Sailboat DIY And Repair Tips

A Frenchman once jabbed, “Why do you stupid Americans store your toilet waste under your bed on your boats?! That’s such a disgusting habit!” Exactly what constitutes “disgusting” may vary among cultures, but his observation about plumbing systems within boats flying a U.S. flag ...read more

It’s never going to be perfect. It can’t be. The wind and water are constantly changing. We can get close, though, and there’s nothing more fun to drive than a well-trimmed boat. Proper sail trim can keep any boat flatter and under better control. It can also help you beat that ...read more

Maintaining canvas can be a daunting task. First there is the challenge of removing the canvas, then knowing exactly how to clean and inspect it, and finally properly reinstalling it. I’ve seen circumnavigators brought to their knees by a snap that wouldn’t snap, and cruisers who ...read more

The Cruising Club of America (CCA) is a collection of 1,400 ocean sailors with extensive offshore seamanship, command experience, and a shared passion for making adventurous use of the seas. Their experiences and expertise make them, collectively, one of the most reliable sources ...read more

The best winter storage location for your boat is a sunny, tropical place with palm trees swaying at the shore, turquoise water gurgling in her bow wave, and you ensconced at the helm. But if your boat lives where winter delivers ice and snow, and if sailing south to avoid the ...read more

Ora Kali had pushed hard to get through New York Harbor and the East River to Long Island Sound, and our nerves were jangling after eight hours of listening to the three-cylinder Westerbeke 13 engine pound away. We picked up a municipal mooring in Port Washington, turned the ...read more

Lifeline failure usually arrives as a shocking surprise, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Metal fatigue and crevice corrosion are hidden from sight in traditional lifeline construction, with potential danger lurking under white plastic coating and inside wire swage ...read more

Forty years ago, the solid-state revolution, which gave us computers and a host of increasingly powerful electronic devices, reshaped boat energy systems in ways that have underpinned a remarkable transition from camping out to enjoying the comforts of home. Initially, this ...read more

Sixteen years ago, I installed solar panels on my boat. At the time, the peak efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity was around 16%. Today’s panel technologies enable substantially more energy to be harvested from a given surface area, boosting efficiency as high as ...read more

When we decided to add windvane steering coupled with a hydrogenerator to our sailboat, our focus was on the practical aspects: conserving battery power, adding rudder redundancy, and enhancing our off-grid capabilities. It wasn’t until we sailed with the vane overnight for the ...read more

The morning our diesel engine experienced a runaway started like any other. We were headed out of Monterey Harbor on our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet, bound for Morro Bay. We fired up the steadfast if sometimes quirky Perkins 4.108 without issue, untied from the dock and made our ...read more

It’s March, and if you’re like most sailors who’ve had to put their beloveds away for the winter, you’re champing at the bit to get down to the boatyard and spring her from the cold season’s confines. It’s understandable, but what you really need to do is slow down before you ...read more

Neil Evans has been talking about the merits of Harken’s T2 Soft-Attach blocks—most significantly the soft Dyneema shackle as its attachment point, rather than a metal head post and shackle—when he reminds his audience of marine professionals what their biggest variable really ...read more

Ever wonder how the gear we put on our boats gets tested before we ever use it? If it's Harken gear, that would be the Harken Lab. This is where they measure, break, and prove stuff, and SAIL Editor-in-Chief Wendy Mitman Clarke got a tour. ...read more

Winter can be an overlooked season for the mid-latitude boat. Even if you don’t snowbird south for the tropics, good times aboard can still be had. Put on your hat and head on down to the boat, because winter is a fine string of months for boat projects. Whisker Pole Most ...read more

There were two things I disliked about my 1987 Pearson 39-2 from the outset—the anchor locker and the forecabin. The former was a shallow tray, long enough to accommodate the 25-pound Danforth that came with the boat, its 20 feet of chain, and 200 feet of nylon rope, but at 14 ...read more

A dark cloud has been hanging over Starlink antennas lately. Sailors around the world have been bypassing the $5,000 per month maritime version of Elon Musk’s new satellite internet system and instead have been enjoying great success with the $150 per month RV version of the ...read more

You might think that watching invasive surgery on a dated fiberglass sailboat week in and week out would be just about the last thing to draw people’s devoted attention. But Matt Steverson, 38, and Janneke Petersen, 36, who are rebuilding the Open 60 Duracell, are proving that ...read more

