A film I really want to see, orphaned oil wells, and in the “about those marmots” department… I need a new pair of oars. The reason being that I’m selling a couple of dinghies and they sell better with oars included. With me so far? Anyway, for a bit of amusement, I decided to check …
EBM with a $400 million dollar self deal, hurtling becomes a scary word, and in the “It’s not just eggs” department… So, as it happens, I need a bunch of stainless screws, bolts and nuts. Hey, I live on a boat and I always seem to need a bunch of stainless screws, bolts, and nuts …
My plan for today was to catch up on reading and then dismantle an outboard and make a gawd-awful mess in the cockpit in the process. Lucky me! We have what I’ll call a Seattle day in Paradise and it looks like gray skies and copious rain is what’s on the menu. So, next on …
Back during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria with nothing better to do, I painted “So It Goes” while at anchor in the mangroves. The paint I chose was Rust-Oleum aluminum paint. My thinking at the time was that it was something Phil Bolger mused would make a good boat paint, it was dirt cheap ($13 …
A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that the bilge pump was cycling more often than it should, so we looked in all of the usual places. Since we’ve had a lot of rain recently, we found several deck fittings that had been poorly bedded and that, combined with a few leaks we already knew …
“Dry rot is a wood disease, a kind of freshwater induced leprosy, that does not affect fiberglass. Fiberglass boats have their own problems” — Hal Painter Truth be told it’s a foregone conclusion that all boat building materials have inbuilt problematic issues. The trick is to gravitate to the one that best suits your disposition. …
Having experienced a dismasting due to a chainplate failure on “So It Goes”, and mixed with the fact that the Islander is fifty years old, chainplate replacement was high on the list of the needful things to do list. Of course, being that the Islander’s chainplate design is a bit different from what passes for …
I recently needed to get a VHF antenna for the Islander and, as I had to buy a VHF antenna a few years ago for So It Goes, I expected to find one for between $40 to $50 dollars. The fact that most of the antennas I considered this time around were more like $90 …
Most everything, interior wise, in the Islander 36 is overbuilt. So, I’m going to really enjoy replacing a lot of heavy interior with lighter weight monocoque replacement units. Why anyone would use 3/4″ plywood when 1/4″ is available is a mystery to me? Meanwhile, this in the green-washing department makes me wonder how some folks …
As I said before, there’s nothing wrong with the basic sloop rig on the CAL 34 and, if your rig is in good shape by all means go with it. The problem arises when you’re confronted with a rig that is well past its sell-by date. New chainplates, tangs, toggles, turnbuckles, pins, and wire quickly …
