Easy upgrades
Ten simple things you can do to make life easier, safer and more comfortable aboard your small boat
Sailing is a passion, if not a lifestyle, for quite a few of us, but I think we can all admit that it is a lot of work and is quite often not that comfortable. Before you run off and take up golf, there a few simple things that can make life on a small boat a little easier, safer and more enjoyable.
Let’s start by making your boat sail faster and heel less. Most cruising boats have Dacron double-braid halyards. While this type of cordage gets better every year as manufacturers develop new techniques, and is a world away from the three-strand rope we used to use, it is still fairly elastic. A typical Dacron double-braid halyard can stretch up to 2 percent under everyday loads. This may not sound like a lot, but on average 25-footer you will have about 30 feet of halyard under load, 2 percent of this length is 7 inches. You’d never allow your halyard to droop even an inch or two, why would you want it to happen automatically? Worse yet, this stretch occurs in the puffs, precisely when you don’t want it to happen—the puff hits, your halyard stretches, the sail shape becomes fuller, the boat loses speed and heels more.
This problem is easy to fix, it just takes new halyards. On a typical 25-footer, I’d use 5/16-inch New England Ropes T900
(www.newenglandropes.com). This line has a Technora/Spectra core and a tough Dacron cover. You can likely use your snap shackles over again, so you are looking at roughly $125 per halyard, plus splicing. You definitely need to splice this or any high-tech cordage, as high-tech material does not hold knots well and a knot will degrade the strength of the rope dramatically.
A good mainsail halyard will allow us to set the rough luff tension, but for fine tuning we need a cunningham. This sail control is simply a tackle system rigged from the first reef tack point to a padeye on the mast, which will allow us to control the mainsail luff tension. Adjusting it does essentially the same thing as varying halyard tension, but it is more efficient and gives much better control. A small 3:1 tackle with a shackle on the lower end and tack hook on the upper end should do the job.
A rigid boom vang will make life a little easier for us, too. The vang will support the boom in light air, allowing good leach shape, and will hold up the boom anytime we don’t have the main hoisted. You can remove the topping lift altogether—one less string to mess with and you’ll see a lot less chafing on the mainsail. A small rigid vang can be damaged if someone leans hard on the boom, so it is a good idea to rig the main halyard as a dockside topping lift.
Now that we have good control over luff tension and shape, let’s make the sails easier to trim. Friction is the enemy here, and good maintenance can mitigate it. If you have winches, it is important to service your winches every season. The actual servicing technique is beyond the scope of this article, but the process is well documented. Be sure to use winch-specific grease and pay attention to where it goes, nothing can mess up a winch faster than the incorrect application of grease. If you have self-tailing winches pay attention to where you place the line stripper arms. Properly placed, they will spill the line out into the cockpit. However, they can be placed in any orientation around the winch, and I have seen them setup in random positions, even as bad as dumping the tailed line over the rail.
To fully combat friction you’ll need to give your blocks some attention too. A good washing with sudsy water and an application of McLube Sailkote (www.mclube.com) will make a big difference. You should be able to get a lot of friction out of your world for less than $30 and just an afternoon of your life.
Safety is number one, and one of the best tools to ensure your safety is a PFD. Unfortunately, even the best PFD only works when it is worn. The best answer to this problem is an inflatable PFD. These vests are so small, light and comfortable you don’t even know you are wearing them. In the past, you needed to choose between the ease of an automatic inflator or a manual model that you could be sure would not go off when you were doing a wet headsail change, but some new technology is delivering the best of both worlds. The new hydrostatically controlled inflators are designed to only trigger when actually submerged, a good dousing will not trigger them. The vests with the new inflators are more expensive, but your life is worth a $250 investment.
On the topic of safety, the VHF radio is your best friend in an emergency. Yes, we all carry cell phones these days, and we can place a call anywhere in the world with just the press of a button, but it is unlikely that any of us would have the phone number for the boat that happens to be just a half-mile away when we have an emergency 20 miles offshore. Because the U.S. Coast Guard and other boats continually monitor Channel 16, it’s a good idea to have a small, water-resistant handheld VHF radios in reach in the cockpit. A VHF radio will also allow you to get NOAA weather updates and warn you if nasty conditions are on their way. A number of reliable handheld radios can be found for between $100 and $200.
Every spring at the start of the season, or before taking off for a weekend cruise, it’s a good idea to do a radio check. To do this, tune to Channel 16 and call for any vessel to respond to a radio check. Don’t hail the Coast Guard, as they have better things to do. Another good idea is to learn the military alphabet. This is the phonetic alphabet—Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.— that will help make yourself understood over all the background noise and make you sound like you really know what you’re doing.
So far we are sailing faster, trimming easier and staying safe, now let’s clean up the spaghetti in the cockpit. You definitely have jib sheets lying about, and you may have several halyards, spinnaker pole controls and more. A few well-placed sheet bags will really tidy things up. In a small boat, a pair on the back of the cabinhouse works nicely, they can contain all of the rope from the cabintop and the jib sheets, and in a pinch they provide a pretty good backrest, too. You can find sheet bags most anywhere, or even make your own, but the bags from the Dutch company Blue Performance
(www.blueperformance.com) caught my eye. These bags are showing up in more and more chandleries in the United States, and have been popular in Europe for a while. I’ll admit there is not much you can innovate in a sheet bag, but the Blue Performance bags are nicely done with top quality materials. A pair of sheet bags will cost you about $100, but I suspect you may be tempted to spend a little more money on some of their other cool products.
Most cockpits lack back support, typically the seatbacks are short and at a steep angle. Nothing can make a cockpit more comfortable than a padded seat and some good back support. There are several companies that fabricate seat cushions custom fit to your cockpit, but none of them have a compelling answer for back support. I also don’t like the hassle of storing a cockpit full of cushions when I really just need padded seats for two or three people. I have had great luck with a pair of seats from Sport-a-Seat (www.sportaseat.com). These are the folding cushion and seat combinations that I am sure you have all seen at the boat shows. In preparation for writing this article I asked my wife what the best upgrade to our boat was. Mind you I have spend a healthy five-figure budget on our 47-foot cruiser over the last four years. She chose the Sport-a-Seats. The seats are covered in genuine Sunbrella fabric, so you can likely find a color to perfectly match or complement the other canvas colors on your boat. The seats are around a $100 each, but you can sometimes find deals at boat shows.
Another way to make life in the cockpit more cool and comfortable, and open the boat up to camping, is to rig a cockpit cover or makeshift bimini. The cover can be draped over the boom and tied down at the corners and sides to cleats or tie-down points. Some people even get fancy, adding removable walls and screens to provide varying degrees of ventilation and privacy. A simple, inexpensive tarp can be used—buy one with grommets for tying it down or add your own for a more custom fit. Otherwise, if you’re good with a sewing machine and want something much nicer looking and more durable, it’s not too difficult to make your own cover. Sunbrella fabric, mentioned above, can be bought for around $20 a yard and is the ideal choice for biminis and covers. It resists fading, is UV resistant and is available in a variety of colors. It is recommended that you use a sewing machine with a size 22 needle and polyester bonded thread when working with the fabric.
These ideas should make things easier and a little more comfortable, but the truth is that the work is all worth it and the discomfort will float away as you power along on a broad reach.
