Author: $tingy Sailor

Skipper of The $tingy Sailor blog
Uncategorized4 Comments

The Essentials You Should Have in Your Onboard Toolbox

$tingy Sailor

Some of us were Boy Scouts back in the day and we learned to be prepared. For the rest of us, we might not have gotten the lesson. Are you prepared for a gear failure aboard your sailboat? If you cruise offshore or in remote locations like I do, you could be many miles from help if something goes wrong. What will you do if your rigging fails, if your ground tackle fails, or if your outboard motor fails? If you’re not prepared, an inconvenience could escalate into an emergency.

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Cockpit/stern21 Comments

How To Repair a Rudder

$tingy Sailor

Rudders damage easily. Although they work similar to a keel, they aren’t nearly as tough. If you dry sail, the edges can accumulate nicks and dings in the fiberglass from loading and unloading. The rudders of some sailboats can hit the outboard motor’s propeller if you’re not careful. Add in accidental groundings, storage damage, and stress cracks and it doesn’t take much time in water to make the wooden core swell and damage the rudder even more. Without repairs, a weakened rudder can even break into pieces under stress. It pays to protect your rudder.

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Rigging21 Comments

How to Rig a Self-Tacking Jib for Free!

$tingy Sailor

You may not have seen or even heard of a self-tacking jib before. They’re usually only found on luxury sailboats. But that’s exactly what one is, a headsail that sheets itself when you tack. You don’t have to cast off the working sheet and haul in the lazy sheet on every tack. In fact, after you set it up, you don’t have to touch the sheet again while sailing. You just push the helm to lee, come about as you normally would, and the jib passes through the fore triangle by itself and stops on the new lee side at the same sheeting angle as it was before the tack. I set one up for free and you can too.

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Cabin19 Comments

Refinish Your Interior Teak To Better Than New

$tingy Sailor

One of the things about older sailboats that I appreciate most is their abundance of teak woodwork. As a woodworker, I admire good craftsmanship, creative design, and a fine finish. It’s harder to find on today’s modern sailboats. Teak is in short supply so it’s more expensive than it once was and most modern sailors don’t want to spend time maintaining their brightwork. For the rest of us, beautiful teak appointments are an opportunity to set our sailboat apart from the rest and a sign of pride of ownership. Few improvements freshen up a sailboat’s interior like well maintained woodwork.

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Cockpit/stern, Sewing2 Comments

Sew Your Own Winch Covers From Scraps

$tingy Sailor

Do you keep your lovingly maintained sailboat in a slip or on a mooring ball but want to protect your hard work from the elements as much as possible? Covers on your winches can protect the plated parts from corrosion, the plastic parts from UV damage, the bearings and pawls from rainwater and salt water spray, and keep everything cleaner if bird droppings are a problem for you.

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Tips8 Comments

10 Tips On How To Make Time To Work On Your Sailboat

$tingy Sailor

One of the biggest challenges that I read about in the many emails that I receive from subscribers is finding time to work on their sailboats. We all live busy, modern lives and as much as we would like to spend more time restoring and improving our sailboats, there never seems to be enough time.

We procrastinate, hoping for a better time when circumstances will be more favorable. More often than not, we simply never get around to it.

We can even begin to feel guilty or discouraged about working on our sailboat, to the point where we make excuses to not work on it. What once was a joy can becomes a chore and a burden. We might even stop sailing as much because something needs fixed. From there, emotional gravity can pull us down to the final step, selling the boat to be rid of the burden.

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Trailer12 Comments

How to Replace Trailer Bunk Boards

$tingy Sailor

How strong is a zip-tie? Could one hold the end of a bunk board carrying a 2,200# sailboat for 250 miles at highway speeds, including over a mountain pass? Would you do it with your boat? How about two, one on each end with a rusted bolt in the middle of the bunk?

Pretty strong as it turns out. The picture below shows the aft end of the starboard bunk just as the previous owner had tied it before I purchased Summer Dance and towed her home. The other end was like it. They held the whole way. Notice that there is no bolt holding the bunk to the bracket. Don’t try this at home, kids. 

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