Tag: repair

Cockpit/stern21 Comments

How To Repair a Rudder

$tingy Sailor

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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Trailer12 Comments

How to Replace Trailer Bunk Boards

$tingy Sailor

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. 

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Outboard motor, Videos5 Comments

How to Rebuild an Outboard Motor Water Pump

$tingy Sailor

If you’ve already read 15 Outboard Motor Maintenance Blind Spots You Can’t Afford to Miss and discovered that your outboard motor’s water pump (#7 in the list) is one of your maintenance blind spots, then this post is for you. It’s also for you if you didn’t read that article and you don’t have a clue how to maintain a water pump.

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Tips1 Comment

Beware of Galvanic Corrosion!

$tingy Sailor

Galvanic corrosion can happen when dissimilar metals, stainless steel and aluminum, for example, are in contact with each other, exposed to an electrolyte, and an electrical current is applied. That’s the technical definition. The layman’s definition is it’s the white stuff that grows around your stainless steel fasteners in your aluminum mast and boom when you are around salt water.

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Cabin11 Comments

Fix That Screeching Main Hatch!

$tingy Sailor

A very common problem with older C-22s is a companionway hatch that screeches when opened or closed. Over the years, the flanges on the sides of the hatch and the teak rails that they slide in wear thin from use.

This eventually lowers the hatch until it scrapes against the cabin roof. The sound it makes is like fingernails on a blackboard, only louder. It’s not something that you want to put up with for long.

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Enter the 2018 Stingy Sailor DIY Project Contest

$tingy Sailor

Did you do a project on your sailboat last year that you’re particularly proud of? Or did you make an ingenious improvement that you’d like to share with other skippers? I’ve received comments and emails from many of you who rolled up your sleeves and took on DIY projects large and small, simple and complex. Now’s your turn to show off some of your hard work for a chance to win prizes and worldwide acclaim!
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Product reviews1 Comment

Product Review: DrSails Repair Adhesive

$tingy Sailor

This is a guest post written by Andrew Evans who is a highly-experienced, single-handed, offshore racer who hails from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. He is also the author of Thoughts, Tips, Techniques & Tactics for Singlehanded Sailing.  Since Andy shared with us how he likes to abuse his spinnaker in Lessons on Spinnaker Repair,  he’s also a good tester for this interesting new product.
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Sails, Sewing2 Comments

How to Flatten the Luff of that Baggy Old Sail

$tingy Sailor

Do you have one or more old sails that, after you hoist them fully, have scallops and wrinkles along the luff like in the picture above? Or do you have to winch them flat or overtighten your backstay? Instead of a flat, smooth leading edge, those wrinkles disrupt airflow and rob your sail’s performance. If the sail has a polyester bolt rope in the luff and not wire rope, you can fix that yourself for almost no cost other than about an hour of your time. And you won’t have to take the sail to a sail loft, wait days or weeks to get it fixed, and drop a Benjamin or more out of your wallet.

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Hull1 Comment

Storm Damage to Summer Dance Repaired

$tingy Sailor

After Summer Dance was badly damaged in a freak storm, the first mate and I doubted whether we would get her back in the water before the end of the sailing season. I didn’t know how I was going to fix her, whether I could do the work, or whether our insurance claim would pay enough to have the work done professionally. The DIYer in me wanted to save money and learn how to lay up fiberglass. But looking at the complexity of the damage and how long it would take a novice like me to fix it only reinforced the reality that if we wanted to sail again this year, the damage would have to be repaired by professionals.
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