One of my least favorite parts of a new boat is dealing with the sail end of the task list. Whether fixing old sails, buying new ones, or searching out good used ones it’s just a big pain in the ass from where I’m sitting. Of course, dealing with what passes for competence in the …
OK, I’ll start with a phrase I really hate… “It costs what it costs” Sure, this inane assembly of words is correct but it implies that you have near zero control of what you have to shell out money for and that really pisses me off. The reality is that we all have a great …
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’m sitting here looking at a couple of hundred feet or so of Dyneema that should/could be the new rig for the Islander and it’s just a little frustrating as I’m not going to use it and will consign it to the “when the rig needs replacing” locker. Now, as someone who is well aware …
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 …
Just after I got up this morning and cleaned off the reindeer turds from the coach-roof, I saw that Voile & Moteur had a write up for a design that resonated with me big time. Since buying a fixer-upper Islander 36, I’ve had this somewhat hazy idea of how I wanted to adapt the design …
I’ve not forgotten the DIY self-steering post that sits unfinished on my desktop. Truth is, I’d much prefer finishing it rather than the internal combustion clusterfuck I’m sorta/kinda dealing with. The problem is mostly that I just don’t like working on engines for starters as engines are, more often than not, oily messy contraptions that …
One thing no one ever tells you is that all boat building and refit projects is mostly a lot of sitting around doing nothing while you try to figure stuff out. Which is not always a bad thing. So far this month, I’ve put in a couple of hours of actual work on the boat …
In one of Lin and Larry’s books they talk about their yearly purge of getting stuff off the boat that is not needed or not earning its keep. One of the best bits of advice I’ve encountered where boats are concerned. Just this morning I spent several hours going through boxes of the previous owners’ …
A good portion of yesterday’s toil aboard the Islander had to do with the AC electric side of things which left me hot, sweaty, tired and perplexed. Perplexed because I’ve always been a minimalist where AC on boats is concerned so making sense of a non-traditional AC system of the previous owner’s design left me …
