Sails, Rigging & Deck Gear

As the economy has withered, the market for secondhand boat gear has flourished. Used marine-gear stores such as Fort Lauderdales Sailorman and Newport Beachs Minneys have seen both the supply and demand of used boat gear on the rise. Buying secondhand is typically easier on your wallet and on the environment, but used gear shopping certainly has its ups and downs. In this report, Practical Sailor talks to those in the know-the friendly faces running the secondhand marine stores-and takes a look at what used gear to look for and what to steer clear of. Deck gear-snatch blocks, winches, bronze cleats-can be worth the bin-digging at a boating consignment shop. Ground tackle, if it has a shank stamped with a recognizable brand name, also can be a smart buy. However, purchasing used marine electronics, safety gear, or an anonymous anchor can be iffy. As with any gear purchased secondhand, it's buyer beware. Sailors should do their research before heading to a consignment store, and always take with you a list and a budget.

The Hobie Mirage Tandem Island, a mouthful we’ll refer to as the HMTI, is the latest incarnation of Hobie’s capable and creative engineering team. This triple-play trimaran can be paddled, pedaled, and sailed using dozens of Hobie’s in-house designed parts. A specialized Torqeedo electric outboard (www.torqeedo.com), which can be dropped into a drive slot, adds a forth dimension to this multi-tasking multihull.

Beyond the text and photos contained in a sailboat manufacturing company’s brochures, and the words of a dealer or salesperson, and absent an understanding of yacht design, discerning the actual capabilities of today’s production boats is a major task. Gone are the days of Herreschoff et. al., when the conventional wisdom held that a long, deep keel was the best method of producing good tracking, displacement produced a seakindly ride, and performance (straightforward speed) was a simple matter of adding sail area. Prior to the age of fiberglass, most yachts used similar raw materials (wood and metal), and construction methods, so those variables were not generally a consideration.

Take a cursory glance at a new 35-footer and you might easily conclude that, except for cosmetic changes, the boat is essentially unchanged from those that made their debut in 1995. But that is not the case. In contemporary designs, modifications to deck layouts, the design of creature comforts, and boathandling systems, all reflect the market's desire for easy use, as evinced by below-deck sheeting systems (X Yachts), electrically controlled stern platforms (C&C), and removable traveler systems (Etap), for instance.

There's no perfect solution to boom furling. It's not an easy bit of engineering. Still, all the systems on the market continue to mature. Schaefer's new offering looks like a good bet for medium-sized boats.

The systems used to attach a mainsail to its mast have come a long way since the time of hoops and parrels, and the variety of options now available for retrofitting plays to the advantage of the consumer.

Unless the boat was equipped with two headstays, which adds considerable windage, the headsail change drill meant releasing the lowest hanks on the headsail in use, tacking down the new sail, hanking it on below the head-sail already up, taking a deep breath, letting the jib halyard run, then going like mad to get the hanks open on the old jib, all the time listening to the skipper scream to hurry up.

On my 40’ wood boat Daybreak I had a stuffing box problem. The gland leaked worse and worse, especially when motoring. It is very inaccessible, and could not be further tightened. The stuffing box needed to be repacked, but this couldn’t be done without major effort because of insufficient space between the gland and the shaft coupling at the transmission. The Lasdrop shaft seal looked like it might solve several problems at the same time.

The mainsail is a big part of the motive power of almost every sailboat. The art of mainsail control, however, is a relatively modern one. One tool that greatly facilitates mainsail control is the traveler.

The largest fasteners in any sailboat with outside ballast are likely to be the bolts holding the ballast keel to the hull. As a rule, designers specify keelbolts by a tremendous factor, on the order of ten to one or more. Nevertheless, this safety margin does not guarantee eternal life for keelbolts. Corrosion takes its toll, sometimes more quickly than you might think.