Whether or not you’ve replaced your standing rigging, you may be wondering how to adjust it. How tight should the rig be? How can you measure it? After all, what good is great rigging if it isn’t tensioned properly to perform its best?
Category: Product reviews
Remove and Prevent Mildew for Pennies
This guest post is from Drew Frye and first appeared on his blog, Sail Delmarva. Drew also tests products for Practical Sailor magazine and writes for other magazines like Good Old Boat. He graciously agreed to let me reproduce his article here. The great myth of boat ownership—other than believing that everything takes 3 times as long…
Product Review: Garmin ECHOMAP UHD 73sv Chartplotter
I’ve been asked many times if I have a chartplotter on Summer Dance. Up to now, I’ve answered that I didn’t have a need for one and that my handheld GPS worked fine for my needs. But recently, I’ve challenged myself to do more fishing and I haven’t been very successful yet at filling up…
Product Review: MastGates Sail Track Gates
Do you know how to reef your mainsail when the wind gets overpowering? If not, you really should learn how. If you already know, is your sailboat rigged so that you can reef and unreef quickly in high winds while underway? If not, besides a jiffy reefing line like I describe in Single line jiffy reefing, you’re…
Product Review: Nikon Aculon A211 Binoculars
Can you get a decent pair of binoculars for under $100? Or will they just be frustrating and fall apart? I believe you can like your binoculars without spending a lot, especially if you get a pair from the Aculon A211 series by Nikon. I’ve had a pair for a couple of years now on…
Product Review: Smart Solutions Add-A-Drawer Kit
In my never-ending quest to find the best storage and organization solutions for everything aboard Summer Dance, the hardest storage problems are the smallest items. Big items like life jackets and sails aren’t hard to find places to store because there aren’t a lot of options. But finding a home for little items like pens, pencils, keys,…
Product Review: Rolly Tasker Sails
You’ve put off replacing that threadbare old sail long enough. Or maybe it ripped during your last outing. Or maybe you just bought a used sailboat and it’s missing a serviceable mainsail or headsail. You want to buy a new sail but you’re not sure where from, there are so many choices. Being a stingy sailor, you…
Product Review: Bayco Kord Manager
One of the features of the “new design” Catalina 22s (made between 1985 and 1995) and bigger sailboats that I envy most is their anchor lockers. There just isn’t a good place on the older C22s to store a full-size anchor, 24′ of chain, and 200′ of rode without taking up a lot of space….
Product Review: Little Giant Ladder
This is one piece of gear that I didn’t imagine would be so helpful but it has surprised me and become almost indispensable to me. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much—a ladder to climb into the sailboat. But what’s great about this ladder is that it’s perfectly designed for the trailer sailor.
The $tingy Sailor 