The title really does make for an apt VolksCruiser mantra… I spent a couple of hours today working on the thirty or so year old Vetus manual windlass that came on the Islander despite the fact that it’s not really something I want on the boat. I’ll put it up for sale but I could …
As they’re already forecasting a nasty “H” season, it’s way past time for me to be considering the various options that make sense. Trust me, it’s a whole lot better sitting in a French sidewalk cafe than it is being in the mangroves waiting for all hell to break loose. Since we’re speaking of hurricanes, …
Today’s mailbag included this , shall we say, rant on the subject of senseless horsepower on boats. It’s well worth the read. For me, the whole idea of a 500-horsepower outboard engine on a boat (much less four or five of them is simply insane. Then again, the largest boat engine I’ve owned was a …
A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that the bilge pump was cycling more often than it should, so we looked in all of the usual places. Since we’ve had a lot of rain recently, we found several deck fittings that had been poorly bedded and that, combined with a few leaks we already knew …
One of the reasons we bought our Islander 36 was because it ticked the same needs as the Dufour 35. For comparison here’s the islander 36… As far as the numbers go they’re very similar and if you want to check them out you can find them here for the Dufour and Islander at Sailboat …
“Dry rot is a wood disease, a kind of freshwater induced leprosy, that does not affect fiberglass. Fiberglass boats have their own problems” — Hal Painter Truth be told it’s a foregone conclusion that all boat building materials have inbuilt problematic issues. The trick is to gravitate to the one that best suits your disposition. …
When I was a kid the very best thing I could do was to go camping. The whole sleeping on hard ground, campfire stories, and the chance of catching a trout for breakfast was some kind of wonderful. These days, all too often I hear the word camping as a negative when used in yacht …
Lots of rain the last couple of days which has stalled my rigging jobs on the Islander but has added to the job list as I need to rebed some leaky deck hardware and sort out a couple of mystery sources of water ingress. Apparently water is a lot smarter than I am. Since I’m …
A common issue when doing rigging work on older boats is that, more often than not, previous owners and various marine tradesmen have made questionable tool decisions. A quick example is dealing with a Sta-Lok fitting that has been mangled because someone used the worst tool known to man to tighten or loosen it. Yeah, …
