Bolt Orientation

When through bolting hardware, you might not pay much attention to which direction the bolt is facing. This may seem like a very mundane point to ponder, but this small detail can have a significant effect on the outcome of your project.

You may feel inclined to simply insert the bolt from which ever side you are standing on, but the truth is there is a right and wrong way to position a bolt.

To begin, lets look at a standard bolt. You have the head, smooth shank, and threaded portion. The head allows you to grasp the bolt with tools such as wrenches and sockets. The smooth shank is often overlooked, as it merely connects the head to the threads. The threaded portion is where the opposing nut attaches to give a bolt its fastening abilities.

The truth is, the smooth shank that is often ignored is actually the designed load bearing area of the bolt. This region of the bolt bears the most bulk and thus strength of the bolt. The threaded portion is actually significantly thinner as the threads are cut in, making the thickness of material reduced by the depth of the threads.

If you through bolt a high sheer stress object with the nut facing the most load, you risk sheering off the nut and causing a catastrophic failure to whatever you were trying to retain. The head should face the high strain working areas, as the head is right next to the smooth shank and thus is the strongest side of the bolt.

In the example below, a bracket was through bolted to the mast that will act as the attachment for all the turning blocks. Under full load, this bracket will be subjected to the full fury of the reef lines and main halyard. Since the halyard is located on one side of the bracket, that side will also be bequeathed with the heads of the bolts. The other side which will be under slightly less load will contain all of the acorn nuts used to hold the bolts in place.

Next time you go to through bolt a piece of equipment, be mindful of which end will be subjected to the most strain and place the heads of the bolts accordingly.

Morty vs Door

Morty wasn't sure if his little legs could get him over the shrink wrap door. After some encouragement and practice, he has mastered jumping through the door to get in and out of the shrink wrapped cockpit.

Being Crew

My first offshore experience on a sailboat occurred when a friend of mine invited me to crew with him as he traveled north during the spring. He is a cruiser who travels north towards Maine in the summer and then sails south to Mexico for the winters. I hopped on his yacht in Key West, FL as we made our way up the East Coast of the United States. We made landfall again in Charleston, SC where we tied up to a city pier and I took a cab to the airport to make my way home to Baltimore.

For most of the voyage, the winds were light and consistent, moving us along at a steady pace through the water. When we got near Charleston, the weather changed as a gale approached us with massive seas. We furled up the sails and turned into a powerboat as we motored head on into the large waves. Once we were able to turn and were no longer beating dead into the wind, we let out a bit of headsail which helped to steady our motion as we motorsailed the last bit into the harbor and up to the city pier.

A cheaper way to go cruising is to skip buying a yacht and be crew on other peoples boats. This lets you see the world with no upfront costs!

Aside from having a powerful diesel engine, the most notable difference between this modern design yacht and Wisdom is the amount of beam that exists in the cockpit! Wisdom is 11 feet wide at the widest point, but the cockpit is very narrow as the stern tapers down to a tiny width. This modern yacht, with its sugar scoop stern was 14 feet wide, and the width was maintained for pretty much the entire length of the yacht. Th

This translates directly into the massively open and wide cockpit which gives you plenty of space to move around and relax. All the lines are led back to the cockpit, so this extra space helps you keep everything organized and separate.

Morty Has Sea Legs

Morty has it pretty good! He gets to relax on deck as we take him to new lands to explore.

Sailing on the Calm Days

Cruising isn't always storms and moving along at hull speed. Honestly, most days are composed of light winds that ghost you along slowly. These are the days when we set our drifter "Dill" and let it catch all the wind it can as we slowly move through the water.