Now that we’ve finally sorted out the various Yanmar issues, pretty much got the boat livable, and no longer seem to be sitting around waiting for parts, it’s time to finally get around to the fun stuff. Which translates to tweaking the rig and installing some needful stuff. As far as the rig goes, the …
So, my two-month refit of our Islander 36 appears to be stretching to four months. Which, when you consider that most of the reasons is simply we’ve been sitting around doing nothing waiting for parts is not all that bad. I’d be surprised if I’ve actually done a month’s labor when all is said and …
I’ve taken a break from monitoring potential VolksCruisers for sale but from today’s cursory glance there is no shortage of boats for reasonable money available. As to the Islander: work continues but most of the tasks are fairly easy and the difficult parts is in resisting the urge to throw money at needless things. The …
Every day or so, West Marine sends me an email trying to sell me something and, while I seldom ever buy anything from them, it is a connection I keep an eye on in the hope that, one of these days, they’ll come up with something truly needful. I’m still waiting on that but my …
Every project in my experience has a “day from hell” or something like it and yesterday was the Islander’s day from hell. Funny though, it started as a day with high hopes with no problems foreseen. In fact, it was a day of high expectations with nary a sign of a problem at all. One …
I’m at the point with the Islander that I’m overly aware of the current outgoing expenses and, while they’re minor compared to most boat projects, I’m rather miffed that the numbers are what they are. For instance, my better half today is on an expedition to go and buy some 2AWG 3/8″ cable lugs which …
The nice thing about most classic plastic boats is the fact that they were mostly built like tanks. Fiberglass and polyester resin were cheap and did not require much in the way of expensive labor to slap together so, for the most part, a lot of very strong boats got made in the late 60s …
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 …
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’ …
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 …
