September 01 Double
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Volume 27 Numbers 17 & 18 September 2001 ® DOUBLE ISSUE SPECIAL SECTION: ROPE 6 Market Scan: Running Rigging Replacement guidelines for sheets, halyards, and topping lifts. 14 Bench Test: High-Tech Rope We'd read about problems with terminations in high-modulus line. They're true. 20 Webbing Untangled There are several places where the flat stuff is the right stuff. Make sure type follows function. Rope Market Scan ...page 6 22 Offshore Log: Mediterranean Idyll Calypso checks the styles in Marmaris, and overhauls her chain. 26 Boat Review—Com-Pac 35 This Charley Morgan design has a shoreline layout and fleet feet for a cruiser. 30 Handheld Spotlights Sixteen lights from six manufacturers. Spotlights for dark nights...page 30 Also in this Issue 2 Editorial. Give Me Enough Rope 3 Mailport. EPIRB Batteries. Boat Evaluation. Pilot 35. Personal Strobes. Small Batteries and Chargers. Boat Bags. Customer Service. 5 Credit Due. Wells Marine Tech. Wilcox Crittenden. 35 Chandlery. Walker Bay 8. Walker Bay 10. 38 PS Advisor. Deck Bung Epoxy. Wiring for Dual Voltages. AC Vacuums, Blue Topsides. Cavitation. Little plastic boats everywhere... page 35 EDITORIAL Give Me Enough Rope ® Left to their own devices, some sailors pop up and demand to be tried out. buy rope the way Imelda Marcos used This can actually lead to some hair- Editor to buy shoes—impulsively, profligate- brained schemes, like the time some- Douglas Logan ly, with a kind of bulemic urge. Even one who shall remain nameless man- Executive Editor Dale Nouse today when some of us go to a boat- aged to lash a trailer to a hitchless car show we have to stand for a long time bumper with something that became, Editor at Large Nick Nicholson next to the booth with the stacked coils in the space of a mile or so, both of multicolored climbing rope and Gordian Knot and Fender Bender. Contributing Editors Ermanno Di Lorenzo, Richard odds-and-ends in all lengths and di- On the other hand, rope, arguably Greenhaus, Ed Lawrence, Doug ameters, wishing we could come up the most versatile tool in the sailor's Ritter, Jay Chris Robbins, Scott with a reason to get just a little bit chest, can and should be used in a lot Rosenthal, Daniel Spurr more. There's no such thing as too of places where plastic or metal fit- Publisher much. We're melded with Imelda. tings are now installed in the name of Timothy H. Cole In the basement I have everything convenience, but at the cost of weight, Editorial Offices from spools of whipping twine and corrosion, and holes in the boat. 10 Bluff Ave. #111 tarred marline (which, when you put Truly there's nothing so important, Clinton, CT 06413 your nose to it, takes you directly to the so familiar, so comforting to sailors as e-mail: [email protected] fo'c'sl of the Charles W. Morgan) to big rope. It's nice to sit down on a winter's Subscription Department coils of nylon anchor rode waiting for night with Clifford Ashley or one of his 800/829-9087 a project. [email protected] disciples, and 10 feet of three-strand www.practical-sailor.com - click If you have enough rope, projects rope, and work things out. For many, “Subscribers Only” suggest themselves all the time. Last a well-made knot board is a fascinat- Box 420235 winter, the morning after shoveling off ing sculpture, and a Carrick Bend is Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235 th our 57 snowstorm, I got out the gant- an example of symmetry and strength for Canada line I used to use in a four-part tackle to rival the most sacred geometry. Box 7820 STN Main to go up the mast. It's a nice soft blue Before I wax maudlin, though, London, Ontario N5Y 5W1 braid, about 160 feet, and I made a there's business at hand: It's tough to Web, Back Issues, Fax Service, rope-tow with it up the little hill in the make sailing systems work without Other back yard—put a snap hook in it with rope, and that's a big concern in this Customer Service a cow hitch so I could pull the lighter month's issue—specifically the stuff PO Box 2626 Greenwich, CT 06836-2626 kids and their sleds up the hill. The we use for basic running rigging. It 800/424-7887 top end went through a block tied to a was time to take a close look at high- [email protected] tree up the hill, the bottom end through tech line . What we learned (see page a snatch block hooked into a loop 14) was not a shock, thanks to Brion Quantity Reprints Available Minimum Order: 1,000 around another tree at the bottom. The Toss and some others, but if you haven't Contact Mona Kornfeld, Belvoir loop was closed by two rolling hitch- heard about the very great differences Publications, 203/422-7343 es, so the