When I came to radio sailing, an early realisation was that my lifetime sailing tools and their toolboxes were going to be useless. An interesting challenge with radio sailing is, relative to big boats, the smallness of everything.

You need some basic tools on hand, just right at the start – to give you confidence apart from anything else.

These are the first four things I dropped in my new radio sailing toolbox.

1/ If you see any hex nuts, they are going to be small. For example, shroud rigging screws on an IOM. I bought these:-

2/ So far, I’d say slightly more in demand, some good allen keys. I have found so far that 2.5 size is in high demand. From my cycling days I had a lovely set of allen keys, going right down to 2mm and having the magic 2.5mm. However, the keys have quite long stems … possibly 10cm. I think you also need something shorter, and you anyway should be carrying two sets to protect yourself against losses. I what I went for with the second set was these (below). It’s got the magic 2.5mm, plus they have short stems for tight spaces but I really, really like the colour coding.

3/ I’ve not had to break open the screwdrivers yet, but where there are screws they are jolly small. For the moment I have packed a set of these

4/ Again different to big boat sailing, I felt I needed some glue in the box. If I have superglue in the box for rigging knots, then I thought I might need something a bit milder – non impact adhesive to allow wiggle room. I bought this silicone glue. I see it has already been used!

So that was my four part toolbox for day one of radio sailing. Oh – I bought some long tweezers too. More about those in another post.