In a recent post from Wind Dancer, I heard about a handy product that could save your bacon in a sticky situation. It’s the Sail Clamp, a bit of molded nylon with a couple screws that grips the luff of your jib or genoa, and provides an attachment point to jury rig a connection to a forestay in the case of a furler failure.

The thing that’s great about this is that it doesn’t damage the sail’s luff, so once you’ve got your furler fixed up, you won’t need to make a bunch of extra sail repairs. What’s even better is that if you order some Sail Clamps, you’ll enjoy knowing that you are helping to support the voyages of another cruiser, Ken Henderson of Panta Rei.

I’ve been considering adding some video segments to Navagear, and being the gear geek that I am, have been keeping an eye out for an interesting, bleeding edge camcorder to get started with. Since catching word of the Panasonic HDC-SD1 in the gadgets and video blogs a couple months ago, I’ve been eager to get my hands on it. And unexpectedly finding it in-stock at a Circuit City in Seattle put me over edge.

Notable features of the SD1:

• Shoots high definition video in a new format called AVCHD
• Records to postage stamp-sized SDHC memory cards
• Has a microphone input (necessary for good quality audio recording)
• A decent range of manual controls for creative control
• 10x zoom range

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