I’ve never been big on the whole birthday thing but, much to my surprise, hitting the seven decade mark was kind of nice. Sure, I’ll admit that it solidifies the fact that I’ve achieved permanent Old-Fart status but it carries with it the fact that I simply no longer have any fucks to give and …
Now that we’ve finally sorted out the various Yanmar issues, pretty much got the boat livable, and no longer seem to be sitting around waiting for parts, it’s time to finally get around to the fun stuff. Which translates to tweaking the rig and installing some needful stuff. As far as the rig goes, the …
A couple of days ago we jettisoned the hard dodger on the Islander and the boat now looks a lot better. Granted, I will have to do some sort of minimal dodger but that can wait til the Holidaze have passed. The downside of removing the dodger is that the coach roof really does need …
I’ve not forgotten the DIY self-steering post that sits unfinished on my desktop. Truth is, I’d much prefer finishing it rather than the internal combustion clusterfuck I’m sorta/kinda dealing with. The problem is mostly that I just don’t like working on engines for starters as engines are, more often than not, oily messy contraptions that …
Most everything, interior wise, in the Islander 36 is overbuilt. So, I’m going to really enjoy replacing a lot of heavy interior with lighter weight monocoque replacement units. Why anyone would use 3/4″ plywood when 1/4″ is available is a mystery to me? Meanwhile, this in the green-washing department makes me wonder how some folks …
I’ve taken a break from monitoring potential VolksCruisers for sale but from today’s cursory glance there is no shortage of boats for reasonable money available. As to the Islander: work continues but most of the tasks are fairly easy and the difficult parts is in resisting the urge to throw money at needless things. The …
One thing no one ever tells you is that all boat building and refit projects is mostly a lot of sitting around doing nothing while you try to figure stuff out. Which is not always a bad thing. So far this month, I’ve put in a couple of hours of actual work on the boat …
There are days when the insanity of boat gear makes me want to scream and shout. What’s even worse is how compliant we all seem to be with this kind of norm where boat stuff is concerned. Talk about marine quality… The last few days I’ve been trying to fix a traveler car which retails …
Every day or so, West Marine sends me an email trying to sell me something and, while I seldom ever buy anything from them, it is a connection I keep an eye on in the hope that, one of these days, they’ll come up with something truly needful. I’m still waiting on that but my …
Every project in my experience has a “day from hell” or something like it and yesterday was the Islander’s day from hell. Funny though, it started as a day with high hopes with no problems foreseen. In fact, it was a day of high expectations with nary a sign of a problem at all. One …
