Whats In the Practical Sailor Toolbag?
Milwaukee M12 right-angle drill/driver kitBoring holes in hard to reach spaces often requires a right-angle drill, and this compact Milwaukee cordless tool fits the...
Bottom Paint Stripping
My husband, Ken was in the fiberglass business for over 25 years. We intend to take off all of our boat’s bottom paint (about...
A Better Way to Mount Deck Hardware
Improperly mounted stanchion and pulpit bases are a major cause of gelcoat cracks in the deck radiating from the attached hardware. The cracks are...
25 Paints Make it Past the 24-month Mark
In July 2009, 61 samples of antifouling paints, including several new formulas, went into the water in Sarasota, Fla., for testing. This report and...
Semi-Annual Antifouling Paint-Test Checkup
EpaintEpaint has been doing well in PS tests recently. The company’s antifouling paints contain no copper, and historically no-copper paints have done well in...
Rating Paint Panels
The paint samples were applied to 6-foot-by-2-foot fiberglass panels for testing. Testers follow the makers’ instructions for preparation and application. There were 11 samples...
Baked-on Prop Coating Still Repelling Barnacles
Last November, we began field trials of Mussel Buster, a baked-on powder coating that relies on its slick, hard coating to prevent barnacles from...
Sodablasting 101
Owning a boat is an exercise in perspective. A gale can make a sailboat feel like a canoe, while the prospect of bottom paint...
A Mathematical Decision-maker
An easy way to compute the do-it-yourself labor commitment involved is by timing how long it takes to scrape clean two 1-square-foot patches. The...
Past Adventures with Chemical Strippers
Our foray into sodablasting follows years of testing several different ways to remove bottom paint. Although you can simply attack the bottom paint with...
Catalina 34 Used Boat Review
Are you shopping for a 30 to 36 foot sailboat? One of the hottest selling mid thirty footers on the used sailboat market right...
Latest Sailboat Review
Caliber 40 LRC Used Boat Review
Brothers George and Michael McCreary, and Marshall Jones, formed Caliber Yachts Inc. as a backyard boatbuilding company in 1979. No strangers to the sailing...