Beating

Beating is the idea of staying on the wind. You need to learn to recognize which way the wind is blowing just by feel. In the same way that recognizing the road conditions in a car becomes second nature to the driver, so feeling the wind becomes second nature to the sail boat racer.

Transitions

Transitions include both tacking and jibing. Transitions does not refer to roll tacks, but really has more to do with the basic maneuvers.

Close Sailing

You need to be able to sail close to other boats confidently and without being nervous. You literally need to be able to get within a few centimeters from another boat without hitting the boat, and without being afraid of hitting the boat.

Consistent Starting

A bad start will keep you from winning a sail boat race every time. You need plenty of practice getting away from the “gate” at a consistent speed and rate of acceleration, and being able to catch the wind as soon as possible.

Mark Roundings

Roundings are key, as well. Roundings are where you will make some of the most consinstent gains on your opponents, so being able to make your roundings effectively is one of your most important tools.

Reaching and Running

These two techniques will give you a serious edge. If you can master them, you’ll be ready to take full advantage of an opponent’s weak spots.

You’ll notice that the important techniques rely nearly as much on the speed of your sailboat as they do the handling of your sailboat. Raw speed does very little for you if you can’t get the boat positioned effectively.

Finally, make sure your boat insurance is up to date before you race your boat. You want to make sure your investment is secure in case something bad happens during a race.

Photo via dragonseye

If you’re creative, dedicated and devoted, however, you can afford your dream boat. It’s just a question of how long it takes you. Here are some ways you can work toward your dream:

1. Sell your plasma. It depends on a number of factors, of course, not the least of which is the area you live in. Many folks may be able to get as much as $90 every six weeks by selling their plasma. Over time, this will add up. You’re talking about around $820 in a year, assuming you invest your plasma money and make a paltry five percent interest. It might take you 15 or 20 years, but what are a couple of decades when your dream boat is at stake?
2. Save your change. Setting aside all of the change you take in over the course of a year should yield a couple hundred bucks. While that’s not enough to buy a boat, it also will add up over time. If you combine that with other tactics, it can greatly shorten the time it takes to buy your boat.
3. Build your own. There are plenty of people out there selling boat plans. Some of those boat plans are even legitimate. Yes, you still need to buy all of your materials and have a certain degree of skill working with your hands, but if you can pull it off you may be able to build your dream boat for half of what it would cost to buy it outright.
4. Don’t settle in the meantime. This is where many folks fail. They buy a smaller boat to get them by while they save for their dream craft. This just postpones your dream. Don’t mortgage your future for today’s pleasure.
5. Use your equity. Take out a home equity loan, which can often have a lower interest rate than a boat loan. Make sure to get boat insurance, of course, because if that boat gets destroyed you’ll still be paying on the loan.

Photo via Paolo Antonio Gonella

What is the Gelcoat?

The gelcoat is the outer “skin” of your boat’s fiberglass hull. It’s made up of pigmented resin. It’s purpose is to protect your boat’s surface from both water and sun. It is the gelcoat that gives a boat it’s colors, and it’s the gelcoat that gives a boat a glossy finish.

Gelcoat Maintenance

Gelcoat maintenance includes a two-part process: cleaning and protecting. Cleaning the gelcoat removes the dirt and debris from the surface. Applying a protectant will help it to continue to hold up over time.

Oxidation

Eventually, your gelcoat can oxidize. Oxidization occurs when oxygen mixes with your gelcoat and it becomes dull and chalky. The shine is gone from your boat. While oxidation isn’t great for your boat’s aesthetics, it’s even worse for the integrity of the boat itself. As the gelcoat oxidizes, it can lead to greater intrusion of water and even hull damage.

Addressing oxidation can be simple or complex, depending on how severe the oxidation is:

• Light oxidation. If your boat’s gelcoat is lightly oxidized, you can use a fiberglass cleaning agent on your boat and follow it up with an oxidation remover. This will restore your boat’s shine. You can then wax the boat with carnuba wax, which will fill in any pits and make the gelcoat shine once again.
• Medium oxidation. Medium oxidation is usually something you can still address on your own. You’ll clean the boat, and then use a strong oxidation remover. You’ll probably want to buff and polish the gelcoat as well, and should apply a sealant after the process is over.
• Heavy oxidation. Here’s where you need help. In some cases, your gelcoat may be beyond home and  need to be painted. Unless you’re very familiar with the process, you should probably consider hiring a professional to handle heavy oxidation.

Photo via wili_hybrid

Cleaning

You need to start with some general cleaning. You want to clean the hull, the deck and the topsides. Use a mild detergent, and follow it up with a good coat of wax. Check to see that your scuppers and your drains are clear, too. You need to wipe down any metal with a metal polishing product, and you need to clean your teak and oil it. Make sure to clean the interior of the boat, as well, including your bilges.

Hull Inspection

After a thorough cleaning, spend some time on your hull. Look for scratches or other damage and make minor repairs as needed. If there are blisters, refinish them. Inspect your swim platform or ladder, too. Look at your rudder and your fittings, to make sure they’re in working order. Inspect your trim tabs and test them. Replace your zincs, if necessary. Look at the cutlass bearing, shaft, strut and the prop.

