Sailboat DIY And Repair Tips

Part of the remodeling of the chart table area on my 45ft schooner Britannia involved making a new section of floorboarding or, to use its proper nautical term, cabin sole. The floor beneath was just rough plywood, unlike the remainder of the boat, which was beautiful teak with ...read more

As a classic-boat sailor, I’ve long held that simpler is the better. I still think this is true: a simpler boat is cheaper, she has less gadgets to break down and there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing you’re able to handle a bit of discomfort. Thus, for a long time, I sailed ...read more

For quite some time, I had contemplated an expansion of the house battery bank aboard our 1987 Sabre 38MKI, Orion. There were several potential issues that had kept the project from becoming a reality. But fortunately, while not trivial, in the end, they were all surmountable, ...read more

Q: In one of your recent Ask Sail responses, you wrote about loose-footed mainsails. I have an S2 7.9 that has a rope-footed main. Since I’m just cruising and not racing, could I just leave the rope out of the track and sail it as though it were loose-footed, or am I asking ...read more

Celestial Nav 5 - The fifth installment of The Nav Station’s Celestial Navigation series discusses the contents of the Nautical Almanac, and how to use its daily pages to find the Greenwich Hour Angle and Declination of the Sun, the first steps in any sight reduction. February ...read more

In mid-August 2019, my wife, Terrie, and I laid up our Malö 46, Nada, in Falmouth, England, and flew home to Maine. We booked flights back to the UK for May 2020, anticipating a summer of cruising the Atlantic coasts of France and Spain. Then Covid struck. Remember that first ...read more

To read part 1, click here. When I began repairs on my Santana 27, Shirley Rose, I focused on the major systems rather than cosmetics. My goal was to create a safe boat for the often rough conditions on San Francisco Bay, and I didn’t much care about winning any beauty contests. ...read more

I’ve always known the importance of having good sails. As a low-budget boat punk, I prioritize making sure I can get where I’m going with the help of the wind, as opposed to under power. It isn’t necessarily my goal to be engineless, or basically engineless. It just happens that ...read more

If you missed the first installment, click here. The hull and deck of Shirley Rose had been repaired, but what kind of sailboat would she be without a sturdy rig? I was told she was ready to sail, and that the owner replaced the standing rigging a few years before. Shirley Rose ...read more

Squalls are well known to sailors who cruise the middle Latitudes. Eventually, you become complacent to their bluster. But squalls vary in magnitude, and while crossing from Tahiti to Oahu, our 47ft Custom Stevens sloop paid the price for carrying too much canvass as we were ...read more

If you missed the first installment, click here. Thankfully, the deck and cockpit of my decades-old Santana 27, Shirley Rose, were in pretty good shape. The balsa core, in particular, was for the most part nice and solid. Nonetheless, there was still a fair bit of work to do. ...read more

Ever since the advent of GPS, I have not found much use for the chart table on my schooner Britannia. Most of our passagemaking navigation is done on a Raymarine multifunction display on the helm pod, which is then transferred to a paper chart on the saloon table roughly every ...read more

Pressurized water systems are brilliantly convenient, but they raise the question of how to get water out of the tanks in the event of a power failure or unexpected demise of the pump. For this reason, builders of expensive yachts intended for long-distance cruising often offer ...read more

Sailing is a remarkably safe activity, despite the potentially dangerous environment in which it takes place. This is undoubtedly due to the safety-conscious attitude of most skippers and their crews. Nonetheless, even the best sailors can still get in trouble when and where ...read more

Q: I’ve been watching the most recent America’s Cup down in Auckland, which has got me thinking about technology and sails. My question is, how much difference do square-top mains, like those used aboard the AC75 mononulls, really make? In the America’s Cup, obviously every ...read more

Shirley Rose, a well-worn Santana 27, sorely needed refurbishing. When I took ownership, she was on stands in a sorry state looking for someone to bring her back to life. Since then, I’ve replaced or repaired most of her major systems and also done a fair bit of cosmetic work. ...read more

Q: I recently removed my radar’s white radome, which covers the internal rotating antenna. I gave the radome a light sandblasting to clear it of years of grime and discoloring. Should I paint it, too? — B. Anderson, Aberdeen, MD GORDON WEST REPLIES Stop! First, make sure the ...read more

If I were to ask, “What are the top five parts of the engine you want to be able to easily access?” How would you respond? Would it be the dipstick? The overflow coolant? I’d wager the raw water pump and its impeller would also make the list. Am I right? The reason we want to be ...read more

