Inside Practical Sailor

I spent last weekend tuning the rig aboard boatbuilder Robert Helmicks Endeavour 42, Lost Boys, and got a first-hand look at the problems reader Scott Rimmer encountered with his vertical windlass back in 2009. When Helmick's son, Kameron, went to work deploying the anchor, he soon ran into trouble; the chain was jammed in the naval pipe, kinked with hockles. Helmick started plying me with questions about anchor swivels-questions we often get at the magazine.

While Im sure that some of these all natural products are exploiting a vaguely defined marketing niche, I do worry about some of the chemicals found in skin-care products. One of the reasons we're seeing more natural sunscreens is that groups like the Environmental Working Group are taking a fairly strong stand against certain sunscreen ingredients. It recently released a list of sunscreen ingredients and formulas not to bring on vacation, which includes spray sunscreens and sunscreens with oxybenzone and retinyl palmitate.

Hobie asked: Are you near Norfolk or New York?, and I said no to both. He then paused and said: I could sell you one, but if you buy three boats you can be our dealer in that area. . . . My wife was not too pleased with 140 cardboard boxes (each box holding a hull) in our backyard. She had just given birth to our first child three months earlier!

The story of the rescue of a sick 1-year-old girl, her parents, and toddler sister from aboard the boat Rebel Heart last week provoked a storm of controversy over whether ocean voyaging with young children is sensible. One of the reasons that Theresa and I chose not to have and raise children aboard our boat were our own dicey experiences with illness in the tropics. (Our threadbare, vagabond lifestyle at the time raised other salient concerns, as Theresa put it-Im not giving birth in the forepeak!) But if we had decided to cruise with young children, we would have likely avoided long passages and kept pediatric care within close reach.

Be aware that a less-experienced sailors report of a great anchorage with plenty of depth, or statements like We ran aground here! don't do you much good if they fail to include basic info such as their boat's draft, state of the tide, etc. Other sailors' facility reviews should also be taken with a grain of salt. For example: The dockmaster hates Algerian Snaggle-tooth Poodles (like our Fluffy), so were never coming back, and you shouldnt either!

As I edge toward my 200th blog post and my 10th year as the editor of Practical Sailor, Im going to detour briefly from the usual fare to say thanks, to you our readers, and to the loyal group of testers who have brought this publication to where it is today-the top of the heap in its field. This fact was recognized last month at the annual meeting of Boating Writers International, a professional organization of writers, editors, publishers, photographers, broadcasters, public relations specialists, and others in the communications profession associated with the boating industry.

Paint removal using a paint stripper is a little like dental work in that theres no one perfect tool, and getting the job done usually requires a tray full of devices. The arsenal of hand-scraping weapons used during our test of paint strippers ranged in caliber from a lightweight, extra-thin and narrow scraper sharpened to a knifes edge to what old shipwrights referred to as a slick. This heavyweight king of the chisel family was kept sharpened with a whetstone and had the mass to plow into thick paint buildup and peel the substrate evenly.

As spring fast approaches (it's coming, I promise), a few of our less fortunate sailing brethren discover their house bank batteries can no longer hold a charge. One of the most common questions we get regarding deep-discharge batteries-those batteries designed to power our lights and electronics-is whether to go with a gel-cell, AGM, or flooded lead-acid wet-cell battery.

At about 9 p.m., the wind picked up and the temperature dropped to 56 degrees, Miamis version of the polar vortex. Sailing conservatively under staysail and main, the 60-foot catamaran ripped southward toward the city lights. Tucked behind the 18-inch wheel on the leeward hull, helmsman Harry Horgan, a wheelchair-bound sailor who founded one of the nations finest community sailing programs, squinted into the wind. To the west, the nearly full moon rose above Cape Florida Lighthouse.

Three days after I blogged about the risks of having liquid petroleum gas (LPG) onboard boats, and shared frequent PS contributor and surveyor Capt. Frank Laniers tips on checking for leaks, an LPG explosion killed a Swedish sailor who was docked in Livingston, Guatemala. In the upcoming March 2013 issue of Practical Sailor, Lanier goes over LPG safety from top to bottom, and I hope everyone will read the article carefully. The article is an introduction to a series of tests comparing products found in the LPG system-ranging from tanks to valves, from aftermarket lockers to solenoid valves.