48° North has an excellent article on DIYing a dodger using plexiglass that costs out somewhere short of $500. Considering that a Sailrite dodger kit and their dodger frame kit will cost you over $1600 or so, that amounts to a significant savings.
Of course, my go to method for dodgers is stitch and glue plywood construction which costs a whole lot less and is strong enough to stand on when the need arises.
Still, the plexi dodger sure looks sweet and 48° North is free as always so well worth checking out.
I've got a few crappy jobs to do on the boat this weekend. Nothing exciting but just the sort of stuff that needs doing and requires no thinking whatsoever.
Just the sort of work that you can put on a good podcast and have at it.
By the way do any of you have experience with a beetle infestation?
While you're at it you might also want to check out the website which is a cornucopia of great info on how to do a sensible bespoke refit and the blog which is excellent..
Small Boats Magazine has a great November issue with an article on Phil Thiel's Escargot minimum envelope canal cruiser that is well worth the cost of the subscription. Another story about a couple rowing from the Atlantic to the Med on the Canal des Deux Mers is just the sort of article that will fuel your dreams.
We've got a tropical wave blowing through and it's gray and rainy. I've got a bunch of projects on hold for a variety of reasons and can't seem to find a window for the ones I'd like to do.
Makes me kind of grumpy and not fit company for civilized folk.
So here's a video that you'll find entertaining as recompense.
The new issue of the Junk Rig Association Magazine is now out and it's a particularity good issue and a great example of why you should join the Junk Rig Association.
Be sure to check out the article on an out-of-the-box method for building masts.
Way back when I used to work in a boatyard for an hourly wage, I mainly did two jobs. Fixing leaky decks and sorting out mast step issues where deck stepped masts were concerned.
The leaking decks were hard on my knees and back, but fairly simple. Deck stepped mast problems were a whole other thing entirely.
The usual problem ran something like this: the compression post was not supporting the deck/mast. Compressive forces induced by the rigging would push the deck down at the mast step. Which would cause the rigging to go slack.
With me so far?
Then the owner or rigger would tighten the rig, which caused more damage to the deck, compression post and compression post step, which would then result in more rig tuning. This, of course, would induce more pressure on the mast, step, deck compression post and compression post step.
Which puts us pretty deep in FUBAR territory.
Now you have a deck reverse curvature, a compression post step failure, or a buckled compression post. In a worst-case scenario, the mast would simply pop a hole in the deck or hull. Other issues were various forces on interior structure that could cause many and varied construction failures as the mast/rigging matrix is now tearing your boat apart.
It’s actually pretty amazing just how much damage (spelled t-o-t-a-l — l-o-s-s) can occur by simply over-tightening the rig.
Actually, like most sailboat problems, the fix is fairly simple if caught early and addressed promptly. Of course, check all the parts of your rig regularly, including not just the rigging but the mast step, compression post, the compression post step and the deck in and around the mast.
Most classic plastics are old enough that parts of the compression post assembly are way past their sell-by date. For instance, on our CAL 34, the first repair/upgrade I made was to replace the compression post and the beam it stepped on. The downside was to remove the old I-beam and replace with a new one. I also had to drop the mast and remove and replace the adjacent bulkhead.
There is a pretty good video, on just such a problem that you might want to check out.
While I’m pretty sure I’d approach the repair somewhat differently than they do. I’ll just say they are on the right track, though they’d make their lives a lot simpler by dropping the mast to facilitate their fix.
The new issue of WoodenBoat is out and it's a better than most issues from where I happen to be sitting. It talks about a couple of dinghies I'd love to build, Tad opines on a mini-scow cruiser, and there is a solid article on wood species for free-standing masts that I may or may not agree with. Combined with a variety of other articles I have not yet read it looks like I'll be reading it cover to cover.
That said, I don't think I've ever had a copy of WoodenBoat that I haven't read cover to cover.
I used to subscribe to quite a few sailing magazines namely WoodenBoat, PBO, Yachting Monthly, Sail, and Cruising World.
These days, the only magazine I subscribe to is WoodenBoat which is a magazine that just keeps doing an exceptional job of providing great content on a regular basis. I've been reading them from the beginning and I've never yet seen a bad issue or article.
Cruising World was the first subscription I cancelled as it, in my opinion at least, had morphed into Cruising World light and catered to a readership I simply no longer recognized as cruisers. That said, from time to time there is excellent content but it's no longer something you can count on and more about the quality of a specific writer rather than the magazine's editorial work.
Sail came off the list when my subscription ended as it simply had become a shadow of itself with less of just about everything that made it a good read. These days I consider it to be a sort of diet version of a sailing magazine with little or no real content leaving me with an urge to go out and read a real magazine. Again there is some good writing but even then the editorial stance of the magazine gets in the way.
Then there's Practical Boat Owner, while still an excellent magazine the price has reached the point where it became both silly and insulting. At $7.99 an issue the yearly subscription is $103.87 which is nuts.
The last to get canceled is Yachting Monthly who is published by the same publisher as PBO. Still an excellent magazine but at $5.99 an issue is not what I consider a good value.
On the positive side. Latitude 38 is a great magazine that could teach Cruising World, Sail, PBO, and Yachting Monthly a whole lot about what makes an excellent periodical as well as how magazine publishing economics are supposed to work. Better yet, Latitude 38 has great content and it's FREE.
Voile Magazine has an excellent test of dinghies you might want to check out. It's the sort of review which I'd love to see in a USA publication and it got me thinking.
One of the things that gets up my nose where designers of dinghies are concerned is that if they have a photo of their design in use it shows just one person rowing on a dead flat and apparently windless body of water.
The picture I want to see is someone rowing to weather with at least another person aboard, a couple of five-gallon Jerry jugs of water, and a full load of groceries. You know, just a normal cruising dinghy situation.
Yesterday, while perusing a book for interior structure ideas, I realized that my copy of Fred Bingham's "Practical Yacht Joinery" is over forty-years old and still being used on a regular basis. It's somewhat tattered but talk about a good investment.
George Buehler's "Backyard Boatbuilding" and Reuel Parker's "The New Cold-Molded Boatbuilding" are almost as old and still get used all the time. In fact, I just realized that I actually used Buehler's book so much I wore out a copy and had to replace it so it's not quite as old but you get the idea.
Another two books that get heavy use aboard is Dan Spurr's "Upgrading the Cruising Sailboat" and Bruce Bingham's "The Sailor's Sketchbook" which have solved any number of problems as well as improved my life afloat in many and varied ways.
I've a lot of other books as well but all of these are the ones I reach for whenever I have a problem or just need of an idea or inspiration.
I mention this as folks keep writing me and telling me to watch this or that YouTube video of some tyro with nary a clue where boat work is concerned commit boat butchery and mayhem in a bid for a Patreon payout. While, I'll admit, it's often entertaining to watch folks go all FUBAR spending copious money on projects that will just need to be redone later it's a piss poor way to learn how to fix up a boat.
Considering how much pain and suffering could be avoided by reading a couple of books you'd think some folks might just do the book ting.
I'm never sure whether to describe myself as a film maker who sails or a sailor/boatbuilder who makes films...Either way I'm a pretty happy camper when all is said and done.
