Low-Profile Snubber Winch New boats often engender new types of hardware. Case in point, the new low-profile SnubbAir combination snubbing winch and ratcheting foot, or cheek, block from Harken, originally created for the J/70 class. “The classic Harken plain-top B8A winch has ...read more
Low-Profile Padeye Developed in conjunction with Switzerland’s VMG Yacht Design, the Ino-Padeye from France’s Ino-Rope offers an award-winning combination of aesthetics and functionality. Machined in high-strength anodized aluminum, the padeyes are specifically configured to ...read more
Super-light Snatch Block Never mind the novel way in which this bit of gear is manufactured: from a purely functional standpoint Born To Rock’s 3D printed snatch block is also nicely configured so that it fits easily in your hand when clipping it on to, say, a genoa sheet while ...read more
Furl Power Seldén’s Furlex Electric offers an easy path into the world of sweat-free headsail furling. The compact unit can be retrofitted to an existing manual Furlex unit or installed as a replacement for whatever you’ve got now. Its DC-DC converter accepts your boat’s 12V or ...read more
Get a Grip Italian deck gear maker Antal’s two new QR clutches not only have high holding power—up to 3,500lb for the QR10 and 4,800lb for the QR12—they can be opened and released under maximum load, so there’s no longer any need to take up the strain on a winch before freeing a ...read more
Block Party The elegance of these new X3M Flight blocks from Ubi Maior conceals the fact that they can handle loads of up to 15 tons. Designed to be used with a variety of textile loops, as fixed or snatch blocks, the X3M blocks have resin frames to carry the loops and anodized ...read more
Furl Power Are you afraid of flying—spinnakers, that is? Harken’s new Reflex 3 top-down furler will tame A-sails on monohulls from 44-58ft and multis from 39-55ft, and Code 0’s on 39-54ft monos and 36-50ft multis. All you do is heave on the furling line and the sail will roll up ...read more
Block Party The elegance of these new X3M Flight blocks from Ubi Maior conceals the fact that they can handle loads of up to 15 tons. Designed to be used with a variety of textile loops, as fixed or snatch blocks, the X3M blocks have resin frames to carry the loops and anodized ...read more
Doctor Your Sails If one of your sails gets a rip or the stitches start coming out, you want to repair it right away–especially if you’re just embarking on a cruise or are about to start a race. These nifty Sailkits from Dr. Sails contain enough sailcloth for a repair, along ...read more
STACK ‘EM Here’s a nice idea from fiber rigging specialists Colligo Marine. Stackers are lightweight but strong static blocks—no moving parts—with integrated becket, that can be “stacked” together to form purchases of up to 5:1. They’re designed for slippery Dyneema-type lines ...read more
Springtime for Cleats It’s not every day you see a new take on the humble cleat. There are two problems with these essential items: lines tend to get snagged in them when you least want them to and they attract bare toes with painful accuracy. German company Nomen, maker of the ...read more
Gravity is an important force at work on a sailboat. It keeps the boat upright, it makes the anchor drop to the bottom, and it makes the mainsail slide neatly down the mast to be flaked and put away at the end of the day… until it doesn’t. In the case of dropping the mainsail, ...read more
Aye for an Eye If you want to bring some carbon fiber bling to your dinghy, raceboat, sport cruiser or maxi-yacht, look no further than the U-block line from Ropeye. Not only do they look dead sexy, they’re super-strong, nearly weightless and useful for all sorts of applications ...read more
It’s Elementary Harken says its new line of element blocks are just the thing for “wallet-conscious” cruising sailors—indeed, is there any other kind of cruising sailor? Aimed squarely at the cruising market, the Element line comprises single, double, triple and footblocks, ...read more
PUMP IT If you’re a racer or performance-minded cruiser you’ll want to get the best out of your boat and its sails, which means you’ll need some way of adjusting backstay tension to get the sag out of the forestay and flatten the mainsail for better pointing. Selden’s new HTI ...read more
GET HOOKED Fortress’s aluminum anchors are renowned for their unrelenting grip on the bottom, which has earned them a great reputation as storm anchors. With an eye on the small-boat market, Fortress has packaged two of its anchors together with chain and nylon rode in what it ...read more
Three Speeds From Antal Italian winchmaker Antal has introduced a pair of three-speed winches designed to make a racing grinder’s life easier. The XT52.3RD and XT62.3RD each have one direct speed to let you get the bulk of the line in quickly, and two reduced gears for medium ...read more
Block Party Ratchet blocks are common on raceboats, but their benefits extend to cruising boats too. They have a ratchet that prevents the sheave from turning in one direction when it is loaded, but lets it spin when you ease the line. Ratchet blocks are especially useful for ...read more
If a kind of elegant simplicity is an integral part of good design, then it would be hard to find a better example of excellence than Ino-Rope’s Ino Ending 3.6. An evolution of the Ino-Block, in which a short loop of HMPE line takes the place of a conventional axle, or pin, the ...read more
Strops, grommets and shackles made from rope were found on every sailing ship for hundreds of years. The making of them was part of the sailor’s craft and their uses were legion. By the time commercial sailing went the way of the dodo, though, much of the ropecraft that held ...read more
Like thousands of other sailors, I scoffed at powered winches until a rock-climbing injury reduced my right shoulder to an arthritic mess. So, while I love to spin handles, I’ve realized that powered winches are my friends. And I’m not alone. Most medium-to-large cruising boats ...read more
As with many things, change comes slowly in the marine world, sometimes imperceptibly slowly, and we only notice how much things have changed when we look at an old photograph. That’s what happened to me. I was trolling through my photo archives when I noticed a photo of a ...read more
Alain Janet is pretty talkative these days, and with good reason. The head of the UK Sailmakers loft in southern France, Janet has spent most of his adult life making sails and working on how to make them better—not just for sailors, but also for the environment. Three years ...read more
Anchor snubbers are critical when anchoring with an all-chain rode, but it can be tricky getting a snubber’s chain hook to stay on when you’re first rigging it, and there’s always the danger of it coming off—especially if conditions get choppy. To solve these kinds of problems, ...read more
