My O'Day 22 Sailboat Blog

Anyone who uses an outboard motor in the ocean knows the hassle of keeping the salt water flushed from the system after each use. Also keeping the top-heavy machine upright during storage is also a must to prevent flooding. One of the easiest ways to do that is to get a outboard stand. You can store your motor on it without much hassle as well as flushing it out with a bucket of water underneath after each use.

As all marine products typically are, outboard stands are way over priced for what you get. It is literally a few pieces of bent metal and a piece of plywood while West Marine would not hesitate to charge you $120 for one.

That is why I decided to make my own little contraption. It’s no work of art but it’s serving me well so far. A couple pieces of wood and some galvanized hardware that costs me just around $12 and a Saturday morning later, I have my own little collapsable outboard mount.

It uses exactly 2 pieces of wood: a 8 foot 2×4 and another 8 foot 2×6. It is made to hinge so you can fold it flat when you are not using it or for easy transport. Straps at the bottom keeps it from doing the splits when the motor is mounted and I am even gonna mount some wheels on them so it can also be used as a dolly. All that for under 20 bucks. Take that West Marine!

Jose from Santa Barbara whom I mentioned in a previous post has sent me some photos of his mainsheet relocation project. I have been wanting to do this but just have not had time to complete other projects on my priority list. His mod looks pretty nice and apparently works well for him. He agreed to let me repost the email he sent me along with photos of the mod. Here you go:

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I am attaching two photos of the mainsheet relocation to the center of the cockpit. I actually have not yet installed the traveller. I wanted to see how this would work, and also the $160 for the little car and track sort of put me off. as it is I do not think that will make much of a difference speed wise. My design, however, will accommodate the track and eventually I will add it to it. But for now I will spend that money on things more usefull, like the jiffy reefing controls.

I also got you a picture of my new companionway. Regular plywood, TONS of polyurethane, seems to be holding!

I did some searching online to see about my mast extrusion and I came across a site called RigRite.com. They have the extrusion's specs on their website:

Rig-Rite #5 (3723) Mast Section
Measurements: (OD) 3.75" x 2.25" (95mm x 57mm)
Wall Thickness: .100"
Weight/ft.: 1.3 lbs.
Moments of inertia: Ixx = 1.5", Iyy = .63"
Circumference: 9 5/8"
Alloy: 6063-T6
Sail slides: 1/2" round slugs (A018, A118) or 1/2" boltrope
Standard Mast Lengths: 22'7", 25'4", 30'
Common Mast usage: Bristol Corinthian 19; Cape Dory Typhoon; N&W Fisherman; O'Day 22;

This will help a little in knowing the dimensions of my mast. What I'm going to do with it is still an unknown for now.

I went to the boat today to do some work. One of the things I did was to see what was left of the electrical system. The last owner did not have a battery in the boat so he pretty much told me that it had no electrical system to speak of. When I took over ownership, I noticed that there are a few parts that maybe salvageable to build my new electrical system. So today I went and stripped everything that was still on there including all of the wiring so I can start fresh.this is a picture of what I was able to salvage.

1. Breaker Panel
2. Distribution Panel
3. 12-volt Cabin light
4. Toggle Switch
5. 2-way pull switch
6. Misc. wiring

Looks like I will be reusing the breaker panel and the distribution panel. Everything else is either too old, broken or inexpensive to buy new.

This is how the old parts look on the boat before I stripped them out:

Here they are removed and organized in my house:

Here is a close up view of the front of the electrical breaker panel:

And here is the back of it:

I kinda like this color scheme for the ODay. Found it on the odayowners.com website forum. This is from an ODay 22 in the SF Bay area:

Maybe red with shark teeth at the bow like a WWII fighter plane.