery so the cas… (9) — LIFESLING
- In the IALA Region B system, a red even-numbered conical buoy marking the starboard side of a channel when entering from… (3) — NUN
- To hold, and keep tension on, the free end of a line while a winch grinder takes turns on the drum (4) — TAIL
- Differential GPS — a GPS that uses correction signals from ground or satellite-based reference stations to refine accura… (4) — DGPS
- The greatest width of the vessel measured at its widest point (4) — BEAM
- A two-masted rig whose shorter mizzen mast stands forward of the rudder post and is shorter than the main mast (5) — KETCH
- The line of sight formed when two marks ashore line up, showing the centre of a channel or a transit bearing (5) — RANGE
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.