Those really convenient things you did.

[Tempest245]

The simplest and easiest thing I've done was to add two mid-ship cleats on the Genoa Track. Makes my single-handed docking life 100% easier. Once I secure the mid-ship line the boat's not going anywhere problematic.

[sowwaninii]

Just to put another spin on this: how about items and things you’ve purchased or installed on your boat that you now regret.
Top on my list would be roll up inflatable. Great intentions but have never rolled it up!

[LongRange]

Originally Posted by sowwaninii

Just to put another spin on this: how about items and things you’ve purchased or installed on your boat that you now regret.
Top on my list would be roll up inflatable. Great intentions but have never rolled it up!

Jeez, I'd wear out my keyboard listing all the silly things I've purchased, by way of experiment

The first thing that popped to mind is my generic wireless windlass controller. It works reliably, but it has a strange and potentially dangerous design flaw - the minimum switching time is about one whole second. In other words, the briefest burst of windlass operation that can be initiated by the wireless controller is a whole second of 'up' or 'down'.

My anchor is large for the boat, and for the relatively mediocre roller. To reduce forces during launch and retrieval, I am in the habit of using the briefest of brief windlass pulses as the anchor is going over the roller. With the simple wired switches and controllers, that is easy, but once the wireless controller gets going, a whole second seems like an eternity.

I basically don't use it, as a consequence. The initial purchase price was only like fifty bucks, but the time spent installing it was an issue. It dawned on me quickly that the one-second minimum pulse duration is a deal breaker.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by sowwaninii

Just to put another spin on this: how about items and things you’ve purchased or installed on your boat that you now regret.
Top on my list would be roll up inflatable. Great intentions but have never rolled it up!

Yeah we should probably keep it to the subject in the title. Feel free to start a new thread if you like.

[Joe Okros]

1. Replaced the rubber rubrail on my Morgan OI with an aluminium section used on dinghy gunwales, no more black streaks down the hull and also leak-free.
2. Adjustable alternator arm for my ancient Perkins 4108,---makes keeping the alternator belt tight so much easier. I just used a Bottlescrew/Turnbuckle that I modified.
3. Electric lift pump for same 4108,-so much easier to bleed and no danger of failing diaphragm leaking diesel into engine oil. Anyone who has tried to bleed a Perkins 4108 will tell you the hand operated lift pump can expand your vocabulary quite extensively in a very short period of time.
A remote coolant overflow bottle/expansion tank connected to the Heat exchanger pressure cap also helps with knowing your Heat exchanger ACTUALLY has coolant in it.
4. Cheap led strip lighting for the engine room, comes in a long roll from Aliexpress and I just glued it right around the engine room. Also replaced all the globes in my cabin lights with LED's---amazing power saving.
5. A product called PROPSPEED I found in NZ, lasts about 2 years and the first thing I have ever found that actually works on your prop.
6. KIWIGRIP for non-skid decks.
7. LANOCOTE spray for spraying things you dont want to corrode, I sprayed my new windlass motor 3 years ago and it still looks new.
8. OPENCPN on all my mobile devices, I have 3 "old" Samsung phones with built-in GPS and it provides lots of chartplotter redundancy.
9. Its always been on my boat, (14 years now) but the 2500W Heart Kombi Inverter/Charger has been extremely useful coupled to a little 1000w HONDA GENERATOR (Itself an extremely useful addition).

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by conachair

Sailing with free hardware | Sailoog

Upcoming version promised to run on any linux machine.

That be us then

[Minggat]

Originally Posted by Rowmance

When on a ball or anchor my wife is anal about saving water. Also, about not taking a cold shower. She would fill a large bowl till hot water arrived. I installed a pump between the hot water and cold water. Now a press of a button for 20 seconds, voila, instant hot water (almost) and no loss of water.

That brings up another real favorite.

Foot pumps. The most serious water saver I can imagine. And no wet hands slinging water to a water faucet to close it.

Someone once said that they didn't like them because they pump water on both the up and down strokes, hence wasting water.
Duh.
You just feather them.

