Boat Maintenance

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.

Perhaps one reason our buckets keep cracking is that we have to compress them a bit to fit them through the 10-inch rectangular hatch...

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...

In your recent report “Understanding Dew Point to Prevent Mildew,” (see Inside Practical Sailor blog) there is the comment, “curiously, the best way to...

Alot of water has rushed over the bridge since we last looked at synthetic teak decking materials—eight years worth. Since that last report (see...

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

The ability for an enclosed cockpit to drain rapidly has long been a concern among yacht designers, and safety guidelines have been in place...

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...