Cruising Sailboat How To
Tillers break. Sausages outlast wine. Here’s what actually works aboard a cruising sailboat.
Small Craft Warning: How I Repaired the Tiller I Broke Sailing in 25 Knots
The morning my tiller broke, I woke to a small craft warning on board my Nimble 24 sailboat Grit and decided to go sailing anyway.
I hoisted her tanbark sails, tied in a double reef, poked her nose into the Pamlico Sound and the second I rounded… Continue reading
No Fridge, One Burner, Two Weeks: Cooking Aboard a Small Sailboat at Shackleford Banks
My wrist caught the bowl of oatmeal on Grit‘s galley table. It did a steamy Charlie Brown loop and landed next to the centerboard case with a plop, spraying oatmeal across the settee.
“Damn I miss the dogs,” I thought. “Lucky and Diggity would have licked this up in seconds.”
Instead I spooned the oatmeal back into my bowl and chewed carefully, avoiding the grittiest bits. Welcome to Oatmeal à la Grit.
Here’s how my wife Julia and… Continue reading
How to Provision a Sailboat for Two Weeks: Why the Sausages Worked but the Wine Didn’t
The homemade cured sausages that survived Lucky and Diggity were a hit. The bottle of red wine that had a cork instead of a cap was a bust. Here is a list of the provisions that Julia and I took on our 2-week long trip aboard our sailboat Grit to study the wild ponies of Shackleford Banks. Here’s what worked, what didn’t and why every sailboat should carry a corkscrew.
The Rock, the Vine, and a 40-Knot Gale: Anchoring at Shackleford Banks
“The single commandment of anchoring is, ‘Thou shall create scope.'” Reese Palley / flamboyant art dealer, author, sailor, environmentalist and businessman
The best time to write a post about anchoring is on an anchored boat during storm conditions. The second best time is after the winds start dropping but your body and mind are still buzzing from the pounding, lurching, jerking, and groans in the night. That’s where I am right now. Julia, our sailboat Grit, and I recently… Continue reading
The Grit List: Things to Do Before Setting Sail for Shackleford Banks
My wife Julia and I are sailing our yawl Grit to Shackleford Banks, North Carolina, to observe the wild horses that live there. We plan to head out March 15 and I’m writing a post about that trip which I’ll get up as soon as I can. Between now and then, I need to get a lot of stuff done on Grit to get her expedition-ready. Here’s the list of things that need to be checked, repaired, done and acquired.… Continue reading
Why I Prefer an Outboard Well Over Transom Mount on My Nimble 24
Vince recently wrote me the following:
Good morning. I was wondering how you feel about having the outboard in the cockpit well. It seems like it would be noisy and difficult to remove it for service and cleaning.
Thanks for your time.
Vince S.
Here is my reply.… Continue reading
Sky Water: Catching Rain on a Sailboat with No Water Tank
Last week I wrote about how my wife Julia and I lost water at our cabin and I needed to figure out what was wrong.
This week, I was going to write about how my nephew Alvin and brother Christian helped repair the cistern that gathers the spring water before sending it to the house. Then I got restless and decided to write about how I used to catch rainwater while I was at sea… Continue reading
How to Rebuild a Katadyn Survivor 35 Desalinator
The email came from the Falkland Islands. “Do you have advice and information about watermakers?” It was from my friends, sailors Thies Matzen and Kicki Ericson aboard Wanderer III. A new Katadyn Survivor 35, the one they were interested in, costs around $2,400. In this post, I show you how I rebuilt a surplus Katadyn Survivor 35 Desalinator I bought on eBay for $150. It worked fine.
How I Quit My Office Job to Sail Around the World
Until my late twenties, my life went like this.
Boats, horses, something else, boats, horses, something else, boats, horses…
There was the jockey phase, the Alfa Romeo mechanic phase, the running-out-of-money-in-Tuscany-and-spending-a-year-to-earn-a-plane-ticket-home phase, and then at age twenty-five I went to NC State University. I got a degree in Wood and Paper Science and a few years later started the phase most folks had a head start on. That was the Office Phase.
Control-Z
I went to work for a German… Continue reading
Boat Building for Jockeys
It was 1991 and I was riding as a steeplechase jockey but what I was really dreaming about was running away to sea on a sailboat. Unlike these days, when small old sailboats are so cheap and common that they’re often sawn up and sent the landfill, used, entry-level cruising sailboats were scarce and expensive.
The gap between me and my… Continue reading
