The situation so far, a needful discussion, and important stuff on NOAA here and here… Some might say I’m simple minded and that might account for what I look for in blocks… simplicity. Hard to get any simpler. right? Well, actually… Low friction rings are the ultimate in simplicity and can often replace some of …
Some Tesla news, about that anticipatory obedience, and a welcome alternative to Amazon… I used to work in a boat gear consignment shop and it taught me about what works, what doesn’t, and how gear fails. It also confirmed my suspicion that 90% of sailing folks are idiots who love being treated like an ATM. …
An intelligent cat, a game plan of sorts, and in the “no conflict of interest at all” department… The other day, while trying to organize all my sailboat design links, I came across this bit of Gary Hoyt wonderfulness and found myself being somewhat depressed. I mean, why on earth did this rig not catch …
EBM making sense, a very interesting read, and the word for today is “baggywrinkle”… So, yeah, it’s Holidaze season and time to be thinking about stocking stuffers. Books are mostly what I lean towards and Dave Z and Anke’s “Sailing in Place: Our Life Afloat in Southeast Alaska’s Archipelago (Sailing Simple: Means and Mindset)” is …
I’ve always been of the “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” kinda guy and, as a result, also big on backup plans. For instance, at 2AM last night I was thinking about… What would I do if I lost the rig on the Islander? And so, my “A” plan for a rig replacement …
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 …
This is nowhere. Face it, we all have our passions and some lucky people (or so I’ve been told) get to share their passions with with a large group of like-minded folks. Then again, some of have passions that are, due to a general lack of interest, more along the lines of a private passion. …
A common issue when doing rigging work on older boats is that, more often than not, previous owners and various marine tradesmen have made questionable tool decisions. A quick example is dealing with a Sta-Lok fitting that has been mangled because someone used the worst tool known to man to tighten or loosen it. Yeah, …
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 …
