Dear Boat Doctor,  I am taking my boat to Grenada and would really like to be able run an air conditioner. I have read about the new efficient air conditioners that you can run from an inverter.

Dear Boat Doctor, I am doing some maintenance on my old electric Barient winches. I have taken down the manual parts of the winches, and I am pretty clear on how to clean and lubricate those parts. I

Dear Boat Doctor, I own a Caliber 40 and have been working my way down the Windward Islands, planning to spend hurricane season in Grenada. The trip has been great, but we’ve been caught a little o

There are times on every boat when you need to send someone aloft. This is almost never convenient, but it’s a necessity and one in which safety needs to be a priority. Fortunately, the days of a pl

Dear Boat Doctor, My Selden boom vang doesn’t seem to hold up my boom any more. It was OK before I installed the main, but now the boom just sags. For now, I have resigned myself to holding up the

Dear Boat Doctor, I have owned my Tartan 37 for more than 25 years, first on freshwater and now in the Chesapeake and the Bahamas. I love saltwater, but it is eating my boat. What can I do to keep th

Spring cleaning is a ritual, but when it comes to boats it’s often a necessity. Before you launch for the season is often the only and best opportunity to get a boat sparkling clean. But that kind o

Dear Boat Doctor, We stored our boat on the hard in Puerto Rico and launched after hurricane season. When we put the boat back in the water, I had a rigger help me re-install the sails. When I went t

Dear Boat Doctor, I recently upgraded the alternator on my Yanmar 4JH2DTE and things aren’t going smoothly. It is a Balmar 100A alternator with a Max Charge alternator. The alternator is working gr

Dear Boat Doctor, I installed a Frigoboat keel-cooled system a few years ago. The system worked amazingly well until last summer when I noticed that it would cool down very nicely if the icebox was w

Upgrading cockpit canvas Canvas can add a lot of creature comfort to a boat. It helps keep sailors warm and dry and provides relief from the beating sun. But that same canvas can be a real bother s

Dear Boat Doctor, Every couple days the shore power breaker on the dock blows when my boat is connected to it. This started happening when the marina replaced the power pedestals. How do I know if th

In about a decade, Dyneema (sometimes called Spectra, both are trade names for the same material) has gone from a gee whiz high-tech marvel to common place on many boats. It started out replacing wire

Dear Boat Doctor,I am having a problem with a black water smell in the bilge. Well at least I am pretty sure it’s a black water smell, I don’t really know. Do you some ideas how I can diagnose my

 How do I fix a failed fiberglass repair? Dear Boat Doctor, I need some advice on a failing fiberglass repair at my keel stub joint. There is a crack that appears to be the result of repair tha

Dear Boat Doctor, My winches desperately need to be lubricated, and it’s been more than a few years since I’ve done it. A friend told me to use wheel bearing grease but cautioned me not to use it

Dear Boat Doctor, I just bought a new-to-me Beneteau 40 with a PSS dripless prop shaft seal. I appreciate the dry bilge, but those little set screws holding the sealing collar in place make me nervou

I recently bought a Passport 47, and it’s in really good shape but a bit of the running rigging is tired. I need to replace the mainsheet and I have questions on the running backstays. First off, what type of line should I use for the mainsheet? It is just regular double braid now and the guy at the chandlery suggested Dyneema, so I am not sure what to use. Second, the boat has running backstays, do I need to use those all the time? They are made of wire and hard to handle, they tend to rub on my nice new mainsail too. Can you shed some light on this?