Product Reviews
Goal Zero's Sherpa 50
...Portable Solar Power Station sells for $99.95. The Solar Wrap Mini unrolls to expose the flexible solar panel. The Bushnell Solar Wrap Mini is quite compact, only a bit larger than a roll of quarters. The solar cells are on a flexible panel that wraps around a cylinder equipped with a storage battery, a charging port, a charging indicator...
Boat Profile
A beach-cruising centerboard yawl
...another client wanting a dinghy for extended open-boat cruising. The changes included a large locker forward of the mainmast as well as two side lockers under the cockpit seats to keep gear away from spray and from any water that might enter the boat. These also form airtight compartments to lend buoyancy in the event of swamping. These compartments, the...
Adventures
A grand gift
...walked down the aisle. When the ceremony got under way, I took a seat with Noel at the back. After the vows and the “I do’s,” while the couple was busy taking care of marriage paperwork, Noel and I slipped away. We took off as fast as we could, ran around to where we had stashed the canoe, slipped off...
Product Reviews
Making trailers fit
...for a full-length tongue. The hinge is made of zinc-plated, die-cast steel, and has a 19/32″ removable hinge pin and fixed pivot bolt. The kits fit 2″ x 3″, 3″ x 3″, 3″ x 4″, and 3″ x 5″ trailer tongues. I bought the 2″ x 3″ kit from West Marine and 3′ of 2″ x 3″ steel from a...
Adventures
A Sail and Oar Journey
...set out in conditions like this, triple-reefed, suddenly struck me as asinine. Laughing out loud at my near-stupidity, I set the sail aside, then pulled out the oars. I wasn’t going to raise the sail, but that didn’t mean I had to sit around on the beach waiting for the wind to die down. I spent the morning rowing up...
Adventures
Tide flats and sloughs
...put one last load of wood into the stove and slipped into my bed in the forward compartment. I woke to the sound of something knocking against the hull. BONZO was afloat and rocking, and I thought that a stick coming from upriver might have drifted under the bow. I got up and followed the sound to the cockpit...
Product Reviews
More than setting grommets
...seen the damage to the fabric caused when using a common metal hammer—off-center strikes can cause the grommet to compress too much on one side and cut into the fabric, requiring the replacement or repair of the damaged fabric, while the center section remains unset. Grommet die sets and hole cutters also take a beating from metal hammers, and over...
Adventures
Memories of boyhood
...I could manage. The day finally arrived for us to leave the Vicksburg waterfront. It was mid-April 1991. There was a huge party. It seemed as if the whole town had come to see us off. Goodbyes said, we boarded the MARY SAVAGE; Dad went below and spun the flywheel on the one-cylinder Volvo diesel. We set out southbound. The...
Adventures
A Shantyboat on the Sacramento River
...written a book about Locke. As a Chinese community, Locke faces challenges. As the older generation of Chinese people die and younger generations move out of town, there are fewer and fewer Chinese people in Locke. The community viewed non-Chinese residents like Mark’s friends with suspicion until they slowly gained the trust of the community. Unfortunately, I never made a...
Technique
Big jaws with bite
Photographs by the author My new set of homemade clamps have a reach of 16″. Here one is applying enough pressure to keep the clamp from pivoting under its own cantilevered weight and resting on the edge of the plywood. When I built a reproduction of the 9th century Gokstad faering, I encountered a number of challenges I hadn’t faced...
Adventures
Exploring Washington's Riffe Lake
...woods at the top of the rise, there was level ground covered with moss and arched over by saplings that I had to step over and stoop under. I picked my way inland a few dozen yards and saw a patch of black no bigger than a bathmat. It was asphalt, the only indication that under the carpet of moss...
Reader Built Boats
A boat for Bliss Creek
...well, and didn’t leak too much. I paddled her around the pool with an old oar that had been shortened. Then my dad paddled her across the pool, and my brother and I both got in and paddled around. Then we put her up on blocks on a hill by the creek. A couple weeks later some friends came over....
Product Reviews
An easily stowed cart for canoes and kayaks
We have a wide variety of small boats in our armada and, with our recent move to our new homeport in the Tidewater region of Virginia, we found ourselves in need of a cart for our kayaks and canoe. When we checked out the local kayak launch, we found that the ramp was too narrow for our Dynamic Dolly, but...
