Recent content by Roger Janeway

That is very sad. It was a lovely magazine to receive in paper format. I had been wondering how it was managing to survive and had just renewed my annual subscription 3 weeks before they sent this notice.

The Wager, by David Grann. True story, mid 18th century British navy. More about being shipwrecked than sailing.

On the Great Lakes. It's unclear from the article in GOB how long Gordon Lightfoot owned the boat, but it described him as its "original owner." His hit "Sundown" was released in 1974 and this is a 1976 model year. Subsequent owners kept her name "Sundown", inscribed on her red boot stripe.

Technically true, but you don’t want the dial on your bulkhead reading 4 knots when you’re really going 5. And the dial on the bulkhead is the thing we see while sailing, if we don’t have a Garmin mounted.

I have an old Signet paddlewheel sensor (i.e., not integrated with a depth sensor) and the display has a calibration function that allows adjustments up or down as much as something like 50%. Calibrating it is very tiresome: you drive back and forth in calm conditions on flat water (back and...

Welcome, Chris! I am a slip tenant at the boatyard in Basin H of the Marina, which is called "The BoatYard." It's at the end near the public launch ramp. Because I rent a slip from them, they don't charge me for an annual haul-out when I hire them for repairs or maintenance. I didn't check...

I don't know if this provides any useful perspective, but in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles, I recently did the same on my 26' boat for $1,618 (this doesn't include a haul-out charge). The Trinidad HD Red was 1.5 quarts for $468, and labor was $930. $220 for all the little things.

I had these same concerns when I got my E26-2 a few years ago, because my most recent sailing was on small daysailers (16') that I couldn't reef . So at first I was alarmed at the idea of the mainsheet being on a cleat (being used to hiking out to windward and easing the mainsheet immediately...

Alan, the assessment is not based on an actual appraisal of the boat, but on the original sales price, adjusted every year based on Board of Equalization data on boat sales. I gather from things you said awhile back that I may have paid more for my E26-2 than anyone in history except the...

You may be interested to learn that there is an alternate reality in which our boats’ market values increase over time: the state’s tax rolls. This year, the Los Angeles County Assessor claims my 35-year-old sailboat increased in value by 21% since 2021. The Assessor says this is based on...

I don't have an electric bilge pump. The longest I've left the boat without checking the bilge is 2 months, during the initial Covid lockdown in 2020. So far, most of the water in my bilge comes from exchanging the knotmeter paddlewheel sensor with the dummy plug.

There's a lot of discussion in this thread about accessing and adjusting the stuffing box: https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/threads/e26-2-stuffing-box-drip.19195/#:~:text=E26%2D2%20%3A%20stuffing%20box%20drip

Alan Gomes has an excellent and easy solution to the leak through the pulpit base, which afflicts all our boats, large or small, it seems. In case my link doesn’t work I am quoting him here: Alan Gomes: “The water was coming in from the aft starboard leg of the bow pulpit. The bow pulpit...

Three years ago when I bought my boat in Dana Point I used a surveyor named Bunker A. Hill (an odd name to those familiar with Los Angeles) and thought he was good, albeit probably one of the more expensive surveyors. However, I do not think he had any particular familiarity with Ericsons. I...

If you are sailing into a 1 knot current, and your boat is moving forward at 6 knots through the water, then the old-fashioned paddlewheel-based knotmeter will read "6 KNOTS" (assuming its is calibrated correctly!). But a GPS device will say that you are moving at 5 knots, because the water is...