Delivering the Commander 27
On April 10, 2015, Tony Bianco, JB, and I departed Riverside Marina in Fort Pierce, Florida, and headed north. I had restored JB—a 1965 Chris-Craft Commander 27—for Bianco over the… Read more »
Repair
Turning the Infrared Camera On
When you see smoke filling the engineroom in the video above, you know right away that something’s wrong. But you don’t get the full picture until 49 seconds in, when… Read more »
A Fuji Rudder Repair Revisited
from “Rovings,” Professional BoatBuilder No. 153 Compiled by Dan Spurr In the Rovings column in PBB No. 151, page 16, we published photos of reader Michael Robertson’s 1978 Fuji 40 (12.2m) rudder,… Read more »
Keeping Paint on Aluminum
Early in my career I worked for a dealership that sold production boats, every one of which was equipped with painted aluminum arches. Invariably, the paint would blister, in some… Read more »
Jade Resurrected
Few boats are as notorious as Como Nova, formerly Jade, whose ignominious distinction was to nearly bankrupt her builder, Jim Betts. Described in some detail in the magazine pages (see… Read more »
Beware the Brass
A colleague recently described to me the unusual loss of a large, relatively new motoryacht that sank at the dock as a result of a failed raw-water plumbing fitting in… Read more »
Classic Whalers, Repurposed
At the 1958 edition of the Boston Boat Show, engineer/entrepreneur Dick Fisher introduced a pricey and—let’s be honest—homely 13′/4m utility outboard skiff. Looks aren’t everything, right? Fisher’s uniquely shaped boat,… Read more »
A Fix for Waterjet Fouling
March 1965. Forty-six years ago. That’s when Jack Hargrave came up with the then-unorthodox idea of combining supercharged diesels with waterjet pumps, along with a special steering system, and installing… Read more »
IBEX Seminars as Articles
Technical Seminars at IBEX and the Professional BoatBuilder Stories They Spawned Since the first IBEX (International BoatBuilders’ Exhibition) was created as an offshoot of Professional BoatBuilder magazine in 1990, technical… Read more »
Magic Repairs
Late last December, 13 years after I designed and built the prototype Commuter 36 (11m) Magic, her owner, Erik DeBoer, brought the boat back to me at Parker Marine, in… Read more »
