18 / JUL / 2026 · skippercheck.net/crossword
⚓ Daily Maritime Crossword
18 / JUL / 2026 — archive puzzle. The world's first maritime-only crossword — 259-term nautical corpus.
Across
Down
Finished Saturday's puzzle? Try Friday's previous too
You're looking at the 18 / JUL / 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 18 / JUL / 2026, so your time and hint count still rank against the global leaderboard.
If you solved this Saturday grid, don't stop — 17 / JUL / 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 — 17 / JUL / 2026
Newspaper-style: today's page publishes the full solution to Friday's puzzle (15 maritime terms). Today's answers stay hidden until tomorrow — play the grid above, or replay Friday's grid.
Across
- The taller (main) mast on a vessel with more than one mast (8) — MAINMAST
- A point of sail with the wind coming from dead astern (3) — RUN
- The sideways lean of the hull caused by wind pressure on the sails (4) — HEEL
- To hold, and keep tension on, the free end of a line while a winch grinder takes turns on the drum (4) — TAIL
- A pivoting keel that can be raised into a trunk to reduce draft and lowered to resist leeway (11) — CENTERBOARD
- The floor of a cockpit or cabin (4) — SOLE
- The enclosed interior accommodation of the vessel (5) — CABIN
- The fitting (on deck or on the keel) into which the foot of the mast is stepped (8) — MASTSTEP
Down
- Running across the vessel from one side to the other, at right angles to the fore-and-aft line (12) — ATHWARTSHIPS
- To adjust a sail's controls to produce optimum drive and lift (4) — TRIM
- 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 haul a sail to windward so the wind fills the wrong side, stopping the boat or driving it astern (4) — BACK
- A patch of shallow water, often sand or mud, representing a hazard (5) — SHOAL
- A brand of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibre; as strong as steel wire but a fraction of the weight… (7) — DYNEEMA
- 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.