The important/funny thing about windvane self-steering gears is folks either get it or they don’t… Sort of a love/hate thing. Which, as things go, happens to be a good thing where outfitting a cruising boat on a frugal budget is concerned. First off, the cost of most manufactured self-steering gears are silly expensive with a …
about self-steering and how to save $4000 or more in one fell swoop… Read More »
Maybe we’re talking about stuff all wrong… Forget the money. Seriously, as anyone who has taken a couple of college level economics classes knows, money is really just an artificial construct and, at best, is simply a means of counting virtual beans. Now if you stop to think about it, what exactly does a pile …
maybe we should actually be talking about value… Read More »
While all boats need a good selection of tools, it’s a given that folks of the VolksCruiserish persuasion tend to be a bit more serious about their tools because they’ll be using them on a regular basis. You might say a good set of tools and half a clue about how to use them is …
OK, I’ll admit stuff costs too much… Just the other day someone mentioned to me he was going to forego a self-steering gear because he’d have to pay in excess of $5000 to get a good one and if he could not have “the best” he’d simply make do with a used underpowered, prone to …
Have you noticed that Sail Magazine is now doing a rally so folks coming down the ICW won’t be so lonely? I suspect, that most folks of a VolksCruising bent, are not the sort who sign up and pay big bucks to do rallies. Well… Maybe if we had a stealth/flash-mob rally? Nah, there’s no …
Over at Simply Sailing Online there’s a post that makes a lot of sense… You really should read it if you have not already. I mention it because there are a lot of people who think that having stuff is what makes them safe. As opposed to something, shall we say, as mundane of being …
I take stuff for granted and, I suspect, so do you. Which can be problematic if you happen to live in interesting times… For instance, just a few years back the simple act of hauling your boat for a week or so to do some work and bottom paint was simple. All you had to …
The other day while I was shopping for groceries, a much talked about and often recommended book came to mind… The reason for such an event was my standing in front of the cabbages looking at the $1.19 a pound price. Seriously, $1.19 a pound for cabbage is frelling nuts! Hence my thoughts of “Sailing …
I’ve always considered one of the most important factors in being a happy camper on a boat is simply knowing where you are… Being lost on the other hand is seriously unhappy-making! So, having charts is a pretty needful thing on the list. As it happens, I need to get some charts and boy howdy …
What a lot of folks forget when discussing cruising budgets is that the more self-sufficient you are the lower the cruising budget is going to be. As much as I try to keep our food budget frugal and while saving ten cents a pound on carrots or eating cheaper cuts of meat does add up …
