DIY Projects

Choosing a marine caulk for use above the waterline comes down to which product offers the best resistance to weathering, dirt, mildew, and ability...

Wood is strong, stiff per unit weight, easy to work with, attractive, and economical. And it rots. A few special types of wood, such as teak, are highly resistant to rot, but these woods are generally heavy and almost always expensive. Pressure treated lumber is an option, but it’s ugly, warps, does not take coatings well, and is not always very rot resistant. Western red cedar, on the other hand, has long been used in canoes, and cedar fence posts have a deserved reputation for durability. We started our rot resistance testing eight years ago in 2015, and we finally cleaned out our accelerated rot test box in July 2023. Results ranged from abysmal (untreated samples of fir have nearly disappeared) to astounding (our teak samples are still just like new). Let’s see what we learned.

The windows on our Corsair F-24 trimaran were obviously damaged by UV radiation. All we could see through them were shapes of objects that...

A recent test report reacquainted me with an age old problem, that has not yet fully been solved: How can one person, absent a...

In 2021 I bought Epic, a 2013 Lagoon 450 catamaran, and soon learned the boat’s forward bulkhead, along with other important structural components, were...

This is Part V, the final installment of a five-part series on rebuilding and modifying our Cape Dory 36 from a bare hull into...

Fuel tanks typically have a mechanical gauge, but water tanks can cause corrosion and waste tanks will foul the typical mechanical flat mechanism. As...

This is the fourth article in a five-part series describing the rebuild of our 1982 Cape Dory 36 and how we turned it into...

For more than four decades, Practical Sailor has been testing bottom paints, although for the first few years, the topic really didn’t draw much...

This is Part III of a multi-part series describing the rebuilding of our 1982 Cape Dory 36. In Part I (PS November 2022), I...