I'm all about simplicity. I have a low tolerance for frustration. And I am easily surprised by engineering decisions that are obviously bad.

That said, boating offers some spectacularly horrendous examples of what I call 'That Should Work' solutions - usually taken as an expedient fix with the idea that it'll get taken care of correctly later. But when a boat is built with these 'Gotchas' I am truly amazed.

Here's a case in point - Pelican has three water tanks, one each 50 gallons under the port and starboard settees in the main cabin and one 60 gallon tank under the v-berth. So far, so good. But the vents are not overboard - that's also a pretty good idea except in this case when the port tank vents into a hidden space, the starboard into a hanging locker, and I haven't found the vent for the bow tank yet.  read more »

Episode 2 in guest blogger Hal Weidner's story of his encounter with Hurricane Cleo in 1958... Cleo came at midnight, slowly at first. We had gotten used to the off-key cello sounds in the rigging. On the night of the 17 th , the rigging began to shriek and we feared we were in for a real blow. We decided to head So Long up into the waves, button down, and ride her out. This worked for only a few minutes. The waves just rolled over us. For some reason these seas were acting like waves coming ashore on a beach; they curled early and the tops broke off and seemed to fall straight down. We had a mile of water beneath our keel, so this wave pattern was a mystery, unless our leeways wake was disturbing the sea.  read more »

I don't know about you but my nav station collects stuff. By season's end, the inside contains little bits and pieces of things that have long ago been replaced, fixed, or otherwise rendered unto Neptune. It seems that the natural place to put things that you don't know what to do with is the nav station surface. So much so that before you can go for the first sail of the season something must be done or face charts, bulbs, little bits of wire, tape, Eldridge's (last year's), the screwdriver you use when you're too lazy to find a proper tool and whatever else hides in the corners ends up on the cabin sole or in the bilge.

So last weekend while installing my radio/CD player I had to clean it up. The first thing I found is that I have a bunch more spare parts than I knew. The other thing is that there's lots of room there for, well, navigating. Who knew? So, for the first few weeks of this season I'll have a ship-shape nav station while it waits to accrete this year's detritus.  read more »

When I was young, say, last year or so, I never had a use for mast rails. I could prance about the deck with nary a worry in the worst of the worst weather. I was, for all practical purposes, the mountain goat of deckdom. I'm sure you'll believe that.

My efforts since purchasing Pelican (nee Pelicano) have been to make her an ocean going vessel that I can single hand.

Towards that end, I decided that since I couldn't run all my sail control lines to the cockpit, that I'd keep them at the mast. These lines include the main and jib halyards and the main reefing lines. It doesn't make sense to have to run back and forth from the cockpit to manage sails, especially if you're trying to get it down quickly.

I know you'll say, "Hey, wait! Didn't you move all your lines aft to the cabin roof on Inertia? I mean, you went to such trouble!" You'd be correct - the difference was that Inertia had a clear route for all the lines that wouldn't result in me tripping every time I went forward. Pelican's layout is not the same and since I can't run that many lines, I won't - actually, the only three will be the staysail sheet, the boom vang, and the main sheet. Everything else is at the mast.  read more »