Reader Built Boats
Pondering pedal power
...for his Fiddlehead, which he christened HIYU. SBM The combination of pulleys in the cockpit with the gears beneath the hull give the system an 1:11 drive ratio, so pedaling at 50 rpm spins the prop at 550 rpm. He devised a pedal drive that used a long V-belt from a large die-cast pulley on the horizontal pedal axle to...
Adventures
A great escape
...would and wouldn’t work, and together we came to a clear understanding of the boat we’d build. A bond of understanding and trust had developed between us. During construction, Peter traveled by motorcycle from his home in Holland, a journey of around 900 miles each way, no less than three times, and even brought his partner Elly Jansen for one...
Reader Built Boats
A peapod built by family and friends
...him to come to the shop to help me make the poor man’s hollow mast. He really got into it and couldn’t believe that with just hand tools, planes, and a sanding belt turned inside out we could make something as perfectly round as we did.” Photographs courtesy of the Honan family Christian, one of Richard’s neighbors, took up his...
From The Editor
Like a moth to a flame
...groceries a whole lot easier. In November of 1985, I drove the sneakbox to Pittsburgh and embarked on a winter cruise aimed at Florida. Here I’m in the first mile of the Ohio River, looking over the stern at downtown Pittsburgh with the Allegheny River flowing under the bridge at left, and the Monongahela under the bridge at the...
Technique
Suspended relaxation
...clearing your companions out of the chair when you want to sit in it. Materials: 1-1⁄4 yards of roughly 60″-wide canvas. (For chairs that will stay outdoors at home year-round I use Sunbrella.) 28 #0 spur grommets About 200′ of paracord 16′ of 3⁄8″ three-strand nylon line Two 2″ D-rings One 2″ round ring A stick of wood roughly 2″...
Adventures
A neophyte on the Inside Passage, Part 2
...sleeping bag. The fights on the dock were still going on and I heard another similar commotion to the north. Around midnight the waterfront lapsed into silence and I was able to sleep until 4 a.m., when there was yelling and swearing again coming from the pier. At daybreak, Bella Bella was at peace as a man in a red-and-black...
Adventures
One man's journey from long-distance rowing to shorter motor-sailing cruises
...years to come. Dave Lesser Alex designed and built FIRE-DRAKE to replace the Whitehall he had rowed and sailed for seven years. The new boat sailed well to windward but at times Alex found the best option was to lower the rig and row. But the characteristics that gave her better sailing abilities in comparison to the Whitehall—more beam and...
Adventures
Off the road and off the grid, a scow takes shape in the forest
...open spot for the shop, which would be sheltered by a 20′ × 30′ tarp. I wanted to build a simple frame under the tarp to give the covered area enough height to work under. After I’d found the right spot, I went to the local hardware store for lumber while Vida explored our surroundings. Each of the four back-to-camp...
Adventures
Ontario's Lake of the Woods
...Woods chart tucked under a strap on the rowing thwart, Sabaskong Bay alone fit comfortably under the palm of my hand, ten miles crammed into four inches: four hours of sailing, maybe five. But the world here was to be understood not with a glance at a chart, but only moment by moment, island by island, mile after slow mile....
Adventures
Exploring the wild beauty of British Columbia
...incoming swells which were bending around the headland directly into the sound. We motored into the quiet cove on the north side of the sound, went straight to the first pink mooring buoy there, and tied on for the night. The next morning, we carried on westward and around noon rounded Steep Head into narrow Sargeaunt Passage and pulled up...
Adventures
Thirty thousand islands, two small boats
...Far out on the water, sunlight glinted and sparked on the wavetops. Every cleft and crack in the bedrock around us sprouted unruly tangles of raspberry bushes, but our decision to come in early June was already imposing harsh penalties—all thorns, and no berries. Landing on the rocky slabs of West Fox Island’s east side is manageable when the wind...
A charming house and camp boat
...on the water more often, and so he designed and built DIANNE’S ROSE. Roy calls his new cruiser a house/camp boat, and he and Dianne find that DIANNE’S ROSE is equally comfortable on the water or on the trailer in a campground on the way to the water. He professes a fondness for near-shore, shallow-water adventures, sliding under bridges and...