Personal Gear & Apparel

Summer is here, and hopefully, the living is easy. Weve put together a roundup of summer reads perfect for those lazy afternoons aboard. Our reading selection this season includes a provocative reassessment of the War in the Pacific, a look at turning sailing skills into business strategy, the mysteries and memoirs of yacht racing, and more than one way to die, or survive, at sea.

Ive found that the deeper one plunges into sailing, the closer you move toward nature, and the fringe culture of like-minded nut cases who embrace its wildness and unpredictability. This is a good thing. Everyone needs a break from the multimedia barrage that can blind our senses to the natural world. We all need a few nut cases in our life. The downside of drifting away from high-def screens and toward the edge of the sea is that fewer companies seem inclined to make the things that truly fit our needs.

For this test, we rounded up six high-performance, U.S. Coast Guard certified Type III personal flotation devices (PFDs) designed for children (50 to 90 pounds) participating in active sailing and other watersports. The test lineup comprised life jackets from five manufacturers: Astral Designs, Extrasport, Gill, MTI Adventurewear, and Stohlquist. Testers rated the PFDs on fit (in and out of the water), buoyancy, comfort, ease of donning and doffing, and safety features like crotch straps and whistles.

Summers warm breezes and lazy weekends have arrived, so PS testers have put together a lineup of cool toys and tools for the dog days. Tower Adventurer Inflatable Standup Paddleboard: Inflatable SUPs are sprouting up everywhere on the Internet; many boards are identical, made by different brands at the same factories in China. Quality varies. Generally, boards 6 inches or thicker offer better stiffness and stability, making them easier to ride.

Two years ago, I replaced my incandescent stern light with a waterproof, sealed LED unit from OGM (www.miseagroup.com). This winter, while the boat was on the hard, I noticed that the seal had failed and drops of water fogged the lens. Although the LED continued to work, I was concerned that the moisture would reduce the visibility, or that the light would fail when I needed it most.

With Mothers Day upon us and Fathers Day just around the corner, we put together a few gift ideas for sailing families. Our grab bag includes gear for warm-weather and small-boat sailors, the galley slave, and the boat-maintenance aficionado.

My closet is full of boat shoes and sailing boots that are in excellent condition on the topsides, but to a sole, their bottoms have become hard and slippery. Is there any known cure short of replacement?

I recently purchased the cord, and as packaged on the plastic spool, the shore end of the new 25-foot EEL cord has a very tight bend at the plug, in order to force it into the package. The bend is much tighter than Id normally allow on a power cord, and upon inspection, I noticed what appears to be a separation of the seal between the cord and the plug. I checked other packages on the shelf at my local West Marine (one of many retailers of the cord), and found all of the 25-foot cords have the same tight bend at the shore end, and most have the same apparent seal issue.

After a series of tragic accidents involving sailors in organized sailing events and training programs in 2011 and 2012, Practical Sailor initiated research into safety equipment in use during the time of these accidents. Our current ongoing tests deal specifically with personal flotation devices (PFDs), safety harnesses, and combination inflatable PFDs and safety harnesses. Ultimately, we hope to come up with recommendations similar to those we made for infant PFDs in June 2007, when we published a prototype of what our ideal infant PFD would look like.

In our search for stowable, seaworthy seating, we rounded up six padded chairs with self-supporting backrests and compared them to the reigning favorite, the Paradise Sport-a-Seat. The chairs have weatherproof covers and multiple reclining settings with self-supporting, padded backrests. The test field was: the Paradise Sport-a-Seat; Picnic Times Oniva and Ventura designs; G2 Products ComfortSeat; and retail giant West Marines Go-Anywhere Seat 2 and High-back Go-Anywhere Seat 2.