Dear Boat Doctor, I am setting up my boat for long-range cruising and trying to be as self-sufficient as possible. I can cover my electrical needs with solar panels. My watermaker produces all the wa

Dear Boat Doctor, I sail my Sabre 34 Mark II in an area where I very often sail directly upwind or on a very deep reach. My boat is not set up well for either point of sail, with a roller furling 125

Dear Boat Doctor, I have had a few close calls with accidental jibes, and I now typically use a preventer when sailing downwind. I just use a spare line and tie the boom down the to rail at the point

Dear Boat Doctor, I recently replaced the original standing rigging on my 1968 Islander 34. I wanted to make sure everything was correct, so I confirmed the wire sizes with my own righting moment cal

Dear Boat Doctor,  I have read a lot about regular inspections of my boat. This seems like a really good idea, but I don’t know what to look for. What am I supposed to be looking for? Rob R

Dear Boat Doctor, I just got a new-to-me boat and I have a charging problem: the house bank won’t stay charged when I run the engine. When the engine is running, there is 13.5 volts at the alternat

Dear Boat Doctor, I am interested in improving my onboard emergency gear. I have carried a personal EPIRB for years, but it feels inadequate. I have been looking at shipboard EPIRBs, but maybe I shou

Dear Boat Doctor, I am struggling with the fuel system on my Hylas 51, which seems to have a lot of small issues that add up to a bigger annoyance. First, I don’t have enough tankage and no good wa

Dear Boat Doctor, I am having some problems with my Yanmar 4JH2DTE, and I’m embarrassed to say I may have created one of the problems myself. I installed a new Balmar alternator and an AltMount ser

Dear Boat Doctor, I am having a problem with my engine, a Yanmar 4JH2DTE.  It has always worked well, but recently I have not been able to get it to run over 2,200 rpm. I checked the Racor and t

Dear Boat Doctor,  I am taking my boat to Grenada and would really like to be able run an air conditioner. I have read about the new efficient air conditioners that you can run from an inverter.

Dear Boat Doctor, I am doing some maintenance on my old electric Barient winches. I have taken down the manual parts of the winches, and I am pretty clear on how to clean and lubricate those parts. I

Dear Boat Doctor, I own a Caliber 40 and have been working my way down the Windward Islands, planning to spend hurricane season in Grenada. The trip has been great, but we’ve been caught a little o

Dear Boat Doctor, My Selden boom vang doesn’t seem to hold up my boom any more. It was OK before I installed the main, but now the boom just sags. For now, I have resigned myself to holding up the

Dear Boat Doctor, I have owned my Tartan 37 for more than 25 years, first on freshwater and now in the Chesapeake and the Bahamas. I love saltwater, but it is eating my boat. What can I do to keep th

Dear Boat Doctor, We stored our boat on the hard in Puerto Rico and launched after hurricane season. When we put the boat back in the water, I had a rigger help me re-install the sails. When I went t

Dear Boat Doctor, I recently upgraded the alternator on my Yanmar 4JH2DTE and things aren’t going smoothly. It is a Balmar 100A alternator with a Max Charge alternator. The alternator is working gr

Dear Boat Doctor, I installed a Frigoboat keel-cooled system a few years ago. The system worked amazingly well until last summer when I noticed that it would cool down very nicely if the icebox was w