Sailing Gear and Resources

Listings are generally in alphabetical order. Comments in quotes are from manufacturers' sites or from members. The appearance of any link here does not imply JRA endorsement.

Drogues

U.S.Coast Guard Report - Series Drogue - "Investigation of The Use of Drogues To Improve The Safety of Sailing Vessels" (Statement, Table of Contents, List of Illustrations.) 

In Lin & Larry Pardeys' archives there's a  note on Series drogue retrieval - Can They Work Like Para-anchors?  

The Jordan Series Drogue 'is a safety device designed to prevent the capsize and damage of both monohull and multihull sailing yachts and other vessels operating in the open ocean, in the event of a 'worst case' breaking wave strike, as well as improving the motion of the boat in storm waves and to reduce drift.' Click here for a pdf about it, and here for a letter from Donald Jordan explaining load factors.

Click here for Oceanbrake Series Drogues.

David Lynn, of Nine of Cups , writes a voluminous and detailed technical article on DIY series drogues suitable for various boats.

Sailrite Series Drogue Kits are available for different boat sizes.

Series Drogue Construction - Make Your Own Series Drogue Sea Anchor YouTube video.  (DIYers may want to jot down dimensions at the beginning of the vid. Drogues vary in line size and cone number; cones always remain the same size. - Ed.)

Wally Bryant has a detailed DIY Jordan-style series drogue project with good pictures and text.

GENERAL FORUM - Discussions about Drogues


Folding Dinghies - Commercial
K-2 Stowaway - 'The versatile family sailing dinghy.' 

Porta-Bote - 'The World's Most Portable boat. Over 90,000 in use worldwide.'

ShoreBase features a Prout Puffin, a semi-collapsible dinghy.

Seahopper  from Wellington, Somerset UK is 'the world's no.1 foldaway sailing and rowing boat!'


Folding Dinghies - DIY
The Barquito folding dinghy - A folding dinghy/rowboat from the gang at Duckworks Magazine.

Craft a Craft's Flapdoodle - is a 'no-nonsense rigid hardwood and ply 8 foot folding classic dinghy designed as a sail boat with a centerboard/daggerboard and flip-up rudder'.

The Micro folding dinghy is one of Matt Layden's early folding dinghies; 1/4" (6mm) plywood, cloth hinges, vinyl ends. The site had offsets and sketches.

Wooden Widget has plans for the Origami, a 6' or 8' folding dinghy; Stasha, a nesting dinghy, and Deckster, a hard dink stowable around the mast.

Foul Weather Gear

Grundens is 'The Professional Choice in Foulweather Gear since 1926' - Grundens USA, LTD  •  PO Box 2068  •  Poulsbo, WA 98370  •  800.323.7327  

Flags

The Flag Company - 'The Flag Company, Inc. carries the largest supply of flags on the web. Our expansive inventory includes all types of the American flagstate flagscountry flags, and even pirate flags. If you're looking for flags of the world, we have every country.' They also do flagpoles in aluminimu or fibreglass - look in the  Flagpole Pages

iPad Gear

GPSCITY and RAM Mounting Systems for iPad mounting systems.

Try Googling 'waterproof iPad mounts'.

Self Steering

The Cape Horn windvane from Cape Horn Marine Products

The Monitor windvane is from Scanmar International 

Flemmings' mechanical self-steering is from here.

Hydrovane's windvane site is here     

Windpilot's servo pendulum self-steering gear fits most transoms. The site includes a free download of 'SELF-STEERING UNDER SAIL - Autopilots and Wind-steering Systems by Peter Christian Förthmann'

Walt Murray's Self-Steering Designs webpages are available here

John S Letcher jr books were available for download from the jesterinfo.org site until it was replaced, and can still (Feb 2018) be found on web archive.

Tenders

K-2 Stowaway - 'The versatile family sailing dinghy.' 

Porta-Bote - 'The World's Most Portable boat. Over 90,000 in use worldwide.'

ShoreBase features a Prout Puffin, a semi-collapsible dinghy.

Seahopper  from Wellington, Somerset UK is 'the world's no.1 foldaway sailing and rowing boat!'

The Barquito folding dinghy - A folding dinghy/rowboat from the gang at Duckworks Magazine.

Craft a Craft's Flapdoodle - is a 'no-nonsense rigid hardwood and ply 8 foot folding classic dinghy designed as a sail boat with a centerboard/daggerboard and flip-up rudder'.

The Micro folding dinghy is one of Matt Layden's early folding dinghies; 1/4" (6mm) plywood, cloth hinges, vinyl ends. The site had offsets and sketches.

Wooden Widget has plans for the Origami, a 6' or 8' folding dinghy; Stasha, a nesting dinghy, and Deckster, a hard dink stowable around the mast.

GENERAL FORUM - Discussions about Tenders

Tracking Systems

Dolink

YellowBrick 

InReach has been used by several members over the last few years

Traveller Systems (Sheets)

One of our members (Roy Denton) made such an impression on Barton Marine re replacing the sheet traveller systems on his Freedom Ying Zhou's junk conversion. Good to hear of a company taking a real interest.

Windvane Self-steering

The Cape Horn windvane from Cape Horn Marine Products

The Monitor windvane is from Scanmar International 

Flemmings' mechanical self-steering is from here.

Hydrovane's windvane site is here     

Windpilot's servo pendulum self-steering gear fits most transoms. The site includes a free download of 'SELF-STEERING UNDER SAIL - Autopilots and Wind-steering Systems by Peter Christian Förthmann'

John S Letcher jr books were available for download from the jesterinfo.org site until it was replaced, and can still (Feb 2018) be found on web archive.

Other

Soft shackles: L-36.com has a wealth of technical articles, not the least of which are a variety of "soft shackles".