What boat expenditure have people found particularly worthwhile?

For us, there have been two recent purchases. The first was the addition of amidships cleats, which has made going on to a pontoon a much simpler manoeuvre: we can come in with one mooring line attached to the amidships cleat, and once we’ve got in on to a cleat on the pontoon, it can bring the boat to a complete stop without either bow or stern being able to swing out under the action of wind or tide. Since we had very little stopping power astern (see below), this has been particularly good. Once we’re attached, the fore and aft lines and springs then go on as usual. We do, of course, need the pontoon to have cleats at sufficiently close spacing, but we’ve found (in admittedly limited experience) that marina pontoons generally do.

The second purchase is a sail drive propeller for the Tohatsu 9.8hp outboard engine that drives Miss Fidget. For the last five years, we’ve had a propeller which gave us good forward propulsion but only a very limited thrust in reverse. At low revs, Miss Fidget would go slowly astern, so we could manoeuvre if we were sheltered from the wind, with little tide. If we increased the revs, there was a huge increase in the disturbance in the water, with absolutely no increase in backward speed! This weekend, we fitted a sail drive prop recommended by Tohatsu, and we used the engine more than on any previous sailing trip, so it was a very good test. Performance forward seemed as good as with the previous prop, tested by more than three hours motor sailing into a fairly strong wind from Chichester to Portsmouth. Performance astern was a transformation! We came up to our swinging mooring in a Force 5, and, at Tim Reeder’s suggestion (many thanks, Tim), were able to motor slowly astern at fairly high revs in to the teeth of the wind to pick up the buoy in complete control, without a white water whirlpool around the prop!

It would be very interesting to hear of other people’s additions/changes and whether you think they’re worthwhile. The two we’ve made definitely have been.

Gilliane


Miss Fidget, Super Seal 26, no. 69

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Gilliane

Interesting to note the addition of midship cleats. Sometimes when coming alongside at our marina berth it doesn’t go as smoothly as we would hope. I was reading the latest PBO the other weekend and it had an article in its’ series about getting in and out of ‘Britain’s trickiest berths’, although this months was Plymouth it bore a close similarity to my own. Their main methods relied on having a midship cleat.

Though not really a purchase as it came with the boat but was not fitted is a traveller – discussed under the topic ‘JP Morgan RTIR’ – but this has certainly proved worthwhile. I did make it easier for the crew by changing from a 2:1 to a 4:1 purchase on the car.

I have made some improvements in running the lines back from the mast and also fitted spinlock cam cleats on the kicker and pole up/dn instead of using the coach roof clutches. The kicker is now double ended and the cleats are positioned so they can be adjusted from the rail or cockpit on either side. I really like this style of cam cleat and I think it makes controlling the lines easier so I would class it as worthwhile, especially as I managed to buy some of the older style PX ones at a significant saving.

I have also changed the log/depth and wind instruments with a nice set of tackticks. The old log display was full of water and the mast head wind sensor had fallen off before I bought the boat. Seem to work fine and were a doddle to fit.

When servicing my engine I noticed the lower oil pipe was rusty due to a leak from one of the cooling water hoses, a quick search on the internet revealed this to be a potential and common failure point so I replaced the oil pipe with a hose – the hose was a lot cheaper than the Yanmar pipe and not subject to rusting.


Jon Foreman
Calypso SS26, no.96

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Hello Gilliane, I like things that work well:
1) Sail stacker
2) My bbq www.sonofhibachionline.com 
3) Camcleat for rudder downhaul that releases under pressure
http://www.quayleisure.c...Models.aspx?ModelID=1380 
4) Mid ship cleats (agreed!)
5) Ram-mount attachment for instruments on the coach roof.www.ram-mount.co.uk
6) Tacktick wind instrument
7) Automatic timed air fresher in the heads(cheap in supermarkets)
8) String bags (from a dive shop) to hold mooring lines. One bag for regular lines, another for extras (like shore lines). No tangles and easy to remove a bunch of lines at once either to dry them or to get to something
9) Ankarolina - flat line on a spool - for easy kedge work
Cheers! Ken

Ken Surplice
Commodore

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Hi Gilliane

I wholeheartedly agree about the amidships cleats, which have taken much of the hard work out of marina berthing, especially short- or single-handed. The other recent purchase for which I am profoundly thankful, although not strictly an addition to Tiptoe Too's inventory, was folding dinghy wheels for my inflatable. Tiptoe's now moored off the Westlands hard at the eastern end of Itchenor Reach and at low water it's an affa' long way to hump the dinghy without 'em!

