Tag: sailboat

Product reviews2 Comments

Product Review: Bayco Kord Manager

$tingy Sailor

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.
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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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Rigging6 Comments

Two Ways to Rebuild Your Main Sheet Traveler Car

$tingy Sailor

What condition is your main sheet traveler car in? Do the sheaves look like the picture below, chipped and cracked? After twenty, thirty, or forty years they can get brittle and weak. You don’t want them to break while you’re out on the water. The car wouldn’t come off the bar but there would be metal riding on metal, not a good thing.

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Cockpit/stern6 Comments

Add More Cockpit Seating With DIY Stern Perch Seats

$tingy Sailor

Small sailboats don’t offer a lot of seating options in the cockpit. Four adults are about the maximum that will leave room for the skipper to work the helm. For casual cruising, that means everyone is in the cockpit, not hiking out on the coamings or side decks. Most sailboats will accommodate six in the cockpit while moored with the tiller out of the way but that can be crowded. You can give your guests more room or yourself more seating options with seats mounted on the stern pushpit.
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Cockpit/stern6 Comments

Make This Simple, Low-Cost Tiller Lock

$tingy Sailor

If you don’t have a locking mechanism on your tiller yet, don’t you sometimes wish you did? Then you could lock the tiller in place while you attend to other things for a few minutes or under the right conditions, relax and let the boat sail itself. A tiller lock is the next best thing to having a crew member or an autopilot take the helm for you. There are several tiller lock designs on the market and all of them do a reasonable job. But like everything else marine-related, they can be expensive for what they are.

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Uncategorized1 Comment

Top 10 DIY Projects of 2015

$tingy Sailor

What a year it’s been here on The $tingy Sailor!

We’ve seen incredible growth in the number of pages viewed every day—up 260% over last year to over 250,000 views to date from 148 countries.

The number of you who subscribed to this blog to receive the Stingy Sailor Spotlight newsletter more than doubled. I sent out 14 editions of the newsletter that let you be the first to know about major upcoming posts. I passed on a lot of gear sales tips to you and your input through the surveys was very valuable to let me know your opinions of some of the major changes to the blog. Continue reading “Top 10 DIY Projects of 2015”

Keel7 Comments

Why a Stuck Swing Keel Pivot Pin is a Good Thing

$tingy Sailor

A reader recently asked me about the pivot pin stuck in his swing keel. Over the years, I’ve read other owners’ calls for help for the same thing in online forums. They assume that the pin has to rotate freely in the hole in the keel.

In my opinion, the pin is better off stuck inside the keel hole either accidentally or intentionally. Mine was that way when I bought Summer Dance and I’ve left it that way, even through a complete refinishing project. It appeared as though the previous owner epoxied it in, which I’ve heard of other owners doing.

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