If you leave your sailboat exposed to the elements for long periods of time or if you just want to keep your brightwork bright, it helps to cover the main hatch to reduce damage from UV rays, rain and snow, and bird droppings. Making one isn’t hard and you can do it in less than a day with about a yard of canvas, depending on the size of your hatch.
Continue reading “Make This Companionway Hatch Cover In Under a Day”
Small sailboats don’t offer a lot of seating options in the cockpit. Four adults are about the maximum that will leave room for the skipper to work the helm. For casual cruising, that means everyone is in the cockpit, not hiking out on the coamings or side decks. Most sailboats will accommodate six in the cockpit while moored with the tiller out of the way but that can be crowded. You can give your guests more room or yourself more seating options with seats mounted on the stern pushpit.
Continue reading “Add More Cockpit Seating With DIY Stern Perch Seats”
If you don’t have a locking mechanism on your tiller yet, don’t you sometimes wish you did? Then you could lock the tiller in place while you attend to other things for a few minutes or under the right conditions, relax and let the boat sail itself. A tiller lock is the next best thing to having a crew member or an autopilot take the helm for you. There are several tiller lock designs on the market and all of them do a reasonable job. But like everything else marine-related, they can be expensive for what they are.
Continue reading “Make This Simple, Low-Cost Tiller Lock”
I have a serious mental condition known as OCD, Obsessive Compulsive DIY syndrome. I see something that needs fixed or replaced and I ask myself, “How can I make that?”
The other night, I had an OCD attack and I just needed to go out in my shop and make something with my hands. It was one of those days when nothing else seemed to go right. For me, it’s cathartic to turn raw materials into something practical and/or beautiful.
I decided to make cockpit scupper grates to replace the flimsy, afterthought-designed, original grates. They were corroded, bent, and wouldn’t stay glued in place for long. Continue reading “Make These DIY Cockpit Scupper Grates”
Want to add a decorative grip to the handle of your tiller? It’s not hard to do in a couple of hours and almost free with a few scraps of canvas and/or cord you may have lying around.
Coachwhipping is one of those little touches you can add to your sailboat to give it a more old-school, handcrafted look. It harkens back to a time when sailboats were made almost entirely out of wood and lashing parts together with rope was the norm. It’s a nice contrast to all the sterile fiberglass and stainless steel used on modern yachts and boosts your seaworthy credibility (or at least gives that illusion). Learning the knots and braids is fun. It’s a great way to spend time on a cold winter evening near the wood stove while the snow is falling.
Continue reading “How to Add Coachwhipping to Your Tiller Handle”
When we purchased Summer Dream, the only tiller control accessory she had was a contraption made with two pieces of shock cord joined in the middle with two wooden beads that formed an eye. It had hooks on the ends that could be attached to the pushpit stanchions. When the tiller handle is in the eye, the cords would hold it somewhat centered and you could adjust the tiller position by sliding the beads (and therefore, the eye) to one side or the other. It was simple and clever but the shock cord allowed the rudder to overpower it, so I couldn’t trust it to hold a heading for very long. I decided to replace it with a tiller lock device that would hold the tiller stationary no matter what. After evaluating several products, I chose the popular Davis Tiller Tamer.
Continue reading “How to Install a Tiller Lock”
The idea for this little solution came to me as I was making the crib board storage solution. The width of the vinyl channel that I fabricated for that project makes for a tension fit with a winch handle.
It amazes me how expensive boat grills and their accessories are. Of all the boating gear, they are the boat jewelry: glittering polished stainless steel grills, covers, and ridiculously priced mounting hardware for every conceivable configuration. But they don’t make the food taste any better. It must be big money for the manufacturers, knowing how much men love to eat and love their grills to cook on.
Continue reading “DIY Rail Mounts for Your Portable BBQ Grill”
While I was doing my How To Repair a Rudder project, I noticed that the tiller bushings were worn and loose. At the time, I hoped they would last the season until I figured out how best to replace them. That was wishful thinking. While putting Summer Dance in the water for our last cruise, one of the bushing flanges nearly fell off in my hands. It didn’t keep us from sailing that day, but it meant I was going to have to make the repair sooner rather than later.
Continue reading “How to Replace Worn Tiller Bushings”
The $tingy Sailor 