Graham Ellison
Tiptoe Too
SS26 no 6

Hello Graham, hello Gilliane,
I have been hunting for mid-ships cleats that can be fastened to the toe-rail, in the hope of avoiding both the need to fit them through-deck and creating a toe snubber!
How have are your midships cleats fitted?
[ Meantime, I clip my spinnaker sheet snatch blocks to the toe rail & lead a mooring line back to the cockpit... ]
and Graham, I'll look out for you next season as I too am moored off Westlands during the summer.
Much against my aesthetic sensibilities, I've just acquired a Plastimo 210 grey polypropylene tender with enormous built-in stern wheel as I too can't face the long haul back up the hard with the empty trolley at low water springs
Geoff

Geoff Sheddick
Parker 27/146 "Stroller'

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Hi Geoff

http://www.mailspeedmari...e-rail-cleat532689.bhtml 

As far as fitting them is concerned, I seem to remember that the oval cutouts in the toerail weren't quite the right spacing to allow me simply to put both the bolts straight through the toerail cutouts. Also the top-to-bottom height of the cleat is such that the cleat's bolts are very slightly too high to feed straight through the cutouts, so a bit of very careful drilling is required.

When researching them on the internet I found a couple of folks saying they didn't like the idea and that Beneteau didn't recommend them because they thought the loads might pull bits of the boat off. There seemed to be plenty of others of the opposite opinion, though, and I've had no problems with mine at all.

See you on the water or wheeling a dinghy up the ramp!

Graham,
Thanks - they're exactly what I had in was looking for - except for the £140/pair price!
Hmm...maybe I'll just put up with the extra chore of rigging the snatch blocks when I'm on my own...

Geoff Sheddick
Parker 27/146 "Stroller'

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True - they are a bit pricey! Now I come to think of it I seem to remember reading something somewhere (yachting magazine? another online forum? not sure where...) about a chap who made his own from hardwood suitably fashioned to the right shape, and again simply bolted to the toerail.

The correct spring cleat for fitting on a 285 or 335 toerail is a Holt YS9185

http://www.holtnautos.co...m/detail.asp?line=spring 

Bob

Hi Geoff

When we first started thinking about midships cleats, we tried to get a feel for how useful they'd be by fastening a line to the jib sheet car, and using this to make fast on the pontoon. We were so pleased by how well it worked that we decided to fit proper cleats the following winter. We thought about toe-rail cleats, but when we bought Miss Fidget, she was very wet inside, due to leaks all along the toerails and at the stanchions. We had her dried out and resealed, and this experience has made us very wary about doing anything that might damage the seal and start her leaking again. We therefore rejected the idea of the toerail cleats, though not because of structural concerns. We had deck cleats professionally fitted, which wasn't particularly cheap (I don't remember how much), but the cleats themselves were considerably cheaper than the toe rail variety. We haven't had any toe-stubbing problems, either.

In fact, since removing all our winches this season for thorough cleaning, I'm now preparing to replace them. If that goes well, I'll probably try adding an extra deck cleat for our furling line - and if that works alright, I would recommend that you fitted deck cleats yourself!

Gilliane



Miss Fidget, Super Seal 26, no. 69

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Thanks for the info, Gilliane.

Geoff Sheddick
Parker 27/146 "Stroller'

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"At low revs, Miss Fidget would go slowly astern, so we could manoeuvre if we were sheltered from the wind, with little tide. If we increased the revs, there was a huge increase in the disturbance in the water, with absolutely no increase in backward speed!"

I had the same experience in a 235, however the reverse effect. The saildrive propelor on the Tohatsu 8 was such a low pitch that I was over-reving the engine and wasting fuel so I fitted a higher pitch propelor which is excellent in forward (a smaller boat perhaps) but terrible in reverse. Ideally I would want a higher pitch propellor with flatter blades, I think it is the large blade camber which ruins the astern performance.

http://freespace.virgin....james.hamilton/forum.jpg 

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Another brilliant purchase... tools this time:

http://www.toolbox.co.uk/sealey...-oil-filter-14471-104759 .....

..... which turns the secondary fuel filter change on Tiptoe's BZ482 (where the filter's in a horribly awkward location - what were Beta thinking when they put it down there?) from an exercise in skinned knuckles, brute force and profanity into a five-minute breeze conducted to the contented humming of a happy sailor's song!

With just one bow cleat, and one stern cleat each side, we've often found it difficult to get mooring lines and springs on efficiently, without them getting in each other's way. We've recently found a very simple and effective solution, attaching a mooring ring with a soft shackle. This is used for the spring, and the cleat is used for the bow or stern line. The photos show the aft cleat with the ring, and the bow cleat with a doubled bow line and a doubled spring line. (Our pontoon is quite exposed, so we're recommended to double up mooring lines.)



The 8cm eye length shackles cost £4.95 each, and the 80mm diameter stainless steel rings cost £3.27 from eBay, with £4.05 post and packing. We think this is good value and we've been very pleased with the arrangement.

Gilliane


Miss Fidget, Super Seal 26, no. 69

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