Vinyl Boat Lettering DIY Application and Repair
One of the pleasures of boating, at least for me, is reading boat names! I enjoy the many humorous names and those that are...
Painting a New Bootstripe Like a Pro
Have you been wanting to add a bootstripe to your boat but aren’t sure how to do it? Perhaps you have a bootstripe already...
Mildew-resistant Caulks for Boats
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 Rot Prevention Eight Years Later
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.
F-24 Portlight Replacement
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...
The Best Boat Bucket You Can Buy
A recent test report reacquainted me with an age old problem, that has not yet fully been solved: How can one person, absent a...
The DIY Bulkhead Rebuild on a Production Charter Cat
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...
Rebuilding a Cape Dory 36 Part V
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...
PS Advisor: Tank Monitor and Camera Mount Hacks
Fuel tanks typically have a mechanical gauge, but water tanks can cause corrosion and waste tanks will foul the typical mechanical flat mechanism. As...
Rebuilding a Cape Dory 36 Part IV
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...
The Fastest Cruising Sailboat in the World?
What is the fastest cruising sailboat in the world—and can a monohull really compete with catamarans for speed while still being livable? In this...
Latest Sailboat Review
Morgan 34 Used Boat Review
By today's standards, the Morgan 34 is a small boat, comparable in accommodations to a lot of 30-footers. When the boat was designed, she was as big as most other boats of her overall length. In profile, the boat has a sweeping, moderately concave sheer. The ends of the boat are beautifully balanced: the bow profile is a slight convex curve, the overhanging counter aft is slightly concave. Esthetically, hull shapes of this period from the best designers are still hard to beat.