winter sailing - search results

Foam life jackets can be hot and cumbersome on a long passage-especially if youre a kid and like to move around a lot. With Spinlocks debut of the Deckvest Cento Junior auto-inflatable PFD with a harness, sailing youth-and petite adults-now have an alternative to those bulky foam PFDs.

You want to sell your boat. And youd like to sell it quickly. What can you do to make that happen? We recently interviewed several brokers and surveyors for advice on what helps, what hurts, and what flaws are sure to come to light when you are trying to sell your boat. Remember that the savvy buyer will always overemphasize the unknown, believing that for every fault they uncover there are three more lurking, and that these will cost more to set right than you say or they think. Fortunately, a well-maintained boat can often be prepped for sale with a relatively small investment in time and money. And if the boat hasn't been maintained, youll want to prioritize the tasks required to draw a willing buyer.

I was happy to see in the last issue on grease and electronics your willingness to test natural products. For years, I have used pine tar as anti-seize. I first read about it in a series of side bars in the Mariners Catalog published by International Marine Publishing in the 1970s. They were by Pete Culler and called Old Ways Work. He suggested that pine tar was great for keeping bolts, etcetera from rusting together. At the time, I was living in Northern Vermont notorious for bad winter roads with lots of salt. I got some pine tar at the local feed store (used on horses hooves) and tried it on the lug nuts on my truck. Sure enough, they always came right apart.

The list of contradictions that define our sailing affliction is long. We need an anchor that buries deep but can be freed at a moments notice. We want a sealant that sticks to anything, but releases its grip for easy disassembly. We want a boat that can weather any storm, and still make way under sail in a whisper. And we want an antifouling paint that repels every sea creature, but will never harm the sea.

The basic design of the humble boat hook hasn't changed much over the years, but it has seen upgrades in construction and materials, along with some minor design tweaks. For this report, we set out to determine what constitutes the ideal boat hook. We evaluated boat hooks currently on the market and took a look at some old models still in service.

The air surrounding us on the surface of the earth weighs about 1.2 kilos per cubic meter, and when we stack up these invisible building blocks of the atmosphere, they add up to tons of pressure pushing down upon us. Its little wonder that when air at the surface starts moving sideways, it has a profound effect on sails and the sea surface.

At the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis last fall, I paused at the newly launched $2.5-million Gunboat 55, Rainmaker, felt the hole in my pocket and moved on. I have always had a weakness for hedonistic follies, but to launch a go-fast carbon-fiber condo into a North Atlantic gale isn't one of them.

Bottom paint? Again? Frankly, sometimes we feel that way, too. According to company lore, more than a few former Practical Sailor editors ran screaming for the exits after phrases like ablative copolymer and Irgarol began creeping into their dreams. As much as some like to poke fun at our bottom paint obsession, antifouling is a topic that deserves attention. Choosing the wrong paint can set a boat owner back $1,000 or more, but more importantly, antifouling is a fast-moving topic; paints available last spring are suddenly gone, renamed, or reformulated. This is particularly true for the newer eco-friendly paints.

A few years ago, we launched a series of holding tank odor tests, including evaluations of holding-tank vent filters and sanitation hoses. After 30 months of testing, weve reached some solid conclusions on the hoses and vent filters. The sanitation hoses we tested were Trident Marines 101/102 EPDM hose; SeaLands OdorSafe Plus, a PVC and acrylonitrile butadiene rubber hose; Raritan Engineerings butyl rubber Sani/Flex Odor Shield; and Shields Marines Poly-X polyurethane sanitation hose. The four holding-tank vent filters we tested were our homemade system, Dometic SeaLand SaniGard, Big Oranges 5/8-inch filter, and the Vetus No-Smell NSF16.

Weve had good experiences with Walker Bay products, so we expected a lot from the companys inflatable stand-up paddleboard (iSUP), the 12-foot Airis Hardtop Tour. Rated for 275 pounds, the board features a standard bungee tie-down strap for gear and a carrying bag.