Deck Inspection

Next, spend some time looking at the deck. Make sure your lifelines, pulpits and stanchions are all good. Check for leaks around your windows, on your deck and on your port lights. Make sure your winches are cleaned and greased, and clean your ground tackle too. Make sure your life raft and dinghy are in working order.

Other Areas

You’ll want to spend some time below decks checking your hoses and clamps, your bilges pumps and your seacocks. You’ll need to thoroughly inspect your electrical system. You’ll want to make sure that all of your ancillary equipment, such as PFDs and sound signaling device are in working order. You should spend some time doing engine maintenance, checking your head system and water system, and even looking at your trailer.

Paperwork

You want to make sure that your boat registration is current and that it’s onboard. The same holds for your boating license. You also need to make sure that your boat insurance policy is up to date and that everything is covered the way you want it to be. Don’t wait for an accident to find out that your investment is sunk because your boat insurance lapsed or because you thought you had more coverage than what you actually have.

If it all seems overwhelming, here’s a helpful checklist to make sure that you’ve got everything covered.

Photo via FaceMePLS

Having said that, building your own boat can be a fun activity and one that can save you money (or at least get you a bigger boat for the same amount of money you were planning to spend anyways). Here’s what you need to do to get started in the boat-building process:

Do some research. Learn a little about the process. Find out what kinds of tools and materials you’re going to need, in general. Invest in some books on boat building, or spend some time online learning about the overall process. Learn about different boat-building methods. A number of vendors also sell boat-building videos to help you get a handle on the process, as well.

Pick and purchase a design. There are a number of companies out there that offer boat plans. You need to not only pick a design that appeals to you and meets your boating needs, but one that comes from a reputable company. Make sure to thoroughly investigate a company before you drop a dime on boat plans.

Get your tools and building accessories. You aren’t going to need anything too exotic. Just a table saw, hand tools and a whole mess of c-clamps will pretty much do it, in addition to basic supplies.

Procure your materials. Some companies will sell you an entire kit that includes all of the materials you need for your boat. You can save some money by just buying plans and then buying your materials separately. Make sure you know what you’re buying, though, as mistakes can be costly here.

Talk to your insurance agent. Once you’ve built the boat, you need to make sure that your investment is protected. Boat insurance rates may differ greatly from a boat that you’ve purchased from someone else. Talk to you agent to find out what coverage will cost.

Photo via paulshaffner

Yet, that’s exactly what scientists uncovered a few years back. This boat is older than the United States. It’s older than ancient Greece. Heck, by most estimates, it predates the Bible. This bolt is even older than Dick Clark.

The boat, which is estimated to be around 7,000 years old, is made of tarry, bitumen-covered slabs. Bitumen is still used today in the Middle East to build boats. It’s crushed with coral and fish oil, and it’s used to create a waterproof seal for boats made from reed bundles. While such technology probably isn’t sufficient to get you boat insurance today, it may have been enough to get the ancient residents of the site where it was found from one end of the known world to the other.

When it was discovered, the side was covered with barnacles. The other side of the boat had impressions of reeds on it. The boat was held and discovered in a stone building at a dig site known as As-Sabiyah.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest boat on record was one found in an Egyptian tomb. That boat was built around 3,000 B.C. There is evidence that other water-going vessels made of logs, much like a log canoe or raft, were built as long as 8,000 years B.C.

The speculation is that these kinds of boats like the one in As-Sabiyah were used to transport both goods and passengers between Mesopotamia, the Central Gulf area, and the dig site itself, which may have been a peninsula on the Tigris and Euphrates at the time.

This theory also explains why pottery made by the ancient Mesopotamians shows up on the western shores of the Persian Gulf. The residents of As-Sabiyah may have been a mixed race of peoples from both Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula.

The kinds of good traded and transported on those boats would have included things like pierced pearls that were used to make jewelry, as well as pottery, bead necklaces, and flint and obsidian stones, as well as livestock and probably fish.

Photo via Dale Gillard

Boating Under the Influence

One area that’s been sort of glossed over, though, is drunk boating. It’s expected, for example, that a guy who goes out fishing for the day is going to drink. You know the old adage: “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll drink a lot of beer.”

This is especially disconcerting, given the fact that the boating environment accelerates the way in which alcohol is likely to impair the drinker. Between the sun, motion, vibrations and engine noise, the boat driver’s body is under stress and fatigue, making her especially susceptible to impairment.

You should also know that it’s always illegal to operate your boat while under the influence in each and every state in the U.S. Federal law also prohibits boating under the influence (BUI). Everything from a paddled canoe to the Exxon Valdes are included in this law, but the way. Canadians take it even more seriously, making it illegal to have alcohol on a boat unless it’s in a separate closed locker.

