Banish mildew on your boat with a simple chemical brew As near as I can tell, boating consists of one part blue lagoons and white sails and two parts painting the bottom, fixing engines, and scrubbing...
Siting solar panels led to an all-around renewal Issue 124: Jan/Feb 2019 After deciding to add rigid solar panels aboard Alembic, our 1981 Whitby 42 center-cockpit the 12-foot spans into two 6-foot sp...
A dehumidifier keeps a cabin dry and free from mold Issue 124: Jan/Feb 2019 My friend Don Smith and I live and keep our boats in Alaska. To control moisture aboard, and its negative side effects, mild...
An electrical update for the 21st century preserves the 1960s aesthetics. Dog-eared and dated, the 12-volt DC switch panel on our 1961 Alden Challenger, Christmas, was original. I had planned to repla...
Over the years, I’ve often used a sun shower to heat water for onboard showers. If conditions are right, they can get to be too hot to use. But more often, a cooling breeze saps the heat generat...
In warm weather, full-length foul-weather pants are rather uncomfortable to wear for too long...
A User-Friendly Cockpit Grating Kind to feet, it keeps dirt from getting underfoot by Drew Frye...
British Columbia winter months are cool and damp with short days, rain, and minimal sunshine. Having a heat source on board is essential to keep the mildew at bay and so we keep Natasha, our 1978 Isla...
Upon upgrading from a cozy, wooden Swifty 13 to a Montgomery 15, I was struck by the stark fiberglass interior of the Monty. I missed the warm, soothing ambiance of a wood cabin. There’s just so...
After replacing the screens that fit the opening portlights on our Bayfield 32, I noticed a narrow gap around the perimeter of the aluminum frame, between the screen and the portlight frame. The tiny ...
The mechanic asked, “Did you check the prop?” “No,” I said into the satellite phone, “why would I do that?” “We’ve had some instances where the prop fell off those saildrive units.” A quick div...
Many of us have Barient winches on our good old boats. If you’ve got them, you may have noticed that they aren’t what they once were. My late 80’s cruiser/racer has 8 of them. Years ago, servicing the...
When we retired from full-time cruising and built a house on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, my wife Dee and I bought a thoroughly dilapidated 1966 Marshall 18 Sanderling catboat for exploring the B...
Ferry it from shore to ship without lifting a drop When you’re on the hook, you fill your dinghy with four basic commodities in addition to passengers: trash, diesel, gas, and water. Water is the heav...
This is further technical information about purchasing, installing, and powering AIS devices from the article in the July 2015 issue. Entr’acte’s navigation system consists of two identical chart plot...
When a sailboat suffers a heart attack Issue 100: Jan/Feb 2015 It’s 0700 on a beautiful April morning in France. Entr’acte, our Nor’Sea 27, is on the River Seine in 18 knots of wind with 4-foot seas d...
A homemade replacement is the answer Issue 100: Jan/Feb 2015 My good old boat was a former racer and came with a KVH Sailcomp electronic compass and sailing instrument. As it was quite old, the LCD di...
After all the setbacks we’d experienced during Levity’s 10-year repair and refit, it was a great relief when the redesigned and newly built rudder was fitted on her stern. At last, another major proje...
Follow up on Installing a Chart Plotter at the Binnacle, from our May 2013 Issue. When I decided to subscribe to a satellite weather service (XM WX Satellite Weather), I found that a simple connection...
Simplifying the water supply led to galley efficiencies Our 1976 Tanzer 26 served us very well for several years as a cruising boat on Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, but on such a small boat the galley ar...
Notes and Lessons We won’t know how well KiwiGrip holds up in use for a few years. According to the manufacturer’s guidelines, weekend sailors can expect the product to last approximately 10 years bef...
Polishing Acrylic and Polycarbonate To successfully polish a damaged or weathered plastic surface, you need the correct polish, clean surfaces, a gentle touch, and real patience. Hard minerals, finely...
Making Magnolia more seaworthy Alternative methods Here are two ways to attach a sea hood that define it as a separate entity from the cabintop. Permanent attachment As shown in the illustration above...
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...
