Learning to live aboard

By: Capt. Scott

Living Aboard 

This is the first post after moving aboard SV Kooky Dance our Caliber 40LRC.  There won't be many picture in this post because I am not so sure that living aboard is a visual thing.  Learning how do a lot of things again.  Learning how to deal with the differences (notice I did not say inconveniences). 

After living in our old house for 15 yrs. we had laid things out so they were very much to our liking, but there was room to work with.  Living on a boat you need to work with the limit room available and make that to your liking. 
 
So our plan was to outfit the boat with things that will make living aboard easy (yeah we thought that) but we were having problems finding place for everything and found ourselves constantly re-arranging to get to access to this or that.  We had missed the mark in our planning, but we had thought we might all along.

We are followers of the Drake & Monique on SV Paragon and had been watching a tour of a southern cross and the owner was commenting about when outfitting your boat to listen to the boat and let her tell you what she needs.  When he first said it I have to admit I was a little skeptical, but then it seemed like the boat started telling us what she needed.  OK so maybe by living on her you start to see what could be changed or added to make thing more functional and easier, but it sound more romantic believing the boat is sending you messages.

For example the hanging net we had for storing fruit ended up by default storing the vegetables.  As EVERYBODY knows citrus fruits accelerate vegetables aging (actually don't feel bad because I did not know this about vegetable aging until my lovely wife informed me and when it comes to vegetable aging there is no one I trust more).  So where to store round rolly  vegetables?  Tamera picked up these plastic strainers and I found a short piece of line and 5 minutes later we had a vegetable hangy down thingy.

 

People keep asking me what it is like to live on a boat and I am still formulating my answer.  It is winter so the cold factors in to our feelings and responses to this question.  For example; living on a boat is like living in a house except when you want to use the bathroom, take a shower or wash some clothes you need to walk to the end of the block no matter the weather and this has hit really hard in the 30 degree temps with 20 knot winds (wind chill in the teens).

 

First Mate Tamera here - I want to add my two cents worth on the subject of learning to live aboard.

 

One element that I had to learn to deal with is the control panel.  When I need to run the heater (and trust me, it this weather I want to run the heater) I need to turn off the water heater, microwave and stove in order to stay warm.  Well hunger soon sets in and I have to cook and do the dishes so I have to turn off the heater and turn the stove, microwave and water heater back on. It is a priority game but I am loving every minute of it. 

 

I am also learning how to cook meals ONLY for two without a bunch of left overs.  With limited fridge space I can't make a big pot of soup and store it in the fridge.  Space is a premium thing on a boat.  I am still learning how to shop, store and prepare our food, but once again I am loving every minute of it. 

 

Clothes are another issue.  I have moved things around a couple of times trying to find the right spot for everything.  Since we have returned to work I have to keep clothes somewhat wrinkle free.  Not easy to do when you don't have an iron any longer.  For right now the forward shower stall is where I keep most of the clothes that we wear to work and they stay somewhat unwrinkled.

 

Dishes are a small issue.  Living in a house we could eat a meal and then put the dishes in the dish washer and run it when it gets full.  On the boat we need to wash dishes by hand after each meal.  With such a small galley the space gets cluttered real fast if not maintained often.  This is not a big deal just something new we have to deal with.

 

I can not wait until spring in two months so we can work on our projects and get this show on the sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Being a Live-aboard in a Texas winter storm

This is our second winter storm in a week in Baytown, TX

We are so happy we did not sell our space heater from the house.  We close off the forward head, forward stateroom and the aft stateroom during the day to keep the heat in the salon.

The ice on Friday closed the Fred Hartman bridge because there was a 1/4 " of ice on the road.  It is a shame they closed it, I was looking forward to sitting in the cockpit and watching the these crazy Texans come down the hill sideways.



Today the entire City of Houston was shut down because of the second ice storm.

The dinghy with ice


Ice and a temp guage

Ice on the main sail

I know it is not much of an ice storm but with below freezing temps and 20 knots of wind....IT'S COLD.....for us.

BUT

Never fear the forecast looks good ......

Becoming Live Aboards

Well we moved onto the boat last night. It was weird seeing the house so empty. It finally did not look like OUR house anymore.  


 I laid my house keys, shed key, mail key on the counter and drove away from the house that has been our home for the last 15 yrs.

 However, as soon as I step on board the boat later that same night I yelled "Honey I'm home!" so the neighbors could hear (the wind was really howling so maybe they didn't). Tamera made me a nice bowl of soup and we unpacked more things from the house that we don't have room for on the boat. As we survey the chaos below we understood more changes are coming.






 Tamera an I were giddy like teenagers with some great secret we could not tell anyone but each other.

 

Altering Course

In the world of cruising every sailor must be able to alter course for the health and safety of the crew.  Kooky Dance is having to alter our course by delaying our departure for a few months.

Leaving from Texas we have a diminishing weather window to make it East in safe and favorable conditions.  Installation delays and minor health issues are causing us to miss our weather window for a December 2013 departure.

It will be far easier to take care of the minor health issues on land where care is available versus at sea where no care is available.

The installation delays are on equipment that is imperative to a safe passage especially in a rough Gulf of Mexico in the winter.

Don't despair.....we are still going cruising ..... just altering course.

