Methodological challenges point to a reconceptualization of ‘tacit knowledge’ to ‘tacit knowing’. The paper outlines the concept of ‘tacit knowing’ and explores the need for educational research to reformulate questions about tacit knowledge as a practical learning concern. Using John Dewey’s transactional perspective on learning ‘tacit knowing’ is analysed as embodiment of knowledge. An approach of ‘body pedagogics’ is used to frame this analysis. From a perspective of ‘body pedagogics’ our bodily being and the actions we perform as such beings cannot be reduced to neither cultural nor subjective experience. Rather, we are in a continuing educating process when it comes to our bodies (Shilling and Mellor 2007, p. 533). On the background of this a transactional model of learning is developed that recognises educative bodily experiences in relation to ‘tacit knowing’. A sailing vignette is used to show that ‘tacit knowing’ becomes visible in a sailor’s embodied inquiry of which situated epistemic relations it is necessary to embody to acquire a certain ‘body technique’. Empirical focus lies on how dinghy sailors grow into purposeful ‘body techniques’ (Mauss, Econ Soc 2(1):70–88, 1973) by taking the measure of their ongoing, continuous experience while coordinating their movements with the environment. The analysis show how understandings and bodily skills are simultaneously used in the educational situation where the dinghy sailor has to handle both the environment and various instructions given by the trainer. Thus, ‘tacit knowing’ in dinghy sailing is not merely a collection of motor skills, but rather the grasping, in the practical embodied way, of physical principles.