26 / JUN / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
26 / JUN / 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 26 / JUN / 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 26 / JUN / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Friday grid, don't stop — 25 / JUN / 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 — 25 / JUN / 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
- Sailing too close to the wind, resulting in a stalled luff and reduced boat speed (8) — PINCHING
- The pin of a rudder fitting that drops into a gudgeon on the transom, allowing the rudder to swing freely (6) — PINTLE
- Length Waterline — the fore-and-aft length of the hull measured at the waterline; a major factor in hull speed (3) — LWL
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- The lowest internal part of the hull, where water inevitably drains and collects (5) — BILGE
- A piece of standing rigging running from a chainplate to the upper mast or spreader tip, supporting the mast laterally (6) — SHROUD
- 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
Down
- To lay a rope down in neat, uniform loops for storage, or the stored loops themselves (4) — COIL
- To adjust the tension and alignment of the standing rigging so the mast stands straight and the sails set correctly (4) — TUNE
- Toward the source of the wind (8) — WINDWARD
- The vertical distance from the waterline to the deepest part of the keel — the minimum water depth the vessel needs to float (5) — DRAFT
- The sideways lean of the hull caused by wind pressure on the sails (4) — HEEL
- The spars, standing rigging, and sail plan collectively — or the act of rigging the boat for sea (3) — RIG
- The forward end of the vessel (3) — BOW
- The direction (usually in degrees true) in which a current flows (3) — SET
Great for studying COLREGs, VHF procedure, navigation marks, rigging and seamanship vocabulary — or just as a spoiler if you got stuck.