Inside Practical Sailor

In the wake of questions about the tensile strength of steel used in the shafts of Rocna anchors, West Marine has issued product specification notices to customers who have purchased Rocna anchors since 2010. The West Marine notification states that certain Rocna anchors were made with a weaker grade of steel compared to that published on the Rocna website and directs customers to Rocna for information regarding the materials and construction of the Rocna anchor. Under its No Hassles Guarantee, West Marine offers a full refund to owners who are not satisfied with their purchase. The offer comes after several months of heated online debate over the strength of the shafts of Rocna anchors made in China.

One of the difficult challenges faced by mast slides on full-batten mainsails are the side loads imposed when the sail is not feathered into the wind. In the event that the sail needs to be dropped (or raised) off the wind, the unequal loading on the batten cars can cause a great deal of friction on one side of the cars. If you are the owner of a smaller boat, however, your options for solving this problem are limited.

Commonsense would suggest that an auto-inflating harness/life jacket is the best choice for the cruising sailor. However, there are cases in which an inflated harness can be a hindrance-for example when you are trying to climb back aboard under a lifeline, or dive free of debris or rigging. And as our tests have shown, rain and waves can inflate some models, a nuisance that could interfere with handling the boat.

While there is no evidence yet that the fatal sailing accident in the Chicago-Mackinac Race this week is linked to a safety tether problem, given our experience with tethers, it is not unreasonable to suspect that the difficulty involved in releasing safety tethers may have been a factor.

"How to cleat a line on a boat" turns out to be a more controversial topic than you might imagine. Practical Sailor looks at various views on how to handle the first wrap around the base of a deck cleat.

While you don't have to be an incurable sail-tweaker to cover ground on a tradewind passage, assuring your mainsail is well-trimmed will put you safely on the hook sooner and ensure a smoother, more comfortable ride. Good mainsail trim, of course, is paramount when going to windward.

In advance of a recent summer coastal cruise, we downloaded eSeaChart navigation app, the first iPad charting program to work with Active Captain, a free service that requires registration. It cost $8 and took only a few minutes to download the charts needed for the cruising area-from Tampa to Ft. Myers, Fla.-including detailed harbor charts. One thing I liked about the charts was that they were raster charts, nearly identical to the government versions that appeal to my analog brain. Redraw rates were a little slow, as a result, but at sailboat speeds, this isn't a major issue.

Practical Sailor was recently invited to check out a custom Fastwater 52 sailing cat. The invite was prefaced with the explanation that the boat is a Practical Sailor posterchild of sorts, outfitted with electronics, hardware, and other gear that has survived PS testing and garnered our recommendation. How could we turn down an invitation like that? Our dockside tour did not disappoint.

Were seeing several errors creep into owners manuals. Many of the mistakes seem to be the lost-in-translation variety, but others seem to be just poor writing, or sloppy editing. As General Motors' recent recall demonstrates, mistakes in an owners manuals can have costly-possibly dangerous-ramifications.

Whenever I feel like contemporary yacht designs are losing touch with their raison d etre, these are two of the books I turn to.