The FCC registration site is quite confusing and there doesn’t seem to be an overview of what is required, so I will attempt to clarify what is required for the most common cruiser scenarios. You may not need everything here, or you may need more, but I will cover what is required for the normal […]
Boats & Boatwork
First we choose a boat, then we spend the rest of our lives working on it.
This is the section of the site for these topics. Read about Choosing Boats or you can look up Performance Parameters for various boats and compare them.
Upgrade your Interior with LED Lights
Eurybia’s incandescent and fluorescent lights are showing their age. And several were not working – for instance the galley lights had suffered some water damage from some years back and no longer turned on. So I have been cooking before it gets dark and doing most of my cleanup in the morning. It’s just depressing […]
A day in the life: Installing Deck Hardware
Installing deck hardware is a great couples job for a Friday after work. Jon had already made the UHMW polyethylene* plates for each piece, over drilled the bolt holes through deck and plates, filled them with epoxy, let them dry, then re-drilled to the right size. I arrived after work and we bedded each piece […]
The Elusive Perfect Dinghy
The imaginary perfect dinghy is beautiful, strong, light, able to carry large payloads yet easily driven and maneuverable, small and stowable, affordable – this list of seemingly opposing requirements makes choosing a dinghy is as complex as choosing a mate! But, like choosing a mate, we are happy when we find what is “perfect for us”, or […]
Straw, Sticks or Bricks? Best Boat Materials
Steel boats are great. Until they’re not. Seeing rusty drips down the side of a boat? Might make you wonder if steel is a good material for a sailboat. Read about Renovating a Rusting Steel Boat to find out what we did when our 50 year old boat got a bad case of the rusts. Or read […]
Renovating a Rusting Steel Boat: a Cautionary Tale
Steel boats with wood decks will rust. Eventually. And if your steel boat is 49 years old, as our Phoenix is, that “eventually” has come. But if there is enough good about the boat to be worth the work, even a rusting boat is recoverable, if you have the skills and the time. Interested in […]
