Sails, Rigging & Deck Gear

A big rollbar-style anchor on a bow roller is now synonymous with cruising. They are efficient in many types of bottoms and reliably rotate or reset when the wind and tide change. Unfortunately, they are shaped awkward and are difficult to stow anywhere other than a bow roller. Lacking this, many smaller boats, both sail and power, are forced to store the anchor in either a shallow bow locker, a snag-prone railing bracket, or in a lazarette.

We've seen both turnbuckles and lashings side by side on matching boats. Why the difference in approach, since both designers are obviously comfortable with synthetic standing rigging?

Boats are always challenged by limited storage space. Many production boats share two common features: they have lockers that are either bottomless or wet at the bottom, and those lockers contained broken storage hooks installed by the previous owner. Over the years weve been on the lookout for storage hooks that wont fail and reconsidered the places where they can best meet our needs.

It was a given that anything added to the cockpit locker of our F-24 test boat had to be quickly removable. All of the bolts for cockpit gear, fuel lines, and half of the wiring is accessed by worming through this narrow locker into the space under the cockpit, and any obstruction would render it inaccessible. Because the backside is the hull, through-bolting was not an option. The previous owner had epoxied on a few hooks, but gluing plastic to fiberglass is pretty hopeless and only the scars remained.

We often get questions about anchoring rights. While it is commonly understood that the first boat arriving in an anchorage has privileges, many see this as a matter of etiquette, but it is also a legal issue. The below citations are from the case Juniata 124 F. 861 US Admiralty Court, E.D. Virginia, 1903. Other rulings we reviewed generally agree.]

Over the years Practical Sailor has conducted dozens of anchor tests, and like many publications, weve repeated the common guidance that cruising sailors should buy an anchor that is at least one size larger than what the maker recommends for your size vessel.

If this were a follow-up article on polyester sail repair, we would have waited two years at least. Wed have added a few stitches during our annual inspection, but major sewn repairs in sound cloth are expected to last for years. Our test boat is sailed frequently, vigorously, and with a lot of tacking, but were not crossing oceans. Polyester would have held up.

Still trying to find a place to stow everything for that big summer cruise? Here are a few organizing accessories that we've found handy in the past few years:

Boats sail better when rode, docklines, running rigging, and sail control lines are properly adjusted, and many lines are easier to adjust if common positions are marked.

There are two primary wind indicators on a sailboat. First, we watch the sails. Sailing to windward we watch the jib for luffing and for flow on telltales.