Home › Boatworks › Projects › Maintenance

Maintenance

Why You Should Paint Your Boat Yourself

by Wally Moran, Posted April 12, 2012
The cost of hiring a yard to repaint a 30- to 40-foot sailboat is likely to be over $10,000, which is uneconomical given the actual value of most older boats. The alternative, if you’re willing to put in long hours with a rotary sander, is doing it yourself.

Holes Be Gone

by Connie McBride, Posted April 12, 2012
When a boat’s systems or interior are modified, you may need or want to glass over existing holes in the hull. One season when we hauled out in Trinidad, we decided to eliminate three through-hulls in our Creekmore 34, Eurisko. The holes were all different sizes, but we treated this as one project.

Snow, Sleet and Storms

by Charles Mason, Posted December 12, 2011
Make no joke about it: winter is here. Luckily SAIL editor Charles Mason is luckily here to show you how to winterize your boat easily and efficiently.

A Head Start

by Don Casey, Posted September 27, 2011
When your boat spends the winter on the hard, relaunching in the spring will go easier, and perhaps happen sooner, if you tackle a few of your pre-launch tasks during the fall and winter months. Some of these are jobs you might otherwise neglect or skip in the rush to launch. And the nice part is you get to mess about doing boat things during the off-season.

A Stand for Tired Outboards

by Peter Nielsen, Posted August 15, 2011
For a number of years, I used a piece of 2x4 screwed to the side of the garden shed as a mount for my 3.5hp Tohatsu outboard. It would perch happily thereon while I dangled its nether regions in a cooling tub of fresh water, sputtering and burbling away as the salt got rinsed from its innards.   This year, I decided something more sophisticated was in order for my faithful motor. I wanted a

Old Boat Nightmares #3: Gate Valves

by Peter Nielsen, Posted August 15, 2011
Among the multitude of things that needed upgrading on our project boat, the cockpit drain seacocks loomed large. The wheels on the 1973-vintage gate valves were frozen open so the valves could not be closed. This is a typical problem with gate valves. The valve stems and the valve body are usually dissimilar metals, and eventually they’ll corrode so that the valve sticks on the position it was

Fenders for your Tender

by Dick Everett, Posted May 5, 2011
A. As you come alongside, it’s often the top of a hard tender’s gunwale that damages the bigger boat’s gelcoat.B. The top edge of the gunwale can be padded with a purpose-made canvas-covered fender strip.C. Some people fit old industrial hose, as shown here; others pad the void and remove the cover if it’s too

A New Cabin Sole

by David Popken, Posted April 14, 2011
The first time I stepped down a sailboat’s companionway I was overwhelmed by the beauty and abundance of the wood I found below. As a result, I knew one thing I wanted for sure when searching for my first sailboat was a teak-and-holly cabin sole. In the end, I found what I wanted, but the teak and holly was veneer over plywood. It was in less than perfect condition, but having

A New Hatch for Keewaydin

by Spencer Howe, Posted March 8, 2011
The forward deck hatch on our project boat, Keewaydin, a 1967 Allied Seabreeze, did not let much light into our dark and dingy forepeak. There was no mechanism to hold the molded fiberglass hatch open, and it was hard to adequately secure from the inside. We decided to replace it with a new waterproof hatch.The Vetus hatch we chose was slightly larger than the original hatch,

Tracking Trickles

by Don Casey, Posted November 23, 2010
Finding a big leak is relatively easy, but a small one can be a major challenge because a boat’s interior is a bit like a room in a funhouse, where water flow often seems to defy gravity. A trickle in the cabin, for example, may be coming from a leak in the deck half a boat length away. Conventional search techniques include 1) flooding the deck by sections with a hose, and 2) building a dike of
  • facebook
  • twitter