Kevin Robinson's Page

It’s been a long nine months without my new Hake Seaward 26RK sailboat, but the helm seat track—despite being a revolutionary prototype design--was an accident waiting to happen.  As a beat-up old quadriplegic (who just turned 60!), I’ve determined to return to sailing after a lifetime away from my favorite pastime.  In fact, I set out to see if there was a sailboat designer out there who would be willing to help me create a moderately priced/sized sailboat…

Those of us with daysailers and/or weekenders browse the sailing magazines and boat shows with no small amount of envy. To have a real chart table, or a "nav station," well, that's just a pleasant dream. But in the meantime, we do the best that we can with what we have.

Like those on most small sailboats, our Seaward 26RK's table is small and it stows away neatly, but I couldn't figure out where to put my laptop everytime we need the table for…

I recently finished reading Morgan’s Run, another great historic novel with sailboats aplenty. The myths and the superstitions surrounding seafarers are myriad, and it’s often hard to sort out those with true historical basis, from those spawned of alcohol consumption alone. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter . . . like this morning when my neighbor, Sandy, told me matter-of-factly that my friend, Gene, was a banana.

My prop-fouling disaster happened…

The world is full of Gotcha! sounds. Every new (to you) house, car, motorcycle, power tool, and, yes, sailboat makes them. These intrusive noises are seldom harbingers of good news, and are almost always sorted out by accident. That is, nobody tells you in advance: “Mr. Foster, if you ever hear a loud CLANG, followed immediately by a metallic scraping noise and a shower of sparks, it probably means someone should have replaced those driveshaft bearings. Enjoy your hardly used…