text: trig..please help..stupid word problems? a sailboat on lake huron leaves southampton and sails 20 degrees west of north for 20km. at the same time, a fishing boat leaves southampton and sails 30 degrees west of south for 15km. at this point, how far apart are the boats to the nearest kilometre? can you also please show how you got everything? thanks i'm not going to do the problem for you, because this is obviously homework.   what i will do, is tell you that you should use the law of cosines.      b^2 = a^2 + c^2 - 2ac * cosb  given the first two directions of the boats, you can find the angle opposite side b.  and you are already given the other two sides.  once you figure out angle b, it is just plug and chug.  hope this is helpful!