3 Boat HACKS you NEED to KNOW | Living La Vida Broka

[Music] what's up youtubes James here from sailing zingara and there are over 200 boats in this anchorage behind me I wonder how many of them know the three little hacks that I'm gonna teach you guys right now I hope a lot of them because these are three really cool boat hacks that are cheap they'll make your boat safer and they'll save you some money we're gonna start with my personal favorite technique [Music] so if you've never seen a soft shackle this is what I'm talking about this is one piece of rope that's been braided and spliced so as to take the head knot and put it through a slipknot like so that makes a very very strong synthetic shackle if you're interested in making these yourself I've put together a video about a year ago on Dyneema and I explained exactly step-by-step how to go through that I'm gonna link that right here so if you haven't seen that it would behoove you to learn that skill it's not hard it takes about 10 minutes just go ahead and click up here watch this video and come back I'll be waiting for you right here [Music] [Applause] okay cool now was that now that you know how to make a soft shackle and how to work with Dyneema let's talk about the pros and cons and compare the two now obviously there's the one big difference where these are chafe proof and these obviously aren't so there are instances where you're going to want to use a hard shackle if there's any hard edges such as on your anchors so I'm sitting here inside my secondary anchor Locker to show you guys an application where you would want to use a regular steel shackle and that is on the anchor if you can see on the end of this anchor it's gonna hold milled into it and the sides of this hole are very sharp so if you were to try to use a soft shackle to connect the chain while this anchor is underwater and moving around you're more than likely going to chafe through that we use a hard shackle instead voila now you get this protection from the chafing with the hard steel shackle this is also a rare instance where you can actually use both types of shackles in the same application just for redundancy for the application of chain to rope if you're using a thimble and splicing the rope like so you can use both soft and hard shackles just for a backup and that's how I do it that's that works really well for me there's also a few pros and cons that aren't so readily apparent for instance the soft shackle doesn't make any noise when it's banged around on the deck which makes a big difference if you use any block deck connections such as spinnaker sheets jib sheets something that's constantly moving in the on the boat or in the wind using a soft shackle will greatly reduce the noise also these are much stronger for the same diameter this will hold up my entire boat this not so much when these hard shackles fail usually what happens is something will pull at an angle that's not straight on to this and it will end up bending and opening up that doesn't happen with the soft shackle when these things fail the not usually inverts and if something's pulling strong enough it'll pull the knot out and it'll slip off that way but you don't have to worry about this thing turning and getting cockeyed like you do with a regular shackle another good thing about these soft shackles is you can make them as long or as short as you want to use the formula I gave you in the video and make them as long as you want to fit around different things or to fit into custom applications and that is very nice with these you need to buy hundreds of them to have all of the different sizes and strengths that you need with these all you need to do is have one roll of Dyneema and make them accordingly another con with these is when they do fail they tend to explode and send shrapnel everywhere with these when they fail they don't explode they just part just like a regular line so the danger area is only if you're touching it overall guys I find that the more people I talk to that I've been cruising longer tend to use these soft shackles so save yourself the trouble save yourself the headache and start learning them now and you're gonna be ahead of the curve they're just better they're easier to use they're easier for more applications they're a little bit stronger than the steel ones they don't explode as easy as the steel ones and you can see when they are weakening and when they are chafing and you can just replace it alright that's enough about Dyneema everybody knows I'm crazy about Dyneema these things are great use them boat hack won over this brings us to boat hack number two butyl tape so this is a roll of 50 feet of butyl tape what butyl tape is is a vetting compound that comes in in tape form but you can actually just rip off pieces of it take it off the back of the table these are said than done okay come on buddy come on so just peel it off the paper backing and then you can use it as kind of a bubblegum material just squish it together it's moldable it's very UV resistant and it's great great great as a bedding compound I'll show you what I mean okay so I'm gonna rebid this with butyl tape this is just an eyebolt that I set up next to my anchor windlass so I can tie a rope onto this and hold my chain while I'm getting my bridle set up I bedded this with 5,200 that was before I knew about butyl tape it's very important when you use butyl tape that you countersink all the holes this is a three-bladed countersink bit I'm gonna put that in there and I'm going to countersink these holes before I put the butyl tape on what that does is it flares the outside of the hole where it meets the deck and it's not a 90 degree angle so some of that butyl tape can stay in there and get smooshed in there and it doesn't doesn't pinch so hard that it comes all the way out and if done right this stuff lasts for 40 years plus so once you do this and you countersink it it should last forever you should never have to read that it [Music] and now this which I pulled off which is excess is now reusable on something else this is boat hack number three air-conditioning duct insulation it comes in a sheet it's very cheap and you can do the weather stripping on your entire boat at least twice with this whole sheet in comparison to this weather stripping that you buy at the marine store for three dollars a foot this stuff is 1/100 of the price great stuff look how thin this stuff is no I mean it's crazy thin nothing left it's not gonna so what we did was we bought yes and this is the same stuff it's just not cut and it's actually a little bit it's a little bit heavier yeah it's about the same as closed cell foam but this stuff's like $10 for a little little roll of it this stuff was like 10 bucks for a huge sheet I mean I could do the whole boat twice with this so we're just gonna put a straight edge on it lay it flat use a razor and cut it into big sections and then cement it on it's kind of like beautiful when it's done so now I just wow that's way thicker than the stuff that we had before yeah waiting but that's what I need yeah bonus boat hack number four is actually sponsored content this is called the Barracuda pro by army tech these guys sent me this flashlight and overall I'm very pleased with it it's one of the brighter search lights I've ever seen and it makes a great dinghy flashlight this thing is way too bright for the boat but if you screw this up underneath the seat of your dinghy you can always have a flashlight in your dinghy left hands driving right hand is over your head with a really powerful searchlight they say 800 meters I don't know how to measure that but it goes a long way the only problem with this thing is it chews through batteries really fast if you have it on high it'll eat both lithium-ion batteries in about 10 minutes so it's good for one trip with the dinghy and then you got to charge it again but as far as searchlights you don't have a lot of options there's those big huge million candlepower plug-in kinds or the ones with the huge batteries or this guy here which is sleek and you can use it as a dive light too overall I'm very impressed we use it in the dinghy all the time Barracuda pro army tech check it out thanks for watching my video guys these three things are all things that I learned along the way and I wish I would have known them when I left so that's why I'm teaching them to you they're all things that make your built more seaworthy and they're all cheap and easy ways to make your life more comfortable if you guys have any of the same things please leave them in the comments below I'd love to learn more I'm always willing to learn and keep an open mind thanks for watching much love until next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Sailing Zingaro

Views: 56,523

Keywords: svzingaro, zingaro, sailing zingaro, svzingaro kim, sailing, catamaran, adventure vlog, sailing around the world, adventure, sexy, catamaran sailing, sailing channel, traveling the world, traveling around the world, travel the world by sailboat, sailing around the world on a catamaran, hacks, sailboat hacks, sailboat tips, boating tips, diy, do it yourself, lvb, la vida broka, living la vida broka, tips and tricks, boat tricks

Id: h_kZ-ds-V-k

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019