Not only illegal, but deadly

Drunk boating is serious business. If you have a blood alcohol level higher than .10 percent, you’re ten times as likely to die in a boating accident as a driver with no alcohol in his system. In addition, alcohol consumption can interfere with the inner ear, causing a person who’s drunk and falls into the water to not be able to tell up from down. It’s also estimated that nearly two thirds of boating fatalities are related to alcohol.

Most states, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard, have stepped up alcohol enforcement efforts. The smartest thing to do is just not drink while you boat. In the long run, it can save you legal woes as well as avoid the drastic increase in your boat insurance rates that a BUI conviction is likely to lead to.

Photo via ..kitta..

Your boat name tells a lot about you and about your boat. Take, for example, these famous boat names:

• Privacy. Tiger Woods named his yacht “Privacy.” I assume that we have the paparazzi to thank for this one. Keep in mind that he bought the boat in March, 2006, and it’s rumored that some of his now-famous liaisons may have occurred on the yacht.
• ORCA. The ORCA was the boat captained by Quint in the movie Jaws. Quint (Robert Shaw was the masterful actor who played the character) named his boat for the one creature in nature that hunts sharks (besides human beings). An “Orca” is also known as a “killer whale.”
• The Minnow. You don’t need anyone to tell you who captained this boat, or what the name of its first mate was. The name evokes images of a small fish being batted around in a large ocean, much like the ship of the same name. The “tiny ship was tossed,” after all.
• The Beagle. This was the two-mast sloop that, on its second voyage ever, carried scientist Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands.
• The Olive. This boat was named by a mighty sailor after his lady friend. If you don’t know who it was, I’ll give you a hint: he really, really likes spinach.
• The Bismarck. This boat, which fired on the British ship the HMS Hood in May of 1941, was named for 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the man who was in large part responsible for unifying the various German states.
• The Calypso. This was the ship used by Jacques Cousteau as a mobile sea research laboratory. It’s no coincidence that the ship shares the name with an exotic dance, and urban legend suggests that Cousteau was particularly fond of the dance.
• The USS Enterprise. This was the first aircraft carrier in the world powered with nuclear power. It was also the eighth vessel in the United States Navy to have that name.

Photo via thelastminute

• The Deep Core from The Abyss. OK, I know. The first cool movie boat on this list isn’t even a boat. It’s an underwater oil rig. But, given the stuff that happens, how can you NOT include it on this list? The film is a classing in terms of being able to create a real feel of terror just because it takes place too far damn down the ocean.
• Condorman’s Speedboat from Condorman. Yes, that’s right. Condorman. I get that only a very specific demographic ever saw that film in the theatres, and I was one of them. This speedboat was built by the CIA especially for Condorman. It featured a laser cannon turret on the back of the boat. Lasers, dude. On a speedboat. That just rocks. I wonder how much having lasers on my fishing boat would raise my boat insurance?
• Any Bond Villain Boat. Thunderball and Tomorrow Never Dies both feature awesome villain boats. There is the Disco Volante, Stromberg’s Liparus and the ultra cool stealth boat that, if urban legend proves true, was the real-world Sea Shadow stealth demonstration boat. If they could have put a cool boat in with a Timothy Dalton bond film, maybe it would have made it watchable.
• The Yellow Submarine. That thing could launch giant cigars at its opponents, fly through the air and even time travel. To say nothing of Nowhere Man and his antics. Best line of the film is when Ringo reaches over and pulls a lever that’s clearly marked “DO NOT PULL.” When questioned, he replies, “I can’t help it. I’m a born lever-puller (Liverpooler).”
• The Titanic from, well, take your pick. James Cameron’s version will do, if it must. Somehow, the real-life tragedy of this ship seems to add to the big-screen mystique.
• Honorable Mentions. We could throw in the Q-Boat from the Bond film The World is Not Enough, as well as the HMS Bounty, the arkships from 2012 and the mariner’s boat from Waterworld. We should probably throw a nod to the Poseidon from The Poseidon Adventure (not the remake from last decade. It just can’t compare, no matter how much you love Kurt Russell).

Photo via 37Hz

For example, Luhrs Marine Group (Silverton and Mainship boats) in Millville, NJ, reduced staff from 250 to 97 in 2009 when they only built 72 boats. As a comparison, prior to 2009, they were building 300 to 400 in their Millville plant.

In January of this year, Luhrs rehired 10 workers. They also reported strong traffic and customer interest at the boat shows they’ve exhibited at this winter.

Viking Yacht, Co., in Bass River Township, reduced staff from 1400 to 730 last year. Their executives suggest that they will gradually climb back to full capacity by this time in 2011.

Finally, Egg Harbor Yachts, in Egg Harbor city was down to 10 employees but has hired 5 back so far in 2010.

Boating Industry Statistics

Thom Dammrich, president of The National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA), indicated that sales for boats, engines, trailers and accessories were at $13 billion in 2008. This was a 20% decrease from the prior years. And while the 2009 figures aren’t yet available for release, sales were down 30%. This means that the 2009 revenue is half of what it was in 2007.

In spite of all of that, Dammrich is encouraged by the early signs thus far in 2010. The National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA) said the improvement for the industry is unmistakable.

Photo via sashapo