Install a Marine Music System
If you’re a music lover, an onboard music system is mandatory. There’s a mysterious connection between the open waters and music. Whether it’s classical, jazz, rock, country, folk, or reggae, there’s a song for every mood when you’re sailing.
A marine music system lets you take your favorite music with you on the waters. We have them in our homes, in our cars, even in our phones, so we need them on our sailboats. A quality system isn’t difficult to install and it doesn’t have to be expensive.
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How to Reinforce Your Stem Fitting
While removing and rebedding all the deck hardware on Summer Dance with butyl tape, I decided that I would reinforce the stem fitting while I was at it. A popular online Catalina parts retailer’s website says:
Boats built before ’82 had an inherent weakness: The forestay load was forward of the stem fitting’s forward mounting bolts, supported only by the deck, in an area with many holes in a small space, all forward of the marine plywood reinforcement. It is common to see these Catalina 22’s with stem fittings that are being pulled up from the deck.
Deck failure begins by looking like the picture below. Notice the line of cracks just in front of the forward stem fitting bolts.
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Salon Table Upgrades from Simple to Spectacular
Every once in a while, I get the urge to add something purely aesthetic to Summer Dance—a bit of class, a touch of beauty. They can transform a sailboat from just a water vehicle into a nautical experience.
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Stingy’s Used Sailboat Buying Guide
If you’ve already been sailing for a while on a friend’s or a family member’s sailboat, then you probably have a good idea of what you want and what to look for. But if you’re relatively new to the sport and shopping for your first used sailboat, it can be a daunting task. There are a lot of used sailboats on the market and their condition runs from one extreme to the other, with corresponding price tags.
How do you know what to avoid that can cost you dearly to repair? What is reasonable to expect for an aging sailboat? And what marks a well-preserved pocket yacht?
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The Essentials You Should Have in Your Onboard Toolbox
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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How To Repair a Rudder
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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How to Rig a Self-Tacking Jib for Free!
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.
Refinish Your Interior Teak To Better Than New
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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Sew Your Own Winch Covers From Scraps
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.
The $tingy Sailor 