Tag: Catalina Yachts 22

Hull9 Comments

How to Paint Cove and Boot Stripes Like a Pro

$tingy Sailor

Ever wish you could repaint your scratched, faded, or worn cove or boot stripes? Have an older boat with a stripe color you don’t like and want to switch? New stripes are one of the little improvements that can make a big difference in the personality of your sailboat. You can apply them with vinyl tape, but most boot stripes aren’t the same width from bow to stern and custom cut vinyl can be expensive. Painting them isn’t as hard or as expensive as you might think. In this post, I’ll guide you through painting new stripes that look like they were done by a pro.

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Outboard motor10 Comments

How to Secure Your Outboard Motor for Safe Trailering

$tingy Sailor

A frequent question of new sailboat owners is what do with their outboard motor when trailering. Is it best to leave it on the boat or is it better to dismount it and haul it in the boat cockpit or tow vehicle? There are lots of owners in both camps. In this post, I describe the pros and cons of each method and how I prepare Summer Dance to hit the road.

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Rigging, Videos10 Comments

The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Winch Maintenance

$tingy Sailor

The winches on your sailboat are the workhorses of your rig. They do the heavy lifting and make your job as skipper easier so you can enjoy the ride. They’re also the most expensive hardware aboard so it only makes sense to take good care of them. In this post, I describe how they work and how to maintain them in peak condition. If you’re a beginner to winch maintenance, this post will bring you up to speed with the savviest captains.

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Cockpit/stern, Sewing1 Comment

Make Your Own Lifeline Cushions

$tingy Sailor

This is a quick, easy, and cheap project if you have any scraps of canvas left over from earlier canvaswork projects. Lifeline cushions are tubular foam with canvas covers that fit over the lifelines that run along the sides of the cockpit. They’re great as headrests when laying back in the cockpit seats while you check your Windex or just watch the clouds roll by. They also make sitting on top of the coamings more comfortable if you want to hike out a bit when heeled on a reach.

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Sails, Sewing5 Comments

How to Make a Mainsail Cover

$tingy Sailor

Summer Dance didn’t have much in the way of canvaswork when we bought her: an original mainsail cover and an old outboard engine cover that also looked pretty ghetto. Besides being 1980’s brown in color, the canvas of the mainsail cover was faded and shredded in places, much of the stitching had disintegrated, and the zipper had come almost completely loose. It was unsalvageable but it did work as a pattern to sew a new cover out of Sunbrella, the gold standard of marine canvas.

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Cabin1 Comment

Make a Door to Storage Space Under the V Berth

$tingy Sailor

Storage for gear, clothing, provisions, and sails is a universal problem with trailerable sailboats. I began solving my onboard storage dilemma with an under galley storage solution. This project is a repeat of that one but claims the unused space under the V berth in my Catalina 22, specifically on the starboard side next to the portable toilet.

It’s also different from that project in that I used different wood for this project. The first door that I made was out of stained Philippine mahogany. I made this one from Honduran mahogany with an oil and polyurethane finish instead of stain. The result is almost indistinguishable from teak, as you can see below.

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