Presented by VETUS MAXWELL Got a tip? Send it to sailmail@sailmagazine.com Freshwater Flush As warm-water sailors, we do not winterize our boat. However, we do store it out of the water for hurricane season, and as part of our decommissioning procedure, we run the engine on the ...read more

Sailors are notorious for being some of the best storytellers. Movies depict old salts at bars doling out wisdom learned through their many trials and tribulations. Books are written about the tales of mariners. It’s no wonder that when cruisers get together for sundowners, ...read more

Since the invention of rope, there has also been a need to belay or secure it. Every sailboat has rope on board so, unless you own a superyacht with captive reels or winches, you’re going to have to find a way to make it fast. (As a side note—and before you reach for your ...read more

It was blowing 25 knots when the inner forestay let go. Eclipse, my 1984 Tayana 42, was screaming along on a broad reach just south of Saint Thomas. I had gone to raise the staysail, and upon putting a slight strain on the hanks, the stainless wire separated from its swagged ...read more

UNDERPERFORMING SOLAR Q: I have a pair of solar panels on my aft arch feeding to a solar voltage regulator and then feeding my bank of three AGM house batteries. All was well for the last two winters, but now when the panels are putting out 15-plus volts the regulator begins to ...read more

The original saloon table in my Down East 45 schooner was a single heavy sheet of 3/4in laminated plywood, 27in wide by 57in long. It was supported on two substantial aluminum pedestals locking into a set of large round collars screwed to the sole. There were two annoying ...read more

You may be surprised to learn there’s nothing new about the half-doughnut-half-sheave-shaped bits of aluminum known as low-friction rings. In fact, low-friction rings, in one form or another, go back thousands of years in the form of the traditional lignum vitae wooden single ...read more

TO VANG OR NOT TO VANG Q: Last year, I bought a new, fully-battened Dacron main for my 36-footer. Unlike the old one, the new main is loose-footed. I have a mid-boom sheet arrangement and a traditional (non-rigid) vang. Is the vang really doing anything? It seems to me that ...read more

CETOL SKIN I used Sikkens Cetol on the bare wood on my Catalina 30, Morning Dew IV. The can was compromised over the spring, and I put the balance in a 16oz clean glass mayo jar. Last spring when I went to use it, a skin had formed over the top of the liquid, so I just cut the ...read more

Quiet. That’s what you hear as you back away from the mooring. No chug, chug, chug from the diesel as water cascades out of the exhaust. Just a slight whirring as the boat smoothly glides in reverse. A twist of the throttle and the boat moves forward with the most notable sound ...read more

So accustomed are today’s sailors to being able to furl their headsails that we often forget what it was like before this technology became so widespread—aboard cruising boats, in particular. A few years ago, though, the furler on my Tayana 42 bit the dust when a sealed bearing ...read more

Q: I have an early ‘70s Catalina 27. The keel bolts look pretty good. My question is, why not glass over the keel to bond to the hull rather than changing the bolts if, or when the bolts are too far gone? I haven’t seen anything on this, so could you discuss? Full-keels are ...read more

If you dread your boat’s antics as you try reversing into your slip or have become used to choking on black smoke, it could be time to start thinking about replacing your engine. Granted, doing so can be more than a little daunting, not to mention expensive. However, bear in mind ...read more

Does anyone else ever get the feeling they’re being followed by hurricanes? It may be a bit of hubris, but it honestly seemed that way recently. First, in 2018, Hurricane Michael raged a mere 100 miles east of where our 1985 Niagara 35, Plaintiff’s Rest, was up on jacks in ...read more

Boats made from fiberglass are resilient, but, “Their best is their worst property” says Wendy Mackie, CEO of the Rhode Island Marine Trades Association (RIMTA). The material’s durability makes it an ecological disaster. How do you safely dispose of a hull past its prime? Since ...read more

Q: When sailing dead downwind (assume 22 knots of wind), if the main is eased out to 90 degrees relative to the wind (perpendicular to the wind) are roughly the same forces applied to the sail as to the sail if it isn’t quite out all the way, say, 75 degrees to the wind? My ...read more

I was crewing aboard a boat named Breskell, a 51ft cutter-rigged, cold-molded, mahogany sloop. We were voyaging from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Port Townsend, Washington, via the Northwest Passage. A few days before setting sail, the captain, Olivier Huin, asked me to secure ...read more