Tips

Improving The Icebox

The cruising boat, like an army, travels on its stomach. If you can't eat well while sailing — whether day racing or cruising the Pacific — much of the pleasure of sailing will be lost. If you can't eat at all due to deteriorated food stores, more than simple pleasure can be lost. Galleys on American production sailboats have come a long way in the last 20 years. We particularly remember one 40' cruiser-racer by…

Taming the Wild Boom: Two Designs for a Gallows

A wildly flailing boom is one of the most dangerous ob­jects aboard a sailboat. If you could completely control the boom at anchor and under power, and while raising, lowering, and reefing the sail you'd avoid worry, save energy and be much safer. For this reason, many serious cruising boats have traditionally carried permanent boom gallows. They usually take the form of metal pillars bridg ed across the top by a wooden cross member. Bolted to the deck at the aft end of the cockpit or on the aft deck itself, they serve several functions: holding the boom firm­ly when the sail is down; catching the boom easily as the sail is lowered; and, perhaps most importantly, keeping the boom steady during reefing operations.

Lay New Nonskid to Restore Worn Decks

We don't really know what the life expectancy of a fiberglass boat may be. There are lots of them out there that are more than 20 years old, still going strong. We do know, however, that no matter how longlived fiberglass may be as a structural material, over time the gelcoat sur­face commonly used in finishing fiberglass becomes porous and chalky, and has the unfortunate tendency to crack and craze. Gelcoat, in other words, weathers just as a painted surface will over time. With topsides, a tired gelcoat surface can be restored to better than new condition through the use of polyurethane paints, which can retain color and gloss for years. Decks, however, are another story.

Adjust Your Own Compass

With a little care, boatowners can do a perfectly adequate job of compen­sating their own compasses. The ob­jective in compass adjusting is to neutralize the boat's magnetism, not to make the compass point in any par­ticular direction. You can determine the effect of the boat's magnetic field on any compass bearing by simply turning the boat 180 for the amount that the compass overshoots or under‑shoots a 180' change is always just twice the effect of the boat's field on that heading.

A Homemade Tiller Tender

On my Catalina 22 I have a tiller tender which has served me well for many years — and it didn't cost a cent. On top of the tiller are two pieces of 3/8" x 3/4" hardwood about 5" long. The two pieces are drilled horizontally, at the joint line, about 2" from the end to accommodate a 3" length of split neoprene which has an inside diameter slightly less than the diameter of the braided line which runs to the coamings. Two holes drilled vertically near the ends are used to fasten the device to the tiller.

How Does the Safety Gear Get to the Man Overboard?

Struggling to remove the number one genoa in a squall, the foredeck man momentarily forgets the "one hand for yourself, one hand for the ship" axiom. You've taken the boat almost head to wind in an effort to make it easier to get the flogging sail inboard. There are only two of you aboard, and one has to steer. An errant wave knocks the boat completely head to wind, and the jib backs. Plunging over…

Design For: Tableware Storage

One solution to the problem of tableware stowage is a bulkhead rack of the type commonly available from marine chandleries and discount houses. If you have some free bulkhead space in the galley area such racks can be fine, but, if you've got a drawer or cupboard available, stow­ing your tableware under cover seems a better solution. The problem is that the tableware should be secured within the drawer or cup­board. You could use one of the compart­mented, plastic trays such as many of us employ at home, but ideally you want something which holds the tableware against the movement and vibration of the boat.

Ventilation Can be Improved in Almost Any Boat

Fresh air and a dry berth are two “rare," commodities in the belowdecks caverns of most boats. On deck you may be surrounded by endless quantities of fresh air. Below, fresh air frequently comes mingled with similar quantities of fresh or salt water, sometimes in the form of an emulsion that is difficult to breathe at best. Most boats are well ventilated at the dock or at anchor, or even under way in fair weather. But let the wind blow, the spray fly, and the rain fall, and the interior can quickly become a dank swamp if you leave an opening for ventila­tion, or an airless dungeon if you don't. Fortunately, ventilation can be improved in almost any boat, new or old. In the grand scheme of things, improv­ing ventilation is relatively cheap; far less expensive, for example, than installing refrigeration or a sophisticated propane system.

