Apparent wind is not what you may suffer after too many apparent sprouts with your Christmas dinner this week. The apparent wind of which I speak and have spoken of in the past is an important aspect of sailing that needs to be fully grasped. The concept of apparent wind is largely unknown to non-sailors …
Ships have derricks to hoist cargo aboard and our cruising boats can certainly benefit from a similar convenience. We need to hoist provisions aboard, the outboard motor, bulky sail bags and countless other heavy and awkward loads. On sailing boats you have a ready made derrick in the form of your boom. It’s a good …
No, I don’t mean the destruction of the economy by irresponsible banking behaviour; I mean the interaction between the banks of a waterway and a vessel travelling through it A vessel moving close to the bank of a river or a canal will find the stern tends to move towards the bank. This effect is …
On my cruising boats I’ve always opted for conventional flushing marine toilets in conjunction with a holding tank. On my earlier cruising boat there was a Y-valve to allow waste to be directed to the holding tank or discharged directly overboard, on my later boat all waste went via the holding tank to a dockside …
Salty John, our retail store, accumulates shelf-fulls of discontinued, redundant and surplus boating products. We usually dispose of this stuff on eBay or flog it in case lots to other chandlers. Now we’ve decided to offer it first to our customers and blog readers – that’s you. It’s all good, unused equipment at very, very …
Sailors must be perceived as targets for gadgets because over the years there have been some weird and wonderful gimmickry placed before them. Docking aids spring immediately to mind. These are devices to thread a line through a ring or just get a line onto a buoy or cleat – The Happy Hooker, the Grab-N-go, …
I took a stroll along the towpath of one of the prettiest sections of the Lancaster Canal yesterday, here are a few photos of the cut in its winter mood.
Having the correct tension in stays and shrouds is important because a slack rig can impart shock loads to shrouds and chain plates as the mast flops from side to side; a too tight rig can cause structural damage. A well tuned rig will have equally tensioned shrouds so that the boat will perform well …
Here’s a link to an informative article on choosing a VHF radio. It’s by my favourite radio company, Icom, but is by no means Icom oriented, the advice applies to selecting any VHF radio. http://www.icomuk.co.uk/Choosing-a-VHF-Marine-radio Once you’ve selected your radio you’ll need a top quality antenna and cable to extract its full potential. A Metz …
When there’s foredeck work to be done, such as when anchoring or picking up a mooring, reliable intra-boat communication is vital. But with skipper and crew operating at opposite ends of the boat it can be quite difficult and, particularly with husband and wife teams, fraught with consequential damages. (Yes, this post is about intra-boat …