Our 1987 Pearson project boat came with an elderly but functioning Raymarine chartplotter, located belowdecks at the nav station. Since I usually sail solo or doublehanded, it was of little use down there—it needed to be near the helm. When I decided to update the plotter along ...read more
Both of the heads on Britannia, my Downeast 45 schooner, are Raritan Elegance electric models that I installed nearly four years ago. They have performed flawlessly, and one of the reasons for that is that for about 90 percent of the time, they are flushed with clean freshwater. ...read more
No sensible bluewater sailor would consider setting off on a long cruise these days without some means of generating power other than by burning fossil fuels. The good news is that solar energy is becoming less expensive by the day, making it an obvious answer for providing the ...read more
Dock water hoses can be seen connected to lots of boats in marinas, and my 45ft schooner, Britannia, had the system built-in from the original. A water hose connects to a dock faucet and a pressure-reducing inlet on the boat. This reduces municipal water pressure, usually around ...read more
Without much reflection, I recently replaced my broken bilge pump with a slightly larger model. After all, I thought, surely an 800 gallon-per-hour (gph) pump will outperform the previous 500gph unit? Well, yes, but that’s no reason to feel much safer, as I soon discovered. The ...read more
The time has come when the prospect of cold drinks and long-term food storage has you thinking about upgrading your icebox to DC-powered refrigeration. Duncan Kent has been there and done that, and has some advice Fresh food must be kept at a refrigerated temperature of 40 ...read more
Solar panels or wind generator? There’s little doubt that for Stateside cruising, especially down South where the amount of sunshine outstrips the strength of the wind for much of the year, solar is top of the list for liveaboard and long-term cruisers. Having seen what even a ...read more
It’s easy to spend a lot of time and money on sails, engines, generators and electronics when gearing up for a long-term cruise. However, one vital element (literally) that is often overlooked or left until the last minute is freshwater. Granted, you may be planning to cruise in ...read more
Modern satcom devices and network airtime costs have dropped in price recently as more “birds” are launched and more constellations are created. This has resulted in several low-cost voice and data, or data-only, communicators being made available to the budget-conscious sailor. ...read more
The challenge of establishing healthy performance under power without compromising a boat’s sailing ability seemed unsolvable until the first folding and feathering propellers for leisure sailors appeared on the market. Now, the quest for the ideal low-drag propeller constitutes ...read more
The 30-year-old Raritan PH II head on our Pearson 39-2 project boat still worked, but reluctantly. The boat had sat on the hard for two years and if there’s anything marine toilets need, it’s regular exercise to stop rubber or leather parts from hardening and cracking. I could ...read more
Wind generators have a natural appeal to sailors in need of extra power. They harness the same element that we rely on to get from A to B, and the technology behind them is well proven and reliable. Despite the growing popularity of hydrogenerators and ever more efficient solar ...read more
One of the most vexed questions for long-distance sailors is how to keep the batteries topped up without resorting to running the engine. In the past, that might have meant a few amps for navigation lights, GPS and a radio. But these days, yachts are much more energy intensive, ...read more
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is the cooking fuel of choice for most cruisers, but it can kill you if you don’t respect it. Here’s how to keep your propane system healthy and your boat safe It’s often the things we cannot see that pose the greatest danger on our boats. A recent ...read more
Over the last 25 years, there has been a dramatic shift in the types of refrigeration systems carried aboard cruising boats. Today, 12-volt systems prevail, but the systems most often installed up to the late ‘90s were driven by the main engine. Engine-driven refrigerators ...read more
From the first time I switched on the lights on board our new project boat, one thing was certain: they would have to go. The 1987 Pearson 39-2 had been updated in some ways, but not in others—and it was obvious that interior lighting had been way down the previous owner’s ...read more
Keeping your diesel fuel clean should be one of your highest priorities, and you can avoid a lot of trouble by adding extra filtration. During the 2015-16 winter aboard Eclipse, our Tayana Vancouver 42, we pulled out our old Perkins 4-108 for a rebuild. With the engine out of ...read more
Parts List: Click to print a PDF McMaster Carr Stainless Steel 3/8" MNPT Nipple Quantity: 22 $1.79/each Brass 3/8" FNPT to 3/8" hose barb Quantity: 22 $11.12/packs of 5 Brass 1/2" MNPT to 3/8" hose barb Quantity: 4 $3.29/packs of 2 Brass 3/8" MNPT to 3/8" hose barb ...read more
I was in the café at West Bay Marina in Olympia, Washington, on a damp, chilly fall morning, and my buddies and I were assembled for our morning briefing on what’s going on and what’s not going on. After a few jokes that were funny only to old men, we narrowed the focus to what ...read more
When I moved my new Nicholson 32 sloop, Alibi of Bridham, from a marina to a mooring this summer I also had to rethink my power requirements, since the change meant severing my umbilical to the grid. Although I had a powerful (read: noisy) wind generator as an alternative power ...read more
When we bought our Allied Seabreeze sloop several years ago, the head and attendant systems were, at best, adequate. Nothing smelled, everything worked, but clearly we would have to upgrade at some point. Over the years, we replaced the sea toilet, went through several repair ...read more
A desire for cold beer has unforeseen consequences It all started with the icebox, or rather the not-quite-ice box, on our classic Swedish sloop. It wouldn’t keep ice for more than a few hours, which meant we were forever lugging ice-filled coolers on and off the boat. After a ...read more
Would you buy an automobile whose rear brakes locked up and dragged along the road when going downhill? Not likely. So why do so many sailboat owners do much the same thing by dragging the blades of a propeller through the water behind them when the engine’s off? A fixed ...read more
“I will not sleep on this boat. I’m going home–NOW!” said my overheated sailing mate and spouse, Monica. For years, our 1986 Hunter 40, Gratitude, had been an ideal weekend and summer vacation cruising platform for exploring New England. We’d enjoyed beautiful summer nights on ...read more
