Welcome Aboard
Current issue highlights: the legendary Olson 30, review of the LM 28, going solo on short voyages, the inside out rudder, better backing blocks and hardware on soft decks.
Speaking seriously: Propellers 101, discovering current tables, Bob Perry's column on keels and new lights for old ports and windows.
Lighter fare: painting your boat (ok, maybe that's not so light, but it's a really great article), under siege in the wilderness, poor man's winch halyard, "green" lantern and, of course, tons of more super stuff!
What's New At Good Old Boat
New back issue CDs available
Ta da! We now have years 2004 and 2005 available on back issue CDs!
If you've been around as a subscriber for a while, you know that Good Old Boat articles are timeless. If you're replacing the non-skid on your deck or repowering or building a hard dodger (or a whole lot of other projects on your boat), you'll find articles that appeared in the past specifically on your current topic of interest suddenly seem much more important than when they appeared. This is especially true if, when those articles appeared, you were focused on keeping the bugs out, replacing the water tanks, stirring another batch of epoxy, or recovering cushions.
Since the old information is still valid, we continue to make it available to readers as copies of old magazines gradually disappear. New subscribers want to read the articles they missed. Long-time subscribers want to have an easier way to store all those articles. (A small, searchable, CD with a year's worth of issues in PDF format is a lot easier to deal with than a shelf of dogeared copies.)
With the addition of the two new CDs, we now have seven back issue CDs available, starting with our premier issue in 1998 and taking you to the end of 2005. More will follow.
More did-'em-ourselves videos
We hope you've discovered our growing library of short videos. In the spirit of do-it-yourself projects everywhere, we did 'em ourselves and they're about do-it-yourself projects, sailboats, and life aboard. Our newest video is about installing or replacing a plastic telltale window pane in a jib. There are several more in the works.
Our new series of videos includes Dock Walks featuring special boats we find on the docks where we sail, Boat Projects with a focus on the DIY projects we do on our boats, and Cooking on a Hook with an emphasis on simple cooking in small spaces. If you have discovered video cameras and editing and want to contribute your own videos, please contact Michael Facius.
Have you seen our t-shirts?
The latest thing you'll want to know about our T-shirt collection is that it's still growing. We'll be announcing a contest soon since we're on a quest more T-shirt slogans. The slogans for our newest shirts came to us from J.R. Holm, a reader who suggested a couple of sayings for new T-shirt designs. We promptly sandbagged two of our previous designs and went with J.R.’s suggestions, proving how highly we value subscriber input!
Sailing artist Tom Payne did the magic once more, putting his paintbrush to the slogans and creating a couple of new designs we hope you’ll be proud to wear in the marina and around town.
To order these or to see the other styles in our, umm, “Tom Payne Collection of Logo Gear for the Rest of Us,” please visit our online Books and Gear page.
The newest Good Old Boat Regatta
In late January the good folks in St. Petersburg, Florida, filled Tampa Bay with more than 50 sailboats and -- apart from a few exceptions -- no two were the same. All were welcome, so long as the boats were built before 1990. It was a grand and glorious adventure for a whole bunch of good old boats and their skippers and crew. The event was organized by the hardworking volunteers of the St. Petersburg Sailing Association. If you want to know more about this event, we've posted some photos and a report on our sponsored regattas page.
