I’ve been working on a better mast raising/lowering system for “So It Goes” and rereading all my various go to boatish books for whisps of cunning plans for ideas. Have I mentioned of late what a great book Bruce Bingham’s “The Sailors Sketchbook” is? One thing I like about it is there are no “Buy …
A book that should be part of every VolksCruisers library… Read More »
The new issue of Practical Boat Owner has a review /article about he Etap 24i that caught my attention. First off, it is a good review and not the usual regurgitated advertising copy we take for granted in American sailing rags. Secondly, I’ve always really liked what Etap is doing with their boats and it’s …
Being an old fart does have a few advantages… The other day I was reading an interchange between folks who simply did not understand the reasons behind the thought process in terms of boat, gear, and cruising choices of Lin & Larry Pardey. The logic (or lack of) seemed to be that no one should …
Sometimes a little historical perspective is a needful thing… Read More »
OK, I’ll admit stuff costs too much… Just the other day someone mentioned to me he was going to forego a self-steering gear because he’d have to pay in excess of $5000 to get a good one and if he could not have “the best” he’d simply make do with a used underpowered, prone to …
Lin Pardey recently took to a cruising forum to counter some of the misunderstanding going on regarding the whole engineless thing… The thread is actually worth reading as Ms Pardey makes sense and reading a lot of the posts will give you some understanding about how elusive common sense is when discussion of engines, basic …
a couple of notes regarding engines and suchlike… Read More »
Jay Fitzgerald (whose book should be on every VolksCruisers bookshelf) has mentioned that boat size should reflect muscle power and as far he could figure that 1 to 50 was the ratio that made sense. Offhand, I expect he’s pretty close to being right on the money… So, what does that work out to in …
Just about everything we do on boats is pretty simple so, every once in awhile, I find myself marveling at how difficult people make it or think it all is. It truly does boggle the mind… It’s not like the information is not readily available either. Most everything you need is either on the web …
Logic is a funny thing… Especially when it’s connected with boats. For instance, a friend recently wrote about changing a gaff cat rigged boat into a junk schooner. His reasons for such a conversion were listed as the single sail was too big to be easily handled, possibly better balance of the schooner rig, and …
Back when we were cruising the Med and West Africa in the early 90’s, you hardly ever came across anyone with dinghies bigger than eight feet. As far as outboards went, 5HP or smaller was the fashion unless you had a sailboat larger than 60 feet… At the time, we had a Bolger Tortoise which, …
The carnage of the current Salty Dawg rally has given me a lot to think about the last couple of days… For instance, the various boating media coverage seems to think it is sorta/kinda normal for masts to fall down, rudders to fall off or break, and the fact that there are heroic Coast Guard …