When talking shop among sailors or reading about safety at sea, ventilation is not a topic that comes up much. Evidently it’s secondary to things like angle of vanishing stability, survival equipment, and overboard rescue skills. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a big ...read more

Are you happy with your boat? Few of us are, at least not 100%. There’s always something that could be improved or altered. There are also many things you can do to make your boat easier and safer to sail. If you have trouble finding crew, or perhaps you’re not in the first ...read more

Mother Nature is good at heavy lifting. She effortlessly—and depending on where you sail, fairly regularly—delivers thousands of gallons of precious drinking water directly to the decks of our sailboats. All that work and water needn’t go down the drain. To harvest rain, on our ...read more

Chances are you’ve been at the boatyard or marina lately, hovering hopefully as you wait for your boat to get back in the water, checking with your service techs about projects they’ve been working on to have you all ready for a great season of sailing. These are the busiest ...read more

Nerd alert: We’re talking networks and data this month, none of which is really integral to the safe running of a boat as far as seamanship is concerned, but all of which is addictingly fun and surprisingly enlightening. Specifically, I’m looking at NMEA 2000 networks and how to ...read more

Winter can be hard on boats, even when they’re properly winterized, covered, and tucked in for the long dark nights. Come spring, we’re all antsy to get back on the water, but before you untie the lines, it’s important to make sure your boat is as ready as you are. Spring ...read more

Small diesel engines tend to be remarkably reliable. Even in the harsh saltwater environment, marine diesels can last for decades and thousands of hours, largely because they are entirely mechanical (other than the gauges, alternator, and starter motor). If you can crank it ...read more

Is any command less welcome on a boat than “all hands on deck!”? And short of “man overboard!” is any cry more guaranteed to wake you instantly from the deepest of slumbers? It came, as such things do, in the wee hours of the darkest of nights. “The bowsprit’s broken,” the ...read more

Our Open 60, NV, was originally designed, built, and raced by Hungarian sailor Nándor Fa in the singlehanded around-the-world races Around Alone and the Vendée Globe. Like many such boats, she carried water ballast, up to 4 tons in six tanks (three on each side): one pair ...read more

Read All-New Battery Tech: Part 1, here. When I started the lithium project on our 65-foot Farr, Falken, Mia, and I were hell-bent on induction cooking. Cool factor, baby, plus it would rid us of the hassle of refilling propane tanks in exotic ports (and make galley cleanup ...read more

It’s a typical humid, southern Chesapeake Bay summer day when I show up on the doorstep of Latell & Ailsworth Sailmakers in the one-stoplight, one-lane-roadway, rural tidewater town of Deltaville, Virginia. I’m late getting here to work on a new jib for my 29-foot, Bill ...read more

Until very recently, the batteries in sailboats used some form of lead-acid chemistry to store energy. Different manufacturers used different techniques and materials, but in the end, the chemistry and the process by which the batteries charge and discharge electricity remained ...read more

The old saw that the happiest day in a sailor’s life is the one on which they sell their boat is funny, of course, because of the fact that owning a boat can be both expensive and a lot of work. If you sail a boat hard, and especially if you’re in the habit of making ocean ...read more

I gazed aft over Hazel James’ port quarter and patted her well-travelled 31ft hull. “It’s time to sail, girl. We’ve got a long way to go,” I said. As the Virgin Islands sank below the horizon, my thoughts were filled with Caribbean memories, a curious and sundry collage of ...read more

During the three months my little ship lay in Belfast, Maine, I had three friends. The first was a schooner bum I’d met sailing in Florida who now worked for the shipyard next door to where I had just bought my boat, Teal, a 1963 Tripp 29, sight unseen. He would hook me up with ...read more

For the record, I will be the first to admit that a professionally executed reverse-tuck Class 1 eye splice on modern braided line adds an air of proficiency and seamanship to any boat. When I see a boat with braided line eye splices, I am more impressed than any amount of ...read more

During the pandemic, I was stuck aboard Guiding Light, a Lagoon 410, in St. Lucia for over a month. During that time, as I worked on the boat, I started by doing a spring cleaning in my spares locker and finding some parts and material that I forgot I had. As soon as I saw them, ...read more