A new role brings a fresh identity Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 I renamed my boat. For several years, I’ve made my home aboard a 1967 Irwin 27 . . . just another narrow-beamed mass-produced vintage sloop...
Useless spaces can earn their keep Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 Our MacGregor 26D, Thebote, has a tiny sink area that is relatively useless. For a long time it held the wastebasket. Recently, at the requ...
Eye-catching reflective tape adds color Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 The reflective cove stripe on our 1981 C&C Landfall 35 had faded badly. To refresh it, we used a type of pressure- sensitive adhes...
Heat the food, not the cabin and crew Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 I should put this on the table right now: I am a vegetarian. When every other boater in the harbor is preparing dinner on an outside gri...
A thoroughbred at home on rivers, lakes, and oceans Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 Phil Bills began sailing in 1960 when he was 15. He grew up in Delaware, Ohio, north of Columbus, and sailed the Douglass ...
A drop-in refrigerator delivers the cold Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 Whether to have an icebox or a refrigerator on a sailboat has always been a difficult choice, especially on a small boat with limited...
Karma and kind strangers made it happen Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 One desk-bound afternoon in May, as I juggled two phones, carrying two calls to two different area codes in a foreign country, while f...
A stitch in time can extend the life of a sail Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 The monsoon season was upon us. Each day we spoke by high-frequency radio to friends clawing their way toward Palau aboard a 50...
Find the fault with a multimeter and a flowchart Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 When one of your engine instruments stops working, it’s good to be able to diagnose the problem yourself. If you know how to ...
Out with the old . . . er, not so fast! Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 Why was there water in my normally dry bilge? Rain, I suspected. I checked all the hose clamps on the deck drains and the portholes, t...
A holding tank vent revamp clears the air Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 I found an easy, inexpensive way to improve my boat’s holding-tank system. It cost $10, the stink is gone, and the catastrophe the o...
Welding plastic for a superior sanitation system Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 Our 1978 Bristol 29.9 had been experiencing a number of “holding tank issues.” Despite new hoses, we’d been getting frequent ...
High-level protection at a low price Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 Sometime before we left — towing our 25-foot Catalina C250 WB (water ballast) — for a yearlong “road and float” 17,000-mile cruise around...
Bites, sweep, fins, bulbs, wings, and winglets Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 In Part 1 (May 2015) and Part 2 (July 2015) of this narrative, we explored the evolution of the keel from a longitudinal struct...
Exercise that gets you somewhere on the water Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 For many of us, our very first boat was a rowboat — in my case an old and leaky one — so every outing is a trip down memory lane...
A quick trailerable that does the small things right Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 R K. “Kim” Hogan, a retired airline captain, and his wife, Karen, have been sailing their 1996 Precision 23, Willow, on t...
Familiar waters feel like a fond hug Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015 We had just seen a favorite kid play the role of a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz when we untied our docklines in late June for a 75-nautic...
