A better way to mount deck hardware Issue 67: July/Aug 2009 No doubt the builders who installed the original deck hardware on your boat took the easy way, and later owners who added further hardware p...
An informal survey for our readers Issue 66 : May/Jun 2009 As the national and world economies started heading south, Good Old Boat magazine made some rigging changes to help us weather the storm. Mos...
Trimming your sails to the wind gradient Issue 70 : Jan/Feb 2010 You can have a very happy life and never understand sail twist. You can even be a reasonably good sail trimmer without understanding al...
Valuable tips for upgrading deck hardware Issue 71 : Mar/Apr 2010 I have not spent a lot of time crawling around the hidden spaces of high-end luxury yachts, but the vast majority of the fiberglass pr...
Mechanical advantage for the windlass disadvantaged Issue 79: July/Aug 2011 For about 19 years, we have anchored Mystic without benefit of bow rollers or a windlass. When we were weekend sailors, we o...
Thinking beyond the pail Issue 78 : May/Jun 2011 Aboard Mystic the “ship’s bucket” is an important piece of gear. When it’s inactive, it holds the vacuum cleaner and is buried deep in the port cockpit...
Vang/preventer: a fast, effective safety device I was guilty of contempt. Never a good thing, in this case it turned out to be a serious error. I had held a thunderstorm cell in contempt all morning. ...
Guidelines for evaluating and installing wet exhausts The most popular sailboat exhaust system today is a wet exhaust system which includes a waterlift muffler. This system offers many advantages and ...
Diesel envy? Take another look at the gasoline engine that came with your good old boat If you own a sailboat, there is a good chance that you recognize the Atomic 4 engine by name, even if you don...
The wind had shifted overnight. A sea was starting to run into the anchorage from the exposed direction, so we decided to leave. We finished the breakfast dishes and pulled in the “off-duty hook...
The ClampTite alternative is more effective and less injurious Issue 127: July/Aug 2019 When most sailors think of hose clamps they think of the ubiquitous worm-drive steel clamp. Worm-drive clamps ar...
It is a genuine pleasure to read just about anything Dave Gerr writes. His books range from popular broad-appeal works like The Nature of Boats to very specialized books like the Propeller Handbook an...
This is the one book that should be aboard every cruising sailboat. When the first edition came out, I read it cover-to-cover. When the second edition came out, a flip through the pages showed some up...
Summary of Testing Crip Splices After reading Gord May’s article (“Ohm’s law and You” published in the March/April 2002 edition of Good Old Boat magazine), I was concerned abou...
Don Casey wants to make electricity as simple as possible. So in Sailboat Electrics Simplified, part of the International Marine Sailboat Library series, he omits extensive theory and keeps his explan...
Illustrated Sail and Rig Tuning is a little book which takes on a big job. Since it’s 9 1/2 by 6 3/4 inches and 80 pages, we had to wonder. The book is intentionally small and of high quality pa...
Not on AMAZON (SIX ISSUES USA $38US; CANADA $39.50) REVIEWED BY JERRY POWLAS Water Craft magazine is a little different. It is a publication from “across the pond” that has all the mystiqu...
Why do some yachts have long overhangs and sharp ends while others have plumb bows and very broad sterns? In Yacht Design Explained, Steve Killing and Douglas Hunter explain how different racing handi...