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With numerous types of spotlights flooding the market, Practical Sailor testers narrowed the test field to seven LED spotlights from manufacturers that have done well in our past tests: West Marine, Sirius, Coleman, Brinkmann, and Streamlight. Prices ranged from $50 to $150, and all but one test light had a rechargeable battery. The evaluation focused on several key criteria in choosing the best spotlight: ergonomics, beam pattern, beam luminance, beam effectiveness at a distance, and service time (how long to half strength and how long to recharge).

No good ever comes of fouled diesel fuel. One of the best ways to keep fuel free of contamination issues like condensation buildup—and the bacteria growth it promotes—is fuel polishing. Fuel polishing in its most basic form is the act of circulating the diesel in your tank through a filter. The Parker FPM-050 diesel fuel polisher is designed to be plumbed into the fuel supply line between the existing primary fuel filter and the engine. Testers plumbed the FPM-050 to recycle fuel into a container for several days. Testers looked at flow rates, contamination, sludge, ease of installation, and price.

When tropical weather threatens, being prepared for the wind, waves, surge, and flooding pays off. How you prepare for a storm depends on where your boat is in relation to the storm and whether you choose to keep it at a dock, on a mooring, or anchored in sheltered waters or a hurricane hole. Irene may have lacked super-storm status, but her sizable diameter and the angle with which she approached the Northeast coastline caused considerable impact from Beaufort, N.C., to Bangor, Maine. Sailors hiding from the storm faced a range of impacts. The most common was tropical-force winds with gusts to about 60 knots.

Just when you thought Practical Sailor had covered all marine head topics, we found another subject our readers are interested in: toilet paper. We followed up our reviews of marine toilets (PS, March 2011) with a look at some of the toilet tissues available for use in marine toilets and on-board sanitation systems. Practical Sailor evaluated 10 TPs from seven manufacturers: Coleman, Dometic, Kimberly Clark (Scott Paper), Thetford, West Marine, Camco, and Charmin. The test centered on well and how quickly the different toilet paper brands dissolved in water. TP that doesn't readily break down can eventually clog marine toilets, holding tanks, and the rest of the sanitation setup. The toilet tissues also were evaluated on tear strength, weight, softness, sheets per roll, and price per square foot.

One of the more unsanitary shipboard practices is draining showers directly into the bilge, a setup that not only generates odors, but also introduces pump-clogging hair and soap scum into the bilge. A common aftermarket solution is mounting a gravity-fed sump beneath the shower pan, which collects the water and automatically pumps it overboard or to a gray-water tank, using a small submersible pump and float switch mounted inside.

Our review of the trailblazing trailer-sailer, the Venture 21, brought to mind a recent phone conversation with my friend Andrew regarding a similar boat. I just got myself a free sailboat, he announced cheerily. Well, almost free. Husband, father, and the owner of a new business, Andrew had no time for a boat. But hed sailed as a boy in England and, by jove, he wanted to start again.

All the test toilets had at least one electric pump to handle supply and flushing duties; some had one pump for each job. The best pumps pushed more water faster and didn’t hesitate when they hit solids.

Every now and then, I’ll clear out the attic and come across a shoebox full of receipts and an oil-smeared ledger, testimonies to the steep learning curve we faced when we began outfitting Tosca back in 1989. Many of the crumpled receipts are illegible; their ink faded with the passage of time. But between the paper scraps and the figures in the ledger, an instructive story emerges. These artifacts of a well-spent youth remind me how we nearly fell into the same trap that keeps so many aspiring voyagers forever tied to the dock.

Improperly mounted stanchion and pulpit bases are a major cause of gelcoat cracks in the deck radiating from the attached hardware. The cracks are usually the result of un­equally stressed mounting fastenings or inadequate underdeck distribution of hardware loads. Frequently, a boat is received from the builder with local cracks already developed. Once the deck gets dirty enough, these minute cracks start to show up as tiny spider webs slightly darker than the surrounding deck gelcoat While repairing these cracks is a fairly difficult cosmetic fix, the underlying problem — poor mount­ing — is fairly easy to correct in most cases.

Good stability for a racing sailor may be the ability to carry a #1genoa upwind in 20 knots of breeze. Stability for the cruising sailor involves a different and more serious set of questions. What happens when a boat is knocked down so far that it doesn't come back up? What if it comes back up, but is full of water and is at risk of sinking? From what degree of capsize should a boat be able to right itself?