Sailboat Tools

I didn’t used to bring tools on the boat.

I always had a Leatherman, some duct tape, and a can of WD-40, which is kind of the MacGyver Mirepoix, but I didn’t have dedicated boat tools. If I needed to work on something, I’d bring the necessary tools from home—although what seemed necessary during the planning phase often proved inadequate once I was contorted upside down into some dark hatch with sweat running into my eyes, mildly bleeding, and swearing as if I were being paid by the word. I’d have to shimmy out and make a wild-eyed plea along the lines of “Jen, there is no tomorrow. If I don’t buy a [tool that I already own] before the store closes, we’re never going to sail.”

Eventually, I bought enough duplicates in this manner that it started to make sense to just get a tool bag and keep them on the boat.

Today is the vernal equinox, and I felt like I should be thinking about boat things, but given the “wintery mix” that’s going on out there, it’s not exactly bottom painting weather. Just to feel productive, I decided to pull everything out of my boat tool bag and give it a light coating of rust-inhibiting (I hope) lanolin.

I don’t make any claim that these are the best or remotely appropriate tools for a sailboat, but it’s what I happen to be carrying at the moment.

Roughly from left to right along the top row, I have:

• soft face hammer
• claw hammer: I’d like to upgrade this to a ball-peen at some point, since I rarely pull nails on the boat.
• pop rivet gun: Not to be confused with the marina’s “Big Daddy” rivet gun.
• LED flashlight
• wire strippers
• ratcheting wire crimper: Yeah, it’s from Harbor Freight, but it has the machined dies and still gets the Maine Sail Seal of Approval (with an asterisk for high variability.)
• ratchet set
• keyhole hack saw
• Loos Gauges: For ballparking rigging tension. I need to carry two because my boat has two different gauges of wire which happen to span the gauges.
• horrible stuffing box wrench: This thing is garbage. Does anyone make a nice one?
• soft tool bag: My Gorilla tape has a loop of paracord going through the roll, which is clipped to a carabiner on the bag.

Middle-ish row:

• center punch: I have no idea why I have this in here?
• scratch awl: Used mostly for stabbing myself while looking for other tools.
• razor blade holder
• wrench set: metric and imperial
• mechanical pencils (2)
• hex bits

Bottom row:

• Big honkin’ screwdriver
• assortment of normal screwdrivers: both flat and Phillips, various sizes
• offset screwdriver: very handy when you need to get to an obnoxious place
• hex driver
• crescent wrenches (2): I need two for adjusting the rig.
• Vise Grips: standard, needle nose, and Fuzzy Bunny-sized
• pliers: regular (AKA “plars”), needle nose
• Channellocks: one small, bobo; one large, genuine Channellock brand

Honorable Mention (i.e., not shown):

• Fluke 87 multimeter: I was tired of messing around with junk meters.
• full-sized standard hack saw
• oil filter wrench
• Extremely Large Channellocks: Jen only refers to these as “The Dinosaur.”
• Speedy Stitcher: Previously, uh, reviewed/set to poetry here.
• whipping twine
• stainless steel bailing wire
• ~20 pounds of stainless nuts, bolts, rigging parts, wire terminals, cotter pins, and assorted paraphernalia.

This is, of course, all subject to change the next time I find myself in a losing game of Twister somewhere under my engine in dire need of a muffler bearing wrench or whatever, but for now, this collection mostly keeps me from having to hammer in screws with a winch handle.

Please leave a comment if I’m missing anything obvious (or just to shower adulation.)

Now let’s get back to the more spring-like weather.