An easier way to ward off Jack Frost’s fingers Issue 74 : Sept/Oct 2010 Northern sailors have two seasons: sailing season and maintenance season. One of the primary goals when preparing a boat for the...
An inflatable dinghy gets a homemade upgrade Issue 74 : Sept/Oct 2010 Before my partner, Magali, and I left England on Joass, our 32-foot wooden gaff cutter, in the spring of 1998, we bought ourselves...
Faster discharge from flooding waves Issue 74 : Sept/Oct 2010 My boat’s original cockpit drains were adequate for a rain shower or a light wash-down but often became partially blocked with one thing o...
An early riser solves the problem of clattering dropboards Issue 74 : Sept/Oct 2010 Gary Stoop built new teak companionway dropboards to replace the damaged ones that came with his well-used Ericson C...
One size, or style, does not fit all Issue 74 : Sept/Oct 2010 Writing about rudders was not much fun. Writing about rigs will be more fun. Everyone has an opinion about sailboat rigs. I have opinions ...
Protect your investment from weather and covetous knaves Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 Many GPS chart plotters are designed for bulkhead mounting but, if they’re visible, thieves love them. With that in min...
Simple covers provide closure and containment Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 For a while, Ken and I each owned a 1986 Pearson 28-2. When these sisterships originally left their Portsmouth, Rhode Island, birt...
An in-line valve eliminates the on-dock sprint Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 Upon coming into a marina, our first priority is what we like to call “watering the boat.” The procedure begins with filling her ...
Fly and douse a standard spinnaker like a gennaker Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 People are selling their little-used symmetrical spinnakers and replacing them with expensive cruising gennakers that can be ...
Habitual tinkering comes up trumps Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 Self-steering is the elusive silent partner of every singlehander. Dozens of commercial products have been devised to deliver this blessed gr...
Take preventive steps but be prepared for at-sea repairs Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 This article is an excerpt from Lin and Larry Pardey’s Capable Cruiser, which was published in its third edition earlie...
A Tartan 37’s rig survives a disintegrating chainplate Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 At the time I wrote about replacing the backstay on my best friend, Adam’s, new-to-him Tartan 37 (see Good Old Boat May/J...
A half-hour job gets stuck in time Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 Easing into the fuel dock with a light wind aft, the skipper shifted into reverse and applied a little engine power for a perfect landing. Th...
The Brother was big, but the Necchi fit the niche Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 This tale begins with the collapsing real estate market. For 7 years, our few shoreside possessions had been residing in a ren...
Eat at it, work at it, or park it . . . Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 On many good old boats, the saloon table is mounted on a post bolted to the cabin sole. The post-mounted Formica table on my Bristol 30 ...
Made with a teak substitute, they’ll never need varnishing Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 When it comes to teak, there are three simple truths: new teak is gorgeous; old teak needs regular maintenance; negle...
Rolling out a mirror finish is all about preparation Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 Few upgrades can change the looks of your boat as dramatically as a gleaming new coat of paint on her topsides. Modern two-...
Signals from space are subject to interference Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 The satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) provides very accurate navigational information, but everyone who uses it sho...
Sailboat interiors have come a long way from being purely practical Issue 75 : Nov/Dec 2010 When I was 15 years old, I would walk from our house on Mercer Island, Washington, to Lake Union, about 10 m...
Cloth panels replace plastic snap-ons Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 Your white plastic instrument covers are deteriorating in the sun, they don’t fi t as tightly as they did when they were new (they used to...
In case the splice doesn’t play nice . . . Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 I have eye-spliced my new anchor rode to the nylon thimble, seized the splice with small nylon twine to help keep things in place, an...
Flat, yes; horizontal, no Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 Finding charts we’d stored on board our 34-foot Creekmore, Eurisko, used to be a constant game of hide and seek. When we put charts on the navigation ...
A hard dinghy becomes a rigid inflatable Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 Twenty years, two kids, and a dog later, I finally had to face facts — the family dinghy no longer fit the family. My wife and I had ac...
A little pram dinghy is a workhorse and a comfort Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 We wouldn’t cast off without our 8-foot pram in tow. It’s convenient to have her in the water and ready to go when we finally ...
Cautious amateurs start with a kit — for an asymmetrical spinnaker Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 Never say “never.” For nearly 20 years, I have loudly proclaimed that I would never sew a sail for Mystic, ou...
A hands-on rebuild saved both beast and budget Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 Our 41-year-old C&C Corvette, Trillium, has the distinction of being built originally as a gift to retiring Ontario Premier J...
Maintenance seems less onerous in the right surroundings Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 If the definition of cruising is performing boat maintenance in exotic locations, does that mean the more maintenance, ...
Year-round sailing leads to year-round upkeep Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 When we decided to expand our sailing horizons from northern freshwater “summer boating” to full-time cruising, we didn’t fully re...
Old decks get new non-skid out of a can Issue 76 : Jan/Feb 2011 As our Pearson 28, Indecision, approached her 30th birthday, my wife, Mary, and I began to think about refreshing her non-skid. Because ...
A good lashing and they won’t slack off Issue 77 : Mar/Apr 2011 A number of ideas have appeared in Good Old Boat recently for locking turnbuckles without using cotter pins in the conventional way (Mar...
