UV Protection for Dyneema
In your recent review of shackles (PS, September 2014), you tossed in a statement about recoating the soft shackles bimonthly with a UV protectant....
Top Whipping Twines
How we testedTo determine strength, each twine was pulled to failure by wrapping it around a 1-inch drum and pulling four to 16 strands...
Rope Clutches Tighten Their Grip
Ronstan ConstrictorLike a turbo-charged update of the old finger handcuff, the novel Ronstan Constrictor clutch relies on cordage, rather than cam-induced pressure, as a...
Higher Loads Call for Careful Installation
Rope clutches are a great innovation that can help sailors better control the lines that lead aft to the cockpit and those that cluster...
Stitching Instead of Splicing
Splicing is king in any discussion of line termination. By carefully tucking cover and core back into the line, or weaving strands in laid...
Break and Break Again
All lines were broken once to determine approximate breaking strength without a stitched eye. A simple chain fall and load cell provided a means...
Other Stitching Techniques that Work Well
We principally looked at three means of seizing an eye without splicing-basting, round-stitching, and seizing-used alone and in combination. Round stitching is described in...
Getting to the Top
As Practical Sailor's testers found out during its test of bosun chairs, there are times when getting to the top of a mast is...
Chandlery: October 2014
It draws only 0.45 amps at 110 volts (or 4 amps at 12 volts, if we bypass the converter), a minimal loss. Using a...
Mainsail Halyard Shackles
A mainsail halyard shackle needs to be as reliable as an on/off switch on a table saw. Its a one-act pony thats counted on...
The History of Cape Dory Sailboats
Cape Dory Yachts was founded in 1963 by Andrew Vavolotis in East Taunton, Mass. In the following 28 years, the company built over 2,800...
Latest Sailboat Review
Catalina 22 Used Boat Review
In its 10th anniversary issue in 1980, Sail magazine named the Catalina 22 the boat that had represented the breakthrough in trailer/cruisers in those...