One thing that Rowing Hackers love is finding great ways to organize all the stuff that doing this sport requires. We ran a great bit some years back about putting a cheap carabiner to use to keep all your wrenches together (The Wrench Carabiner) and that hack was as simple using a carabiner to connect all your wrenches together so you could easily grab the whole set at once.

row2k reader Caitlin Trottier one-upped this trick by, in true hacker fashion, following the dictum "more is better!"

She writes, "I always have to dig around my bag for the right size wrench. To take life easier, I got a few different colored carabiners and put each size wrench on each color. You can also duct tape the wrenches the color of the carabiner for easy clean up.”

That is some clever hacking: instead of grabbing all her wrenches and then having to pull off the one she needs, she can skip right to the correct size by grabbing the right color carabiner - and we bet most jobs don't even require the wrench to come off the carabiner at all. And then when done, match the colored wrenches to the same-colored caribiner, and done.

This twist on a good trick could work team-wide as well: putting all the 7/16s in the team tool box on one color and all the, say, 10 mm, on another could keep things way more organized than we ever dreamed the first time we covered the Team Wrench Box idea, and - for team de-rigging - you could then just grab a full set of the one size you need.

As one of the row2k staffers who also coaches noted, "my team puts red electrical tape on the 7/16, black on the 10mm, and some other colors for the 3/4" and 1/2" (fun of having multiple manufacturers)."

So grab some carabiners for a cheap way to get some organizing done in your down-time - and things will run a whole lot smoother when we all get back to the business of rowing, and rigging.

We hope this hack can come in handy at your place and, if you have hacked up something else that is cool and helpful with all this spare time in a quiet boathouse, send it to us and we will write it up - or tell us about your tips and tricks in the comments below.