We are totally crushed and fighting depression but after a few sleepless nights and a very extensive pros/cons list we have made this decision.....we don't have to like it but we feel it the best decision.

The house has been sold so we will still be moving aboard the boat and continuing with installations and I guess we can work to build the cruising kitty....more tropical drinks ya know.

Scott is taking it far harder than I am and that's saying a lot because I am not taking it so well.........

Boat Projects can be a little frustrating

Work on the boat is continuing at a constant pace.  Tamera and I find little time (read none) to smell the roses. 

Finished the electrical installations of the Wind turbine generators but did not have sufficient wind to see how it would charge before having to hall the boat out for a bottom job.  Good bye $2000. 
Once hauled out the bottom looked in pretty good shape.   I will need to find out why the boat does not seem to be as fast as it use to be. 

Finished the installation on the AIS (automatic Identification System).  GPS functioned well and we began picking up targets and the alarm sounded for eminent collision.  Having the boat tied up within 1/2 mile of the Houston Ship Channel make the poor AIS freak out.  The closest point of approach (CPA) is set at 6 nm (good setting for offshore but not for ship channel navigation).  All that is great except the unit kept indicating an antenna fault.  I checked for shorts and found none but I will need to check for bad solder joints.  It was very windy when I soldered the connector onto the antenna cable.  It is my suspicion the fault will be there.
I have been testing the SSB radio and I am pleased with the receiving performance however I have not tested the transmit performance.  I have not finish the ground plane installation and it requires working in very tight quarter with a 900 degF soldering iron.  There have been numerous other projects needing attention that this particular exercise could wait for.

The boarding ladder is complete and took a bit more effort than anticipated.  I needed to figure out how to mount it to the boat securely.  The ladder is also what the inflatable dinghy will be lashed to during transit, meaning the ladder mount had to be very secure.  I eventually figure something out and had to head to the house to fabricate it.  The mount will be secured to the coach roof with threaded inserts that had to be ordered and the ladder will need some rubber bumpers which also needed ordering.  All these things on order meant the ladder mount project could not be finished.

Work on the dinghy cover continues with its 3rd fitting on the boat.  Sorry we don't have any pictures of it.  The idea of keeping photographic logs of the effort does not always take front and center when everything and I mean everything is taking longer to accomplish and costing more than expected. 

We took the outboard motor for the dinghy down to the boat and also the outboard motor lift.  The lift needed modification and the mounting plate on the boat did not accommodate the bottom swivel for the column.  More on this in later post but suffice to say that that project is still not complete.

While we have accomplished a large number of projects we still have many more to do.  It will only be more difficult to do them underway and it will get more expensive the farther east we get.  I am starting to have doubts about our sail away date of Dec 1.  If I am realistic it could be another 3 weeks and that by coincidence is also the shorted day light of the year.  In other words we will be sailing mostly in the dark and cold.  Everybody knows that cruising is all about sailing in the cold with little sun light. Ha Ha Ha.

Pardon us but we are starting to feel the pressure.

Sail away Progress by Scott (Capt)

Well, Scott here and I have not posted in a while however, thankfully first mate Tamera has made some good postings of our progress.  Again it is not for lack if things to do.  Much of what has happened are small nagley bits that will not look good in a blog but they do mark some significant advances towards our disappearance over the horizon.  Our emanate departure is closer at hand than it has ever been.  Projects are nearing completion on the boat, we have an offer on the house, one of the cars is sold, we have a pile of charts and the boat looks more like a cruising boat every day.  Lets talk about it.

This is the dinning room with much missing.

The house is emptying out.  A lot of things are being sold or given away.

We took a trip out to Maryland to see my folks and store some of the things we cannot bring ourselves to part with.  We also presented mother a number of nice keep sakes she seemed to really appreciate.  Mother shares the house with a women named Pat and they look after each other pretty well.  To pat we gave our 42" TV.  It was a really good visit.   I also got to visit Father and had two really good visit.  He was coherent and treasured the little photo album Tamera and I made of our sailing trip in the BVI.  I am glad I got to visit with both of them.

We remember this old 19" TV from the guest room
Sure do miss the big guy TV though.

While we were there we did a little reconnaissance and looked at the cost of slips in the Rock Hall MD area.  Kinda pricey.  I think we will be mostly on the hook for the few months we are there. The drive out was pretty good the leave were changing and the views on the hills were spectacular.



I would expect that we will get to the Chesapeake Bay by boat next summer around the beginning of July and spend about 4 months before joining the Salty Dawg Rally to the British Virgin Islands.  It leave about Nov 4- 8 depending on weather.  More on our sailing plans in another post.

The Boat:

The electronic communication equipment installation is coming together.  we fired up the SSB radio and receiver weather faxes as clear as a bell.  We even picked Hawaii and Australia but weakly.  We installed a few more LED lights to replace the old halogen ones and installed a light over the sink that became dark when we installed the cabinets over the sink thus blocking the existing light.  First mate was very appreciative. 

First mate also wanted a sink cover.  There is not a lot of counter space on the Caliber 40 and a good bit of it is the lid for the freezer.  Often in order to get something out of the freezer you have to move a lot of the stuff you are working on to get to it.  I had made a sink cover that covered only on