BTW, I really don't get hand pumps. How do you wash one hand at a time, to start?

The electric pressure pump is only for the shower. Foot pumps in a galley and head. Separate spigot for seawater, which covers a lot of sins. Your galley sink drain is full of seawater. Flushing the food scraps out with seawater saves water. You can follow that with fresh water if you get fussy.

Seawater to that spigot is via the electric low pressure feed pump to the water maker. I can waste all of that I want.

As far as hot water goes, the best idea I had there was sailing off to the tropics. No water heater aboard since leaving So Cal 11 years ago.

[wackerb]

I have two Chinese 4 channel remotes $15 off Amazon. One handles both electric winches (high/low speed) another for the windlass. Most important is a spray can of clear lacquer. Open up the cheap electronics and spray to prevent salt air corrosion.

Two rimmed double galley sinks were a pain with water always running in between them and hard to wipe the counter over the rims. Couldn't find a replacement that fit, so mounted them under the counter and epoxy filled. Now rimless sinks and the counter wipes directly into the sinks.

Just set up a fridge regulator that has low cutoff and higher restart for automatically shutting it off when batteries are low.

Learned to make soft shackles and keep an assortment handy. Many uses.

[senormechanico]

About ten years ago, we installed a Delta H20 Touch bar sink faucet. It saves a lot of water, and we like it very much.


I looked up a link for it (posted below) and was absolutely SHOCKED at the current price !


https://www.deltafaucet.com/kitchen/...t/9959T-KS-DST

[sy_gilana]

Just remembered another...its laundry day.


We bought a cheap twin tub washing machine for around $100.00.
The best thing apart from the labor saving, it saves a TON of water. Here is why, We use no soap, only Ammonia. 60Lts or 15 Gallons of water in the washing machine, then 1/4 gal of Ammonia. (Do not mix Ammonia and Bleach)
After the wash, the load is transferred to the spin dryer, the outlet hose goes into a bucket. That recovered water is put back in the washing side. We get 7 loads of washing perfectly clean in that same water. There is NO need to rinse, after the spin it goes on the line. We have never smelled such clean laundry, no perfume, no allergies, no smell of Ammonia, kind on delicates, kind on elastic. Its only Nitrogen and Hydrogen, and there is no soap, so after all that we use that water to wash out our shower sumps or topsides, and it does not kill fish.

[Marathon1150]

I was reminded by a post in this thread that I missed out something important in my earlier post. I also added a small electric fuel pump to pump fuel from the tank through the primary filter (Racor 500) and further downstream. This makes changing the Racor filter even easier than it already is just out of the box.

After changing the filter, the housing can be topped up with the switch operated electric pump. Previously I had a small bottle of diesel on hand to top up the filter housing. At the dock this is fine but in a rolly seaway, it can be messy.

Once the primary filter is closed, if any air has managed to get downstream of the filter, it can be bled out of the secondary filter also using the electric pump. This is much easier than using the small hand pump on the engine mounted secondary filter.

[Minggat]

Originally Posted by sy_gilana

Just remembered another...its laundry day.

Ammonia

Where do you cruise that ammonia is even available?

I admit, I haven’t looked everywhere in the world, but I struggled to find it in Mexico. And now in Indonesia.

[GALAWA]

Aboard my catamaran PRIVILEGE 435 GALAWA II , which, for all its finest joinery, was in many respects unconfortable, I made a number of changes :
Of which :
1 An all weather- all seas - each cabin ventilation system
2. A ‘hook-lock’ on the cockpit door
3. A 4 purposes fiberglass mast step
4. A 4 purposes extra winch & support for the main sheet
5. A new, double, sea worthy helmsman seat
6. A cutout of port transom to make it so much easier to get in and out of dingy

Voila !

[Sparx]

Nicely done Galawa.

[dfelsent]

PO installed the control panel for the wind gen in the aft cabin where if the gen is too loud it’s easy to switch off without getting up.