November 29, 2006: Seagoing Tools
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

"What do you consider the most important of all the tools you must carry?'' We asked this of a seasoned cruiser who has travelled untold miles worldwide on a boat that he and his wife and kids built in their orchard. He replied without a moment's hesitation, "A knife and fork." We certainly agree that cooking and eating utensils are the most used and useful tools of all: cutlery, a can opener, a whisk for beating eggs, a spatula, a wooden spoon or two, knives of various kinds, and so on. We value our garlic crusher almost as much as our lime squeezer. In with our galley tools we carry a diamond knife sharpener (handier to use than having to dig out an oil stone) and a B.O.N.K. (a macadamia nut cracker), a wonderful wee tool to have if you need it.

Favorite galley tools.

As for tools for mechanical, woodworking, electrical, painting, and plumbing tasks, we carry an array of all of those. Needs must. We are more often than not in out-of-the-way places without plumbers, mechanics, electricians, ship's chandleries or hardware stores. It is difficult to say which of the tools we carry are most important to us. When we need something, we usually have to be able to put our hands on it NOW, and it has to be exactly the right one for the job - which is not to say that we cannot improvise and bodge a tool if the worst comes to the worst. Which are the ones most used? Vice grips in any of three sizes. Screwdrivers from minuscule to monstrous, depending on the job, and of various types - standard, Allen and Phillips. Spanners and wrenches - both metric and imperial. Hand drills - manual, and electric. We never know what we might need. Not long ago when Michel used his largest seldom-used Stilson pipe wrench to disassemble the exhaust pipe so as to put on our spare, he actually bent the German-made monster out of shape after extending its handle with a piece of pipe and a crow bar, before resorting to cutting into the offending elbow with a hack saw, then spreading it with a chisel and hammer in order to get it off. Later he managed to press the pipe wrench back into shape by using the vice in the hold. Without any one of those tools, the job could have taken far longer.

Some oddball tools we consider essential though we seldom use them. For instance, a stethoscope is extremely useful to trace an elusive engine knock or whine or squeak. Bolt cutters are carried by all cruising boats in case dismasting necessitates cutting away the rigging. One of the few things ours has been used for in all these years, other than for re-rigging the boat, was to cut off my wedding ring when my knuckles got knobbly. I lay on the cabin sole while Michel managed to operate successfully without removing the finger. Tin snips are handy for improvising spare parts and specialized tools. Our frequently used hand-operated Singer sewing machine is a most wonderful tool enabling us to fashion our own upholstery, sail covers, convertible tops and wind indicators, doing repairs and mending and dozens of other jobs. An old-fashioned bow-shaped hand-saw we use only when we choose to gather dead snags for our wood-burning heater, something we've not done for some time. A dear friend invented what he calls a Swypa - a useful tool cleverly designed to reseal reluctant Zip-Lock plastic bags by swiping them between its two wooden fingers.

Swypa.

We are booked to haul out shortly. There are other tools that will be called on then - favourite paint scrapers, a broom handle to screw on our paint roller to apply anti-fouling, and most importantly our one-off magic tool for scrubbing the bits off the hull that the water blaster missed - to name just a few.

If a laptop can be considered a tool it is one of our most used ones. We use it for everything from correspondence to developing, sorting, displaying and emailing our photographs. Now that we have a Vodem Dongle, enabling us to go online from whatever the anchorage, we can browse the Internet and waste hours of our time most happily. As for the GPS, it has replaced the sextant in a most elegant and astonishing way. But our old oven timers, both mechanical and digital, are perhaps the most important of all our navigation tools. They not only help to keep us alert on watch at sea, but increasingly importantly, they remind us when it is time to do various tasks that might otherwise be forgotten. The day we forget what the task is we'll call it a day.