Metal Chafe Plates: Functional Remedy for Scrapes and Scratches

What do you do when the pin in the leg of your folding cabin table digs up the cabin sole? What do you do about the groove in the top of the teak toerail caused by your dock lines? What about the scuffs in the varnish­ed bulkhead behind the companion­way ladder? The answer is that you make chafe plates to solve all three problems. While chafe plates can be made out of almost any material — sheet PVC, thin stainless steel, aluminum — the most readily available and easily worked stuff is plain old brass. Brass can be purchased in many forms: sheet, solid round bar, pipe, tubing, and half oval, for example. It is quite cheap. If you have a local scrap metals dealer, you can buy enough scrap brass in various forms for $10 or less to keep you busy with a lifetime of projects. If there's no metal dealer at hand, most hobby shops carry substantial supplies of brass, although hobby shop brass tends to be thinner than what you want for most jobs.

Design For: Cockpit Foot Brace

Modern yachts are frequently adver­tised as having spacious cockpits: and, indeed, they do. But it doesn't take many afternoons of sailing to discover that the cockpit which seemed so splendidly roomy in the showroom or at the boatyard is too damned wide: it's impossible to brace your legs across the footwell without sliding down so that your body only contacts the boat at shoulders and tailbone. If you want to sit on the cockpit coaming while steering there's no place at all to brace your feet.

Design For: Stern Rail Mount Work Surface

For those who enjoy fishing or char­coal cooking, here's a design for a stern rail mount work surface useful for fish cleaning and meat cutting, and big enough to hold a hibachi when moored. I got the idea from yacht designer C.W. "Chuck" Paine, and Chuck got the idea from some Caribbean charter boats. You could also clamp a vise to the work surface and thus have a handy little work bench for onboard repairs and modifications. Mounted as it is on the stern rail, it is at a useful height, and offal and mess are easily cleared over­board. A hibachi used on the surface demands careful use, of course — as with any open flame on a boat — but it's about as far outboard a position as can be found. It's also a lot cheaper than those charcoal grills designed to be clamped to the stern rail.

Design For: A Dock Box

Whether by choice or force of cir­cumstance, increasing numbers of us are sailing out of marina slips rather than off moorings. For anyone using a slip or dock as home base, a dock box is a handy receptacle for spare lines, fenders, paint, varnish, tools, and miscellaneous gear. Also, a solid dock box can make a useful, if low, work bench, and sometimes serves as a step for a boat with high topsides. The smallest, lowest priced, com­mercially available dock boxes sell at discount for nearly $200, and the cost can go up to over $300. Hence, mak­ing a box yourself can save you a good deal of money. The illustration shows the construc­tion of a basic, plywood-skinned box with notes on material sizes or scant- flings. As you can see, construction is simple enough so that even a begin­ner can make a good job of it.

Proper Fastenings: Don't Screw Up

The ultimate in trivial significance is probably Richard III's lament about losing a battle for lack of a nail. By contrast, use a nail in a fiberglass boat and it's likely the boat will be lost. Nails as well as wood screws have little application on a modern boat. The reason is simple: almost any fastener will do a better job than either. In this day and age the most practical fastener material is stainless…

Teak: A Little Effort Goes a Long Way

Probably nothing can make or break the appearance of a fiberglass boat more quickly than the appearance of the exterior teak trim. Contrary to popular belief, teak is not a maintenance-free wood that can be safely ignored and neglected for years at a time. Though teak may not rot, it can check, warp, and look depressingly drab if not proper­ly cared for. Although it is not immune to neglect, teak is incredibly resilient, and can be brought back to life after remarkable amounts of abuse. Therefore, there is no excuse for drab, ugly exterior teak on any boat. Unlike other woods used for exterior trim, the grey weathering of teak rarely extends very far below the sur­face of the wood.

"Good Hope's" Folding Fiddles

In a rare instance of getting to have your cake and eat it too, this design for folding fiddles affords sturdy perma­nent fiddles suited to the typical folding cabin table found on boats under 35', while avoiding some drawbacks of many fiddle arrangements. It has the advantage that the fiddles are always attached to the table; they do not have to be removed when the table is folded up against the bulkhead. In addition, the fiddles can be folded out of the way when the table is in use, making the table more useful for dining in harbor, when the protection of fiddles isn't usually necessary.