Having successfully removed the existing chain and wire in the last post, the task fell to measuring chain and cable, and making a new chain and new Dyneema cables. Measuring the chain is easy enough, as the J/109 uses Edson's steering chain and cable kit # 77103 (link), and so has an 18" chain …

Many of the world's top race boats have switched to using Dyneema rope instead of 7x19 wire. Edson has successfully supplied many systems using rope-based steering cable for many years, including on one of my all-time favorite keelboats, the Farr 40. The specific system that boats like the Farr 40 a …

Many of the best blog topics come up from conversations we have around the office or customer questions. Today's comes from both so it must be an absolute humdinger!Stainless steel is generally thought of as non-magnetic - but is it? Simply, the 300 series stainless steels (303, 304, and 316 are one …

Spring is happening with a vengeance here in New England, which means that brokerage activity is or will soon be in full bloom to match the daffodils. While most pre-purchase surveys will give a broad overview of a boat's steering system, critical details and the proverbial fine toothed comb are usu …

As you may have noticed when you clicked onto our homepage, the site has a new look. We ask a lot of the site, as it has to play storefront to a ton of different products in several different categories, cover tech info for a similarly wide range of users and uses, document a huge number of OEM stee …

An underappreciated element of sailboat steering maintenance is cable tension. Most people don't think too much about it, but in minor cases it can cause some imperfect steering responses and markedly increased system wear, and in more major cases it can cause a catastrophe.A lack of cable tension c …

First off, for anyone planning to do coastal cruising of any sort, please consider taking a Safety at Sea course. I took my first before a Bermuda Race about 20 years ago and still use lessons from it. The courses are meticulously designed, presented, and updated by experts who really care abou …

There's no arena where the proverbial ounce of prevention is more valuable than safety at sea. Murphy's Law and simple logic dictate that things always go wrong at the worst possible moment - nice sunny days with a moderate sea breeze don't tax your systems too much, but more challenging conditions …

One of the silver linings of the last few years has been our collective comfort with Zoom meetings. Even if we're all a bit tired of them, they're great for the right purpose. Last night, Reed and I gave a presentation by Zoom to the Blue Water Sailing Club about sailboat steering maintenance, …

Welcome to the Edson Blog! Blogging may be a dying artform but we still make worm gear steerers, so no one does “dying artform” quite like Edson. This is actually something of a resurrection of Edson’s original newsletter, The Edson Line, of which Jacob Edson himself was the first author. Big sh …