TLDR: I replaced and subtly reconfigured the lines for my mainsheet and boom vang, as well as replacing almost all of the blocks on my deck. Doing so makes the boat more fun to sail. Total budget @$900, of which the majority was new Garhauer hardware.
Introduction
When I bought my boat, the...
There are many sailing skills I have yet to develop, and not the least of them is a portfolio of experience sailing overnight, as well as cooking while under way. Having a go at both seemed like a good idea in anticipation of more ambitious trips in the future. I invited a friend with similar...
When I bought my 1990 Ericson 32 the engine compartment was lined with reflective engine insulation, but many of the panels were disintegrating. The plastic mirrored surface was peeling back, and the foam underneath was flaking off. Once the foam bits landed on the sole (floorboards) of my...
TLDR: I took an overnight trip to Drake’s Bay, north of San Francisco with two friends. Anchoring out in high winds was a little scary, but we had a nice trip nonetheless.
The San Francisco Bay is one of the finest natural harbors in the world, but it took European seafaring explorers a...
I recently serviced all of my winches and found the process to be straightforward and satisfying in a clean-and-tidy improvement sort of way. Most of the work consisted of cleaning the old gunk off of the winch parts.
There is an abundance of videos on-line for how to service winches...
California offers coastal visitors only a few island-visiting opportunities. Los Angeles has the lovely Catalina group, Santa Barbara is near the Channel Islands, but from the San Francisco Bay, we have only the Farallon Island archipelago. Located 25 miles off the Golden Gate the Farallones...
A quick note on a task I recently puzzled out:
My boat’s galley offers two latching drawers intended to store small items, and not intended to accidentally fall out of the enclosing cabinet even when opened. I recently found myself with a task inside the galley cabinet that would be made much...
While I had my engine out of my sailboat this spring, I earnestly(!) thought of good proactive, preventative maintenance I could carry out while being able to walk around the engine and access the top and all four sides with ease.
I’d seen horror examples of clogged heat exchangers on the...
I’m writing this note in mid-July, 2021. The repair work described was completed in June of 2021.
I hit a rock fairly hard with the keel of my boat in February. The impact pulled the front of the keel away from the hull and shoved the back of the keel up into the keel stub. I’m calling the...
At long last I've managed to get my boat in the water after significant repairs that I will detail elsewhere. I wrestled with a number of continued fixes once I was floating, and decided finally yesterday, that I needed to go for a shake-down day sail to get everything limbered up and remind...
After removing my keel from my boat as part of my hull fiberglass repair, it was revealed that my fore and aft keel bolts had weathered excessively.
...
For a Yanmar 3GM30F diesel sailboat engine, a mounting bracket is necessary to provide a fixed point aft of the transmission to which the cable controlling forward and reverse can be mounted.
After about 30 years, mine had given up the ghost, with the lower cable clamp mounting hole corroding...
A beginner’s note for myself/for future reference: A quick overview of how a propeller shaft attaches to both the engine transmission and the propeller itself. Mine is currently out of the water and disassembled and so it is easy to view.
The coupling bolts to the transmission and within the...
After pulling out the engine of my boat, my friendly local boatyard has now made an incision in the hull grid (Ericson: Tri Axial Force Grid) and created an access point for fiberglass repair work made to the inside of the aft portion of the keel stub. Here’s what it looks like:
Despite...
For those just arriving at my storyline, I recently went for a solo cruise and crashed my boat on the way home. I hauled out my boat and debated whether or not I should walk away and take the insurance money to buy another boat. I decided to buy back my boat and while the boat has been out of...
Recent Timeline:
I crashed my boat into a rock on Tuesday February 9th.
I had the boat hauled out at KKMI Sausalito on February 15th.
Upon reviewing the damage to my boat I negotiated a settlement with my insurance company and decided to “buy back” my boat as of February 24th.
I...
Summary:
I changed the packing flax material on my propeller stuffing box. It seems that no one had done this job for several years, so the difficult part was getting the packing nuts loosened up to begin with, and then extracting what I believe was the wrong-sized packing material. I am...
Summary: I studied my rudder mechanism and made a section drawing for future reference, included below. It seems important to have an abundance of grease squirted into the post sleeve.
My rudder is currently out of my boat and I thought this would be an opportune time to make sure I...
Never waste a crisis, right?
While my boat is hauled out to have the hull repaired, it seemed like an opportune time to determine the condition of my steering mechanisms and my rudder.
The quadrant is the only thing that holds the rudder in the boat. The quadrant grips the rudder stock and...