Deck Lights

Illuminating the deck is crucial on dark nights. I am not a fan of harsh bright spreader lights that blind away your night vision and turn the deck into daylight since they also eat away at your batteries precious amps.

My alternative is to use solar powered yard lights from Home Depot! They do not draw on the batteries and provide a gentle light that will not kill your night vision. They also stay on all night long, letting other boats know that you are anchored and the mast head anchor light is not a star in the sky!

I removed the grass stake and set the lens into a tupperware filled with plaster. As the plaster set, the light was trapped in the stone and properly weighted to keep them from falling over while sailing.

I made a bunch of these a few years back and they have worked very well! They do not slide around on deck and best of all, do not fall overboard!

When we anchor, we spread them around the deck to provide a gentle light and to let other boats know the length of our boat (marking the bow and stern with lights). When morning comes, we collect the lights and set them in the stern where the solar panels charge their AA battery for tomorrow nights illumination.

Monitor Rudder

Monitor wind vanes are an essential part of an ocean going cruising boat. They will keep a well balanced boat sailing along on a straight course (with relation to the wind). They are simple, reliable, and easy to trouble shoot and repair! What is there not to love about these units? The price.

You get what you pay for, and you certainly do get a solid and well built unit for the price; but the price is still on the high side. A new unit will set you back around $5,000, plus installation. Added accessories will set you back even further. 

One such accessory is called the M-Rud, which is an emergency rudder that can be connected to the monitor. I have heard people say that they like using the M-Rud over the standard servo pendulum rudder because its longer length makes it more responsive.

One boat owner on a Fallmouth Cutter came up with his own clever way of having the longer rudder without the extraordinary cost: a wooden rudder!

Sailors are a creative group, and wood is a wonderful medium to work with to construct your creative thoughts. I love seeing the ingenuity that different sailors will come up with to solve the most basic of problems!

Storing the Sculling Oar

The sculling oar is very useful, and it is very big! At 16 feet long, this oar is a bit of a challenge to store. I have many lines running on the deck with all the sails and I always worry that the oar will foul a line. 

Getting the oar out of the way has become a high priority for us. I decided to tie it to the lifelines that way it is available for use when needed but out of the way when not. At 16 feet in length, finding a span that was straight enough and out of the way proved difficult. The shrouds were my first logical choice, but the curvature of the hull was too great in this region. The oar was also at great risk of getting hooked on a sheet and breaking! 

The next location was the stern, but it would get in the way of the winches and sheets if set horizontally. If set vertically, the oar might be too much windage.

The next option was to set the oar up in the bow area. Tying it to the lifelines, stanchion, and bow rail seemed to get the oar out of the way while being clear of all sheets. It also lays lower than the foot of the headsails, so it would remain completely out of the way.

The oar is neatly stowed on the bow, out of the way but also ready for deployment when needed.

Edson Bilge Pump Rebuild

The new diaphragm and flapper valves arrived from Edson, allowing me to finish the rebuild of this old bronze Edson pump. Now that I know how far the pump lever needs to move, I can finalize its placement in the boat.

This pump is capable of pumping 1 gallon per stroke, which means that we can easily pump a lot of water without depending on our batteries holding up in the event of an emergency. By mounting it inside the cabin, we are also able to pump from the safety of a closed cabin if the situation were to call for it.

On a less "gloom and doom" viewpoint, this pump will make cleaning the bilge that much easier since I can keep an eye on the water in the bilge while pumping it overboard at the same time. My current manual pump is located in the cockpit, which doesn't let me keep an eye on the water clarity as I clean the bilge. As soon as the bilge water is clear, I can shut the hose off and dry out the bilge! This can make the quick and easy process of cleaning the dust out of the bilge all the easier.

The downside to this bilge pump is its size. This thing is huge and finding a place that is both out of the way and accessible that can fit this behemoth has proven difficult. The locker where I used to keep my dive gear seems like a good spot for the pump

The bilge pump fits in the bottom of the locker and can be plumbed with with relatively short hoses. This will keep down the amount of head and resistance on the pump and increase its efficiency.

I do need to build a base for the pump so that it can mount on a level surface with the hoses attaching to it.

The plan for routing the hoses is to lead the intake hose from the bilge under the quarter berth and through the bulkhead into the locker. From there it will enter the bottom of the pump and exit into the back of the locker where it can run up the side of the hull and exit through a (yet to be installed) 2" through hull fitting just under the rubrail. A seacock will be mounted on the through hull fitting to avoid water flowing back into the boat when heeled over or if the hose were to leak. 

This bilge pump will hopefully only be used to clean the bilge, but if we did need to use it in an emergency, we can do it from the comfort and safety of the cabin.

Dinghy Bilge Pump

I originally built Tooth to fit upside-down on the deck of Wisdom, but I eye-balled the space available instead of measuring. Don't do this! I spent months building Tooth, only to find out that it is too long to fit on the deck. Tooth is a great row boat, but is forced to live in the water. 

When it rains, Tooth fills up with water and slowly sinks down as the water inside rises. After each rain, I would pump out Tooth with a hand pump. When we are on a trip, I would try to position Tooth next to Wisdom  and hang over the side to pump the water out of Tooth. It takes me around 20 to 30 min to pump all the water out of Tooth after a good rain. When we were in choppy conditions, it would take me almost an hour and the whole experience was miserable!

These past 2 weeks have been constant rain and I finally got tired of running my hand pump. I went to West Marine to get a lever action manual bilge pump to mount on a board with some long hoses that I could drop into Tooth and take the water right out! While I was there, the store manager talked to me about a battery powered electronic bilge pump.

As you may have noticed, I have my biases: 

• I don't like electronics
• I don't like combustion engines

I just feel that they they are waiting for the perfect time to fail you when you need them most! For these reasons, I prefer the manual approach to everything. You can spot a problem that is developing and fix it before it actually becomes a problem.

When he told me it was electric, my first concern was having enough battery power to run this pump and running the wires to power the pump. Then he told me it is self contained battery powered! Once again, my thought was trying to keep the re-chargable batteries would be a nightmare on the boat.

Then he told me that they run on 3 D batteries! I carry batteries in Tupperware for flashlights and other electronic devices, so powering a the pump with disposable batteries when it's needed is right up my alley! 

The pump is simply lowered into Tooth and it pumps all the water overboard! I can easily do this from the side of Wisdom via a lanyard and retrieve the pump once the boat is dry. I tried it out at the pier, and it worked wonderfully. It took around the same amount of time as my old hand pump but it also took no effort! When Tooth was dry, I was not tired with a sore shoulder.

While I don't typically rave over electronics, this pump is awesome. Best of all, if it does fail, West Marine has a wonderful warranty policy through their Plus Plan. The pump is not "installed" in the boat, so I can easily take it in and pick up a replacement! If it does fail, I still carry a manual hand pump to pump out Tooth.