5 Gift ideas your sailor

Christmas and the holidays are right around the corner. Here are 5 recommend gifts for you sailor to keep them safe out on the water.

1. Personal safety: Personal Flotation Devices

WEST MARINE - Coastal Automatic Inflatable Life Jacket

2. Crew safety: Man-Overboard Recovery

LIFESLING - Lifesling2 Overboard Rescue System

3. Footwear: (Yes, Sperry is a crew favorite!)

SPERRY- Men's Sea Kite Sailing Shoes

4. Signaling: Flares and accesories

ORION - Inland Locator® Plus 4 Marine Flare Kit

5. Communications: Handheld VHF Radio 

WEST MARINE - VHF160 Floating 6W Handheld VHF Radio

ICOM - M93D Floating Handheld VHF Radio with GPS and DSC

Lifesling2 "Installed"

It took me longer to remove the old horseshoe buoy mount than “installing” the new Lifesling2. All I had to do was hang the Lifesling2 on the stern rail and secure the flap with velco on the vertical and horizontal rail section. Then tied the retrieval line to the stern rail base. One key note from the manual is to “mount the bag inside of the stern railing or pulpit”. I have seen several creative mounting location and methods on various boats. Next is practice! Then we can decide if the Lifesling Hoisting Tackle is necessary. 

Brought the new battery out to Nauti-Dog and installed it in it’s box. I purchased a West Marine Dual Purpose battery as the house battery for the electronics. While I was under the cockpit I measured all the wire lengths required for the second battery and switch. Also started the Yanmar for the first time in 10 days. It started fine and pumped plenty of water. Also did some general tidying up too. One of the other things I tried today was to find a way to transfer waypoints from the laptop to Raymarine MFD. Unfortunately I did have any success so I manually entered a few to start.

West Marine Black Friday

West Marine has Black Friday deals too! I stopped by to take advantage of the savings. Now through a mixtures auto/manual inflatable and traditional foam PFDs Nauti-Dog  has enough PFDs for the crew to wear.