Please select your home edition
Edition
A+T Instruments 2024 Leaderboard

Calling all boat bimblers! Show us what you've been up to

by The YachtsandYachting.com team 26 Mar 2020 11:30 GMT
'Innuendo' after many layers of varnish © Andrew Wilford

If you have spent the winter engrossed in boat DIY, whether it was small modifications or massive rebuilds, YachtsandYachting.com would love to hear from you. We think it's time to share your story with the world. We'd like to encourage you to submit photos and a few words about what you have been up to in your workshop during the off season. We'd like to publish news of what sailors have been up to.

With racing cancelled, and many of us having time on our hands, it may be that you are just starting to contemplate some work on your pride and joy. Thoughts naturally turn to the boats in our garages, and a few ideas offer themselves up! Please do consider taking some good before-and-after photos, and letting the sailing community know that you've got your hands dirty or how you've solved a problem in a cunning way. It's almost guaranteed you will find a receptive audience at this time.

Your submission can be as simple as a few photos emailed to but ideally we'd love you to write a little about what you've done and the challenges you faced. If writing makes you feel daunted then please leave your phone number so we can have a chat to get some information to accompany your photos.

Videos are always welcomed - it's not a contest to be the fanciest, but it's great to show your hard work from every angle. Or perhaps the photos belie the hard work that was required to get to the end result, so do explain this to us, and we can edit your story if you worry that your writing skills are not immediately publishable.

If you have gone so far as to write your own blog all about your repairs, renovations or inventions, we'd love to see that too. Last year we followed James Sainsbury building his foiling Moth Valkyrie, but you don't have to be getting fancy with carbon fibre to deserve a mention; we'd love to see all levels of work, on all sorts of boats both faster and slower.

If you want to get started on a new project, don't despair at the lack of chandlers open for browsing. Internet orders are still being processed by the main companies you are familiar with, although some have a small delay due to staffing problems.

So, please, email photos/videos/links and a little explanation to and we'd love to share your hard work to the nation.

Get your hands dirty, pimp that ride, and tell us all about it!

Related Articles

So much more than records and statistics
The way the Vendée Globe record was demolished was astounding The way the Vendée Globe record was demolished was astounding. Armel Le Cléac'h's mark of 74 days, 3 hours, 36 minutes had stood for eight years, with the 2020-21 winner of the race, Yannick Bestaven, taking just over 6 days longer to complete the course. Posted on 22 Jan
XR 41 World Premiere at boot Düsseldorf 2025
X-Yachts CEO Kræn B. Nielsen presides over the big reveal The XR 41 is one of the most exciting race yachts for 2025, and we were at the World Premiere on Saturday 18th January at boot Düsseldorf. Posted on 18 Jan
Safety first (like DRRR)
Safety first was definitely the first rule of the sea, as explained to me when I was young Safety first was definitely the first rule of the sea, as explained to me when I was young. You know, one hand for you, one hand for the boat, and so forth. Nothing has changed, but what of the regulations surrounding it all? Posted on 12 Jan
Oldest videos from the London Boat Show
Now-classic craft and never-seen-again inventions from 1955 to 1979 Do you remember the early days of the London Boat Show, when it was at Olympia or Earl's Court each January? As that time of year rolls around again, we can take a look into our video archive and round-up the earliest newsreels that covered the event. Posted on 12 Jan
Flying start to 2025
An embarrassment of riches for sailing fans Happy New Year to you all! The beginning of 2025 is an embarrassment of riches for sailing fans, with a cornucopia of events to follow, ranging from offshore yachts around the world to traditional dinghies. Posted on 6 Jan
Olympic sailing videos part 2
Yachting footage from the 1970s to 1990s Games As 2024 draws to a close, we decided to look back on this Olympic year with a summary of all the oldest Olympic sailing videos we could find, from the analogue era before the year 2000. Here we cover the Seventies through to the Nineties. Posted on 1 Jan
Olympic sailing videos part 1
Yachting footage from the 1920s to 1960s Games As 2024 draws to a close, we decided to look back on this Olympic year with a summary of all the oldest Olympic sailing videos we could find, from the analogue era before the year 2000. We start with the Twenties and go through to the Sixties. Posted on 29 Dec 2024
Publicise your open event to thousands of readers
Get your class/club fixture list into the YachtsandYachting.com calendar As Winter draws to a close, the beauty sleep of event coordinators everywhere becomes more and more disturbed. For fixtures lists will soon be published on club and class websites up and down the country. Posted on 22 Dec 2024
Make me smile
Smiles and cash can always do amazing things. No cash, no splash, after all… Manly's pathway to progress looked at a way to attract and keep youth in sailing. Nice. Really nice. Now, what to do when you cannot replicate such a successful model? Posted on 15 Dec 2024
Firefly dinghy videos from the 1980s and 90s
It's time to dig into the archives again, one year after our first ever video feature It's time to dig into the video archives a second time, a year after our first ever video feature, which happened to be on 1950s Firefly sailing. But this time all we can find is from the 1980s and 90s! Posted on 15 Dec 2024