Boat Maintenance

Everybody has spills, and just a tiny splatter of epoxy can make a mess of an otherwise flawless job. Never fear, there are some...

We received a letter from a reader asking us which acids might be used to clean a bronze propeller. Although we’ve found it fairly...

However you choose to use your scarce time, we’ll wager that you’d rather not spend it removing bottom paint. If you are an owner of an older boat with a decade of accumulated hard bottom paint that is flaking and cracking, now is a good time to start weighing your options for removing the old paint. Should you do it yourself, or hire the professionals—or a bit of both? Our experts break down the different approaches to removing old antifouling and the compare the estimated costs of each.

When we decided to replace the worn-out, real teak on our transom sugar scoops, we thought it might be best to look into synthetics....

The gear shift on smaller outboards is typically a stubby little 3-inch lever tucked away on the starboard side. On a tender or skiff,...

Historically, fiberglass boat hulls and decks were molded separately, and then bonded at the deck seam. Bulkheads were added either with polyester or epoxy...

They were off the coast of Bequia in the Grenadines, near the end of a breezy passage on a 34-foot cruising sloop. Just as the boat reached past a rocky point, trouble struck. The steering wheel suddenly turned freely in the skippers hand.

In our test of waterproof epoxies for making underwater repairs, we also looked into making underwater patches. Obviously, your success in this effort depends...

One of the challenges we faced when testing the Chesapeake Anchor, even at the 3-pound scale, was that once any anchor is set to...

Just about every sailboat owner has at some point mixed up a batch of epoxy to fill a hole, glue parts back together, or tackle an extensive project. Practical Sailor testers evaluated four marine epoxy resins based on their mechanical properties (strength, adhesion, hardness, and flexibility) and key handling attributes such as wet-out, sag, curing, and overall handling. We tested West 105 Epoxy Resin, MAS Flag Resin, Raka UV-inhibited epoxy, and Interlux’s Epiglass HT-9000.