whole thing could be adjust- in the properties of high-modulus line The Practical Sailor (ISSN No. 0161-8059) is pub- ed easily. I had more fun than the kids. and double-braid Dacron… lished twice a month (except March, June, Septem- ber, and December, which are combined) by Belvoir Chris Caswell, in a commendable N ot to give away the story, but even Publications, Inc, 75 Holly Hill Lane, Box 2626, Green- column in Sailing a couple of months as the ropemakers strive to work the wich, CT 06836-2626, (203) 661-6111. Robert Englander, Chairman and CEO; Timothy H. Cole, Executive Vice ago (extolling the habits and skills of kinks out of the high-tech stuff, the rest President, Editorial Director; Philip L. Penny, Chief Operating Officer; Greg King, Senior Vice President; seamanship that make sailors so handy of us are going to have to learn some Marvin Cweibel, Senior Vice President, Marketing —nay, almost godlike—on land) told new marlinespike tricks. It won't be Operations; Andrew Thorne, Vice President, Group Circulation Director; Michael N. Pollet, Senior Vice the story of a friend who needed some easy. We will need handy references President, General Counsel. Periodicals postage paid at Greenwich and at additional mailing offices. Copy- furniture moved out of a second-story with all sorts of diagrams, and we will right © 2001, Belvoir Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is strictly apartment. Someone retrieved a main- knit our brows in perplexity. But we prohibited. Printed in USA. Revenue Canada GST sheet system from a boat in the harbor, can bear in mind what Hervey Garrett Account #128044658. Canada Post International Pub- lication Mail Product (Canadian Distribution) Sales and bingo, out the window and down Smith said in his introduction to The Agreement #0739588. Subscriptions: $84 annually. Single copies, $7.50 the stuff came. Arts of the Sailor, back in '53: "In the (U.S.). Bulk rate subscriptions for organizations and Rope, rightly rove, can make you final analysis, the pleasures that I educational institutions are available upon request. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Practical look devilishly clever. The more you have derived from the practice of Sailor, Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142. Practical know about it, and the more you prac- these skills more than compensate for Sailor, P.O. Box 39, Norwich ON, N0J 1P0 Canada. tice with it and rely on it, the more the endeavor." PRACTICAL SAILOR ACCEPTS NO projects and jury-rig solutions will —Doug Logan COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING PRACTICAL S AILOR 2 S EPTEMBER 2001 MAILPORT EPIRB Replacement Batteries received it back the day I read the vessels value is a marine surveyor. I read with great interest and concur- article. Much to my pleasant surprise, Many surveyors regularly value ves- rence the July 15th J.D. Bitzer and including shipping, my battery re- sels for insurance interests with a Pompas' letters regarding the Litton placement by ACR came to less than Condition & Valuation (C&V) survey, EPIRB battery and the policy of Guest. $200 and was done with pleasant and for purchasers/financial institu- I've run into the same situations and interactions by very professional sales/ tions with a Fair Market Value (FMV) refuse to pay half the price and haz- service people at Mike’s Marine. This survey. There are marine surveyors ardous shipping of a now out-of-date appears to be a completely different who specialize in marine appraisals. gizmo just to replace the battery. experience than those described in The American Society of Apprais- When it no longer passes a test run or the Guest/Litton situation. I was, how- ers (ASA), a multidisciplinary apprais- I'm going on a serious passage I will ever, without the service of that EPIRB ers group, offers a designation for buy a new one and will try to avoid for the time it was in for exchange, specialist appraisers as Marine Sur- Guest products. something I had timed to coincide vey-Commercial and Marine Survey- I have gone so far as to prepack and with a period of no sailing. Yacht. Candidates, most of them ma- test my own liferaft, and felt vindicat- Michael G. Altmann rine surveyors already holding a ed when the last certified packer had Marquette, MI NAMS or SAMS designation, screwed in the tapered valve after must have five years of appraisal ex- hydro enough to crack the CO2 bottle perience, then must pass an ethics neck. A sympathetic distributor was After reading your PS Advisor regard- test, a test on the Uniform Standards of kind enough to supply a tested, used ing EPIRB battery replacement and Professional Appraisal Practice (US- one at no cost.