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.
Continue reading “Refinish Your Interior Teak To Better Than New”
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.
10 Tips On How To Make Time To Work On Your Sailboat
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.
Continue reading “10 Tips On How To Make Time To Work On Your Sailboat”
Six DIY Skills Every Skipper Should Know
If you’re a regular reader of this website, the odds are good that you’re also a do-it-yourselfer. And if you’re a DIYer, the odds are good that you have an above average mechanical aptitude. You have an instinctive curiosity for … Continue reading Six DIY Skills Every Skipper Should Know
How to Replace Trailer Bunk Boards
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.
Continue reading “How to Replace Trailer Bunk Boards”
Turn a Locker Lid Into a Cockpit Table
At the risk of overstating the obvious, trailerable sailboats are cramped. Some are more cramped than others. Cramped inside and cramped outside. But we tolerate the cramped conditions because they’re so much fun to sail and to camp aboard. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be made more comfortable.
Continue reading “Turn a Locker Lid Into a Cockpit Table”
Install Midship Cleats and Dock Like a Pro
What’s the sailing maneuver you’re worst at? If it’s not tacking and gybing, it’s probably docking, especially if you sail single-handed or short-handed. Sailboats aren’t very maneuverable in tight spaces. If you don’t do it frequently enough to get good at it, it’s sort of a semi-controlled crash landing. You can make the process a lot easier, safer, and more predictable with this easy, cheap upgrade.
Make This Boom Tent: the Poor Man’s Bimini
It’s a cloudless mid-summer afternoon. You’ve had a great day of sailing but you’re ready to drop anchor, start dinner, and relax for another stunning sunset. You’ve been in the sun all day so some shade would be great but you don’t have a bimini on your sailboat. You don’t really want to go down into the cramped cabin yet. The first mate will be making dinner and you’d just be in the way.
So You Just Bought Your First Sailboat—Where Do You Begin?
Photo courtesy of Dianna Keen at These Days of Mine
You’ve fantasized about it, you’ve looked, you’ve shopped around. You crawled in, under, and around a bunch of sailboats that other people wanted to get rid of. Finally, one grabbed your imagination more than any other. In your mind’s eye, you could see yourself as its proud owner and in command of its sails and rudder. You made the decision and you brought it home.
The $tingy Sailor 