Practical Boat Owner - February 2016

HELPING HANDS (OF TIME)

How many times have you

been frustrated by the

well-intentioned but often

unhelpful cry of: ‘It’s over

there!’ when questioning the

location of a racing mark,

fi shing pot marker, navigation

buoy etc? One of my regular

crew is a retired RAF navigator,

and he had already schooled

us in the ‘o’clock’ technique for

indicating the actual direction

of a particular feature – often

including, where appropriate,

the add-on comment of ‘no

threat at this time’...

However, there still remained the thorny issue of identifying which side of 12 o’clock we were

referring to: was it 2 or 10 o’clock, etc? Why this was a problem is not clear, but it had occurred

too many times to be ignored; so I therefore added a few discreetly-positioned number stickers

to the front of the cockpit and this has helped resolve the issue.

Over the top? Maybe, but with advancing years we need all the help we can get! The cost

was negligible, just a few pence for some sticky-backed plastic.

Ron Sykes

KEEL BOX COVERS

ON THE SLIDE

There are often occasions when it

is necessary to make a watertight

seal between two components

that subsequently require to be

separated. An example would be the

keel box covers on my Fairey Atalanta. If

mastic is used, the adhesive properties

make it very diffi cult to separate the

components when needed and will

undoubtedly result in some damage.

The solution is to apply the mastic to one

surface and lightly and thoroughly smear

Vaseline on the other. When tightened

together the mastic will spread and

provide a watertight seal in the usual

way, but on parting the components

the mastic will not have adhered to

the surface with the Vaseline on it.

The components will come apart easily

with no damage.

Greg Manning

The bookcase on David Taylor’s

Bénéteau Whiskey Mac

Practical projects

Readers’ Tips

W

e have a Bénéteau
Océanis 390 which
lacked any form of
book rack/stowage, although
there was a wide shelf in
the saloon.
Wandering around Ikea, I saw
a simple wine rack (model name
HUTTEN) that I thought would
form the basis of a bookcase for
the usual collection of navigational
publications. The wine rack came
with a collection of dowels and

Ikea is brought

to book...

David Taylor adapts an Ikea wine

rack to build a serviceable bookcase

Memorise this

one-way system

G Spelling’s system pulls a dinghy up a ramp

and stops the trailer rolling back into the water

battens drilled to suit, so it was

pretty easy to use most of these to

form the structure. All that I had to

add was a length of 12mm dowel

from a local builder’s supplier

and a few additional holes in the

battens. The bookcase fi tted neatly

onto the saloon shelf and I braced

it off the hull lining with short

lengths of dowel. A few coats of

stain and varnish completed the

job. Total cost about £9, and

about three hours of work.

COST

AROUND

£9

I

n PBO October 2014, the article ‘Shove me tender’ mentioned a

means of pulling a dinghy up a slope with a portable winch.

My diagram may be of interest to you. I used this ‘one-way’ system

during my sailing dinghy days; it stopped the trailer rolling back into the

water and it can be zig-zagged up a slope. This has probably been

done before, but I offer it for what it’s worth.

Rope close to wheels to

stop lateral movement

Round pole approx

50mm diameter

Knotted ends

Rope to fi xing point