Maintenance and DIY

SW WINDS 5 TO 10 KT. SEAS 1 TO 2 FT. A CHANCE OF T-STMS IN THE AFTERNOON. Also a chance that a product below will provide many many more details……and possibly allow you to enjoy a good day’s sailing in spite of an iffy forecast. With real-time weather-tracking capability you can see rain and thunderstorms moving through the area, allowing you to make smarter decisions about when to head

Wherever you sail, you know all too well how easy it is to get something tangled around some appendage of your boat. The Hooknife, from Sailor’s Solutions, has multiple effective cutting angles and makes it easy to free your keel, rudder, or prop from abandoned fishing tackle, plastic bags, discarded cordage, or (heaven forbid) your own sheet or guy, without having to go swimming. This tool will

When I raced Lasers as a kid, our team used to apply liquid dish detergent to our hulls to make them faster. This worked great for a little while before the soap washed off (usually measured in boatlengths from the dock). Team McLube’s Hullkote, a high-performance speed polish, takes this same concept many steps forward, delivering an ultra-smooth, bonded finish, when applied correctly. Hullkote

Autopilots. These days, more sailors swear by them than at them, as they used to do in the bad old days when the technology wasn’t anywhere near as solid as it is today. Autopilots for small craft arrived after World War II, when Simrad introduced its first models for use on commercial fishing boats. The technology gradually found its way onto recreational boats, and the major manufacturers have

LeveledAre you a racer looking for ways to hone your crew’s sail-handling skills, or are you a cruiser interested in creating a home video documenting of your latest adventure? Either way, Horizon True can get you sorted with one of their high-quality, self-leveling video camera mounts (they also accept still cameras). The mounts utilize either a pendulum or a counterweight to keep

Leashed. Spinlock has been stepping up their already-deep line of safety products, first with their award-winning Deckvest, and now with their ORC-legal Connect Range tethers. The two-clip tether that I tested relies on a girth hitch, rather than a metal clip, to affix it to a PFD’s hard point (Spinlock recommends also carrying a knife, should a user need to escape her tether).

Few things are finer than sitting in the cockpit on a starry night, nursing a glass of wine and sharing conversation. But sometimes it’s nice to see the other person (or the dishes that you’re serving and enjoying) as you soak up the ambiance. Black Diamond’s Apollo lamp features a 3-Watt LED lightsource that’s powered by either AAA batteries or a rechargeable battery that gives off a

Here’s a stocking stuffer that packs a LOT of remembrance, in the form of an omni-directional 360-degree high-intensity strobe light. While nobody likes to think about MOB situations, ACR Electronics’s manually activated Waterbug SOLAS Firefly 3 strobe ranks as some of the best visual MOB protection one can have, aiding both the MOB and those back aboard. The unit features an easy-to-use sliding

According to manufacturer Weems and Plath, there’s a certain amount of mystery surrounding the “how-it-works” question when considering their Storm Glass. This unique, handsome bronze instrument comes filled with a proprietary solution and crystals, which rise up in the glass tube during certain weather events and settle back down during other conditions. While Weems and Plath mention that the

There are water-resistant bags, and then there are dry bags. Watershed’s Yukon is a dry bag, meaning that provided you close the bag properly, water simply isn’t going to enter. The bag, which is built out of chemically stable polyurethane-coated fabrics, features a zip-lock-like closer system (called a Zip-Dry seal); once closed, a user simply rolls the top of the bag down and affixes the clips,