Make holding-tank chemistry work in your favor Iss...
March 12, 2026
Working alongside shipwrights shines a new light on hands-on. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Not long ago, as I was combing through the employment want ads, one job leaped from the page. A shop that speciali...
“There you are! Are you out for a sail, or out for a swim?” With these thoughtful words, a fellow club member sailed by us in his Laser. We were indeed swimming, next to my swamped open-hulled ...
In the August edition of The Dogwatch, we published Janie Meneely’s wonderful poem about Nasty Nell, the mermaid who was not to be gotten the best of by two hungry sailors. Here, Meneely revisits the ...
Offense Taken While I appreciate the idea of the umbrella for creating easy cockpit shade (“Cockpit Umbrella,” September 2020), as a 40-years veteran of the Navy, I take offense at your statement that...
“We are inching toward the middle of nowhere,” reads an entry in Michael’s log of the cruise of Juliet, a CSY 44 sailboat that is carrying the Partlow family of four through the San Blas Islands of Pa...
Time to Winterize If you live and sail where it gets really cold, you know about winterizing your boat. But did you know that insurance companies insure against freeze/thaw damage? And that coverage m...
Laura S. Wharton’s debut novel The Pirate’s Bastard, is set in colonial America in the first half of the 18th Century. This was an exciting place, especially for a young, ambitious man like Edward Mar...
It’s been said that the most useless things aboard a sailboat are an umbrella and a Naval officer. However, sometimes that’s just not completely true. Cruising in New England, I would ofte...
I wonder how many sailors secretly long for a relationship with, or owning or at least experiencing, a wooden boat. Though most sailboat owners nurture fiberglass craft, my guess is that deep down ins...
More Drones Drones are everywhere, and here is a use case that might make a lot of sense. Imagine a Remote Controlled Lifebuoy. That’s what the folks at OceanAlpha are calling their new water rescue d...
More Words on Electrification I have read through the reader letters in response to your question about electric propulsion and I want to offer one more point that I think was addressed only tangentia...
Maybe you’ve found the exact boat you want and have the money to pay for it, but you don’t have the free time to bring it home. Maybe you dream of cruising far from your home port, but you have only a...
Sam rushed on deck to meet us as we rowed across the still starlit patch of water between our two boats. “Hey, good to see you two. When’d you get back? How was your delivery job? Climb on board and m...
Being able to get the sail cover on quickly means we don’t have to resent the time it takes to protect our sails. Just as important, if a halyard starts slapping the mast just when we are starting to ...
I guess we could sense trouble even before it started. The 35-foot sloop was making a downwind approach into the crowded mooring area, its engine running, a spray dodger in place so the helmsman had a...
Steering chains lurk unloved, out of sight, in one of the toughest environments on the boat, a constantly damp bilge. And steering failure ranks near the top of the list of reasons why boats are aband...
Marlow Blue Ocean, as far as I know, is the first dockline made entirely from recycled bottles. Though counterintuitive, plastic water bottles are made from the same polymer used to make virgin polyes...
Cleaning a fouled diesel tank started with polishing some dirty fuel on the fly. Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 Aboard our 1984 Moody 47, diesel is the elixir of electricity, and electricity is what drives ...
Boat Show Blues First, the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival was canceled, due to the pandemic (but they are putting on a fantastic virtual show, with a movie premiere. Next, we heard that the Newpor...
Amongst the hundreds of sailors I’ve known, only one kept the same boat nearly his entire life; she was a sweet 17-foot Silhouette, with bilge keels, that my friend Bob maintained flawlessly, a...
When we bought our 1976 Westerly Centaur, Breaking Wind, it came with an ancient-but-working Marinco solar-powered vent. Then, on a sporty day sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, the fan, poorly attached t...
Electrified Last month, I put it to the readers about electric propulsion in sailboats—I wanted your take, and I got it. As a whole, there are strong feelings and a strong desire for information. I hi...
A good writer doesn’t tell readers their story, they show readers their story. I know that Randy Baker succeeded on this front because I felt like I was almost aboard with he and his wife, Cheryl, whe...
Thanks to a little help from her friends, a good old boat finds a new paramour. Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 I didn’t really know Nat. Nothing beyond a friendly smile and hello as we passed each ot...
Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 If you’re lucky in this life, you uncover, understand, and embrace what makes you happy. And if you’re gifted in this passion, if you can make it the foundation of your purpos...
A simple system developed for RVs provides a versatile table for saloon and cockpit. Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 Fulmar, our 1982 Pacific Seacraft 37, came to us without a dining table—not in the saloon,...
With the ship’s wheel base, a clever design makes for finer dining. Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 Our good old Bristol 35 has a cozy dinette in the main saloon, but the weather here in Florida often ...
Sourcing rigging tension creep reveals an old flaw. Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 For a few years, the shrouds and stays on Mikula, my 24-foot Seafarer, would slowly lose their tension over the course of e...
Refined to its elements, a day of sailing becomes miraculous. Issue 134: Sept/Oct 2020 Wind and physics create the lift, sucking me along, the same dynamics as flight. One man, two sails, three sheets...
