You might want to check out. Sensible, simple, and cheap. Better yet, it should cost you less than $60 or so in materials and a couple of days of work. Considering that the cost of used vane gears (Aries, Navik, Windpilot, Atoms, Hasler, etc) are getting more expensive and hard to find, this gear makes …
Today the plan is to glue up the self-steering rudder, continue thinking about a hard top Bimini and dodger. The current Bimini is fugly and not strong enough to carry solar panels. I have a few ideas but it remains to be seen whether they are cunning or “cunning” if you know what I mean. …
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 …
Today, I’m mostly finishing the electrics aboard the Islander. Or, to be more truthful, I’ll have 12-volts but will be chasing circuits for the foreseeable future because I have a spaghetti factory of wires that I haven’t a clue where they go or what they do. Ah, the pleasures of a new old boat… Of …
I keep running into some people’s mindset that a VolksCruiser is some beat-to-shit derelict boat that requires a full rebuild and a shit-ton amount of money to get it to float with the mast pointing up. To tell you the truth, it’s really getting up my nose. The fact is most of the boats of …
Once I get finished with the electrics, a bit of engine messabout, and sorting out new navigation lights, then it’s on to making the Islander something more approaching home. First on the list is ripping out the old toilet and building in a “composting head” (and yes, I know that composting heads on boats don’t …
For starters here’s a must read article on marine fuel that both scares me shitless as well as pisses me off… I’m not a huge fan of internal combustion engines and, given a choice, I’d much rather be engine-less or use just a small outboard as we did with So It Goes. The fact that …
I’ll be honest and get out front and tell you that I really hate shopping. Which, according to the marine press, is something of a rarity as it appears in reading them that the main point of sailing or cruising is buying stuff and spending money. That said, having bought an elderly but new-to-me boat …
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 …
