Mailport & PS Advisor

Letters to Practical Sailor, July 2011. This month's letters cover subjects such as: Boat Shoes, Rope Cleaning, Rigging Care, Drain Surgery and More!

In a recent emergency procedures training course at the Annapolis School of Seamanship (www.annapolisschoolofseamanship.com) a handheld Orion flare melted through its handle and began dripping hot slag. Course coordinator Matt Benhoff said, “The trainee operating the flare was wearing heavy leather gloves and goggles and dropped the malfunctioning pyrotechnic flare in a disposal bucket before the problem led to an injury.” If a similar scenario played out in a life raft, hot slag could injure a sailor already in trouble, or result in raft damage if the molten slag landed on an inflated buoyancy tube.

In any wind, our Jenneau 39i charges around an anchorage like a scalded cat, fetching up at the end of each tack (bow more than 90 degrees from the direction of the rode) with a noticeable jerk—even with a scope of more than 5:1. Comparing the behavior of other, more traditional boats in the same anchorage suggests that our centroid of windage is well forward, and that the cutaway foot and high-aspect keel offer limited resistance to the turn.

Do you have any suggestions on a book or manual that explains how to replace a cored deck where most of it is soaking wet? I replaced a 1.5-square-foot area and was surprised to see that it was so wet and rotten that I could grab the wood core and squeeze it like a sponge.

Letters to Practical Sailor, May 2011. This month's letters cover subjects such as: Practial Heads, Anchor Lockers, Handheld Vacs, and more!

Making a portable set of dinghy wheels is relatively simple and inexpensive. Reader (and PS contributor) David Liscio sent us the following DIY how-to on dinghy-roller making, a timely Reader Workbench as we’ll be reviewing dinghy wheels in an upcoming issue. Email us your DIY project ideas at [email protected].

Your September 2010 issue had a great article on electric bilge pumps. My Pearson 424 ketch has a bilge sump that has to be 4 feet deep, which would be a lot of water to move if it ever started to fill. In the article, you recommended a mix of a small pump for “everyday duty” with a couple of large-capacity backup units, you didn’t mention how to plumb these. Would each pump have to…

Letters to Practical Sailor, April 2011. This month's letters cover subjects such as: WI-FI Solutions, Eco Antifouling, Laser News, Streamlight Headlight and more!

Aqua Signal Corp. (www.aquasignal.info) recently recalled a small number of its popular Series 40 bi-color navigation lights. The recalled lights, manufactured between November 2010 and February 2011, were made with the colored lenses reversed—with the red lens on the starboard side and the green lens on the port side.

My wife and I have moved our O’Day 39 to the Oriental area of North Carolina. We have the three-cabin version without the formal nav station. Our draft with our lead-ballast keel is 6-feet, 4-inches. Since we are going to be sailing in the Pamlico Sound, Neuse River, and the Intracoastal Waterway, we are being told we should modify our keel to better cope with the shallower water.