John puts his lazy streak on display with five rigging hacks to do less work, but still do things right.

“Things are different now” is a mantra on “Morgan’s Cloud”. And never more so than now, as John and Phyllis try and act their age.

It’s always easier not to fix our boats right, and using the excuse that “everyone does it like this” is a tempting way to excuse doing extra work and spending more money, but the sea does not recognize excuses.

Phyllis and John are back out cruising and in one of their favourite parts of the world.

In the previous four parts of this series on mast tuning, we got all the basics taken care of, now we just need to go sailing to complete a great tune.

These days, most boats with AC generators have signifigant DC (12 or 24 volt) battery banks that need to be charged regularly by the generator. But often that process is horribly inefficient. The good news is that the fix is easy, simple, and relatively inexpensive.

John muses on why doing basic seamanship tasks, like moving heavy weights safely and efficiently using only the boat’s own gear, are so satisfying…and why the practice is important too.

Setting up a rig to be safe and functional offshore is all about getting the details right. Here are some vital things to know and do.

It’s tempting to assume that the bigger a battery bank is on a cruising boat the better, but past a certain point that’s not necessarily so. It all depends on our usage profile. And sometimes there are much cheaper and easier ways to reduce charging time.

John bored you to death with a lot of mast tuning theory in the last chapter, but here’s the pay off: a step-by-step guide that will yield a good tune every time.

In Part 1 we got the mast upright in the athwartship plane so it was not leaning over to one side or the other. Now let’s set the fore and aft rake and bend. But before we set off on that long and winding road we need to make sure we know what the destination is, and that’s what this chapter is about.

John gets a fright and is once again reminded of that old law of boats: Anything that can happen, will happen, and at the worst possible moment.

Getting the rig properly tuned is vital for any sailboat, but it’s not easy to do right. John takes the mystery out of the process with a step-by-step procedure that works.

In case we didn’t manage to cure your insomnia with Part 1, we now have Part 2. The good news is that this is the last one that’s relevant for members, and now we can all get back to something we actually care about: offshore voyaging.