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?
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 and costs 4 times as much as you expect—is that mildew is ubiquitous. No matter how leak-tight, no matter how well maintained, it is always there. Well, I disagree wholeheartedly, and I challenge anyone to find any in my cabin. How have I dodged this scourge?
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 my electric smoker. I’m also seriously considering cruising the San Juan Islands off the Washington state coast. And there’s my failure to get my handheld GPS to play nice with my tiller autopilot that nags at me. For these reasons, I bit the bullet and installed a Garmin ECHOMAP UHD 73sv chartplotter. I’ll give you my objective evaluation in this review.
Continue reading “Product Review: Garmin ECHOMAP UHD 73sv Chartplotter”
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 my single line jiffy reefing article, you’re going to want to install mast gates of some kind.
I won’t get into all the nuances of reefing in this post. There are many other excellent resources for that. For a condensed, illustrated description along with many other sailing techniques, consider reading my review of Royce’s Sailing Illustrated Volume 1: Tall Ship Edition.
Continue reading “Product Review: MastGates Sail Track Gates”
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 my sailboat and I’ve been very pleased by them. Continue reading “Product Review: Nikon Aculon A211 Binoculars”
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, digital memory cards, maps, and registration paperwork can be tough. They need to be readily accessible yet securely stowed and water resistant. There aren’t a lot of options. Waitaminnit, didn’t I say that already?
Continue reading “Product Review: Smart Solutions Add-A-Drawer Kit”
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 can’t afford to just write a blank check. But you also don’t want invest in poor quality that won’t perform or won’t last.
Continue reading “Product Review: Rolly Tasker Sails”
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. Catalina Yachts must have heard plenty of complaints from first-generation design owners to include an anchor locker in the new design. If you aren’t fortunate enough to have an anchor locker, you have to get creative.
Continue reading “Product Review: Bayco Kord Manager”
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.
Continue reading “Product Review: Little Giant Ladder”
The $tingy Sailor 