On a rainy, non-sailing day recently I was at my desk making a to-do list of work I needed to do on my sailboat, mentally reviewing the little odds and ends of boat maintenance. There were some big jobs like brightwork to attend to, but sometimes the little things irk you more - like the sticking zipper on my sail cover that brought out curses at the start and end of every sail. What's the best zipper lubricant, I wondered? I could google that, of course, and spend hours studying ads and blogs and all, but on the chance that I already had this information, I clicked over to my OneNote program and in seconds found that years ago I'd read a discussion of sticking zippers on a sailing email list and had noted the group's consensus on what works best. It was just another example of the benefits of having a digital system for filing boat information you happen upon that you might need someday to fix something on your boat. I've used this a lot over recent years, especially when on the boat - carried on my laptop. I have thousands of on-call items to help start a stalled engine, choose the best caulk to bed a new fitting, or eliminate a bubble in my compass. Clipping notes from any digital source and squirreling away the information has proved one of the best things I've done yet to keep my boat shipshape. Oh, and the sticking zipper? Try Chapstick as a lubricant.
