Cruising gadgets, knowledge, and ideas for the cruising sailor
Wi-Fi Booster- We use a small, inexpensive 1 watt booster to better our wi-fi reception in anchorages. The one we use is made by Alfa, and cost less than $30. It works well, and frees us of trips to shore to the local “hot spot” to do email. Often we can tune into a free hot spot at a nearby
» Read moreSun Shower – You’ve seen plenty of people recommend this in the past, and that’s because they really work well at both providing warm water, and saving water. My wife likes a warm shower every evening. If we are sitting in an anchorage for days, our hot water that was heater by the engine has gone cold. So we can
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Making ice is easy- We’ve tried ice cube trays, both the one’s with the lids by Tupperware, and the vertical ones that come with some freezers. But these take up a lot of space, and you then have to have a place for the extra cubes that you store. Try this. Fill a quart size Ziploc bag about 1/2 full
» Read moreSandbags for scuppers – This idea came from Ginny Martin aboard THE ABBEY. When it rains, many of us try to catch some fresh water. Sometimes we need to block up a scupper up forward, or, in my case, towards the stern. I’ve made do with rags in the past. Certainly not perfect, but they did ok. Ginny’s idea is
» Read moreYou will find it very useful to have a boat card. Most cruisers out there have these. You will meet so many new people, and you’ll want to recall their names, and their boat names. This is how we all do it. We keep a stack of cards rubber banded together in our nav station. We met one gal who
» Read moreFeeding the offshore racing or delivery crew. Imagine tossing a chicken carcass into a cage of hungry wolves, I think that’s a good idea of what feeding time looks like on a lot of offshore racers and delivery boats. As cook, on a sea going racer, you need not worry about comparisons to the finer restaurants in town. The ingredients
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Oven Stove– This is another heat diffuser. We find that when baking in the oven, some things get scorched or burned on the bottom. Biscuits and pizza are good examples. The stone protects your food from getting too much heat on the bottom. And spreads the heat out more evenly of better baking. My daughter was about to toss out
» Read moreDinghy Lock-up Cable – I find that most lock up cables and chains are too short. On a Caribbean island, you may pull your dinghy up on a beach and the nearest tree or objects to lock it to are 15 feet away or more. I have also been annoyed by the dinghy banging the stern of the boat at
» Read moreFlame Tamer – It sounds powerful huh? The generic name for this is a heat diffuser. We find that our gas stove burners on the boat just don’t go low enough sometimes. Until we started using the Flame Tamer, we would occasionally burn our rice or sauces on the bottom. Rice is probably the best example. This round metal perforated
» Read moreLuggage Scale – Ok, this is not for weighing that huge fish you caught. It’s for weighing your propane tank. We weigh our propane tanks to see how empty they are. This really helps us as the tanks get below half. We “know” instead of “guessing” how much propane is left. Our luggage scale is a handheld digital one, with
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