Sample Articles
Here are some sample articles that represent the type of useful information you'll find in all Practical Sailor pieces.
Caulk and Sealant Test
How does a discerning boat owner decide what's best to use for bedding and caulking, and what products make the best sealants? Here's our start at answering that question. For the class photo, here are the 23 caulks and sealants. Because they are prominent in the marine field, the largest number of samples are from 3M, Sikaflex, and BoatLife, The rest are primarily hardware-store varieties, some from prominent companies like Elmer's Products, Inc., GE, RPM Inc., and West Marine. Some come in tubes, some in cartridges, along with a squeeze bottle and a couple of pressurized cans. Although Practical Sailor started out thinking the tubes would be the easiest to work with, after several hours a preference emerged.
Sticky Situation
After a year of testing, the proof is in the goop. Because it seemed unlikely that any one product could be the most waterproof, the most elastic, and the strongest adhesive, and because not all those attributes are called for in all applications, the Practical Sailor test was somewhat complicated. It was designed to help a boat owner select the caulk or adhesive that best matched the task at hand whether overhauling leaky portlights; rebedding a cleat or winch; or sealing in place a new hatch.
Fishfinders (a.k.a. Scanning Depthsounders)
Why stick to a measly numerical readout if you can get a picture of the bottom? The Furuno LS6100 and Garmin 240 Blue finish one-two in our look at six units from $300 to $400. Even with a restricted set of prices and features, sonar selection can be mighty confusing. Whether you use your sonar device to navigate the depths, determine bottom composition, or, for that matter, to find fish in some deep hole, you'll need to know the answers to some of the basic questions: Which transducer frequency should I use? How much resolution do I need? How much power do I need? Where should I set the gain? What the heck is that upside-down crescent shape on the screen? How different do these shapes appear on different machines? Other questions and variables include power output, transducer type selection, screen type, and screen resolution.
Deck-Fill Fuel Filters
The expensive Baja filter, oft-mentioned in these pages, did very well in these tests but West Marine's new Teflon-based filter did better for less, by means of a simple water-separating scheme. Any analysis of the simple act of pouring an oily liquid called "Number Two Diesel" in your fuel tank can get very complicated. What's coming aboard is not only a burnable fuel, but a lubricant. It's also a coolant. Along with the fact that oil burns much slower than gasoline, it's the self-lubricating nature of a diesel engine that is largely responsible for its long, useful life.
Best Tested Sea Anchors
Sea anchors have evolved to become a vital component of the serious sailor's arsenal in heavy weather. We tested models from Para-Tech and Fiorentino, and favor Fiorentino's for their rugged construction. According to Earl Hinz, a veteran sea cruiser and a recognized sailing expert on contending with heavy weather at sea, the concept of sea anchors can be traced back as far as 1200 AD when Polynesian mariners used stone ground anchors and lines fashioned from coconut fibers for the purpose of keeping their double-hulled canoes into the wind while at sea.
Practical Sailor Tests for the Best Chain for Your Mooring Rig
Slips too expensive? A mooring may be your answer. We search for the toughest chain. Most of us use one of two ways to keep a boat fixed in one place. We tie it to a dock, or we attach it to the bottom. In the first case, there’s often electricity and freshwater available, and maybe handy things like showers and a laundry; there’s usually easy access to the dock by car and an easy walk to the boat; and there’s good protection from standard wind and wave action. The main downsides are availability (in many locales, there are long waiting lists for slips) and high cost (supply and demand at work).
Rope Clutch Test
Lewmar performs best overall in rope clutch test. An interesting development of the cleat reaching back only a decade or two is the rope clutch. A clutch not only belays the bitter end of the line and makes it easy to trim or ease, by being rove semi-permanently, it keeps the line easy to lay hands on with hardly the need to look at it. However, because it’s somewhat difficult to thread a line through any of these clutches, you’ll not want to do it often, meaning that when you’re rigged for sailing, the lines will remain in their assigned clutches.
Primary Storage Batteries Aboard Boats
Among the more neglected pieces of gear aboard most boats are the primary storage batteries, which faithfully crank the engine and light the lights. In the case of the typical lead-acid battery, even benign neglect istant amount to abuse. It’s small wonder that many battery manufacturers refuse to recognize the warranty on batteries used aboard boats. The normal marine battery cycling relatively high discharge rates with no charging, followed by rapid charging at a high rate by high-output alternators is murder on conventional automotive batteries, and not exactly a piece of cake even for deep cycle batteries, constructed to absorb this type of abuse.
