They let you see what you seek
Issue 84 : May/Jun 2012
Sailors waste a lot of time looking for things. Here’s something that, once you make it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without.
Let’s say you want an aspirin. The bottle is somewhere in the medicine bag . . . but where? You’d have to open up a normal bag and rummage around in it. If that didn’t work, you’d have to empty it out, find the aspirin bottle, and then rearrange the boxes and tubes so they all fit inside once more. With an amazing transparent bag, getting to the aspirin bottle won’t give you a headache — you can see it.
We have two transparent bags, one for pharmacy items, such as aspirin and sun cream, and the other for the clothespins, although this one doesn’t really have to be transparent as we would recognize it from its color, shape, and location on the boat. In principle, however, if someone wanted a clothespin, I could tell him to look in the cupboard under the sink and he would immediately see which bag had the clothespins.
Our medicine bag has a zippered top with a built-in handle, but this is a bit more difficult to make as you have to sew the zipper in a circle. You could even make your bag so it opens at both ends. It might be easier to place the zipper along the longest side so the bag opens like a pencil case. Rather than a zipper, our clothespin bag closes with a strip of Velcro.
You can make transparent bags in most shapes and sizes to suit your needs or the location where you’ll stow them. They don’t have to be round. We chose round because it’s an easy shape to make and fairly easy to stow in a boat.
The transparent material we chose is the same clear vinyl used for dodger windows and restaurant enclosures. You might be able to get scraps for free from your local sailmaker because a roll often has imperfect sections that can’t be used. Those scraps are of little interest to sailmakers but are ideal for bags.
We covered the edges of our bags with a binding. Although it adds nothing to the structure of the bag, the binding makes a bag look nicer than it would with a rough raw edge.
The material is tough. Our bags are three years old and show no signs of deterioration. They’re not completely waterproof because of the zipper and the seams, but they’re not bad in that regard. Because the material is fairly stiff, the bags tend to hold their shape well and do not collapse.
See-through bags are not just ideal on a boat; they must surely work well anywhere. Perhaps you’ll soon wonder how you ever managed without a clear-plastic storage bag both aboard and at home.
Benjy Benjamin loves sailing, making things in wood, and photography, and he sells dinghy plans at . He lives aboard Doolittle, a Pacific Seacraft Dana 24, with his partner, Celia, near St. Tropez, in the south of France. He works on classic yachts to fill the time when not exploring the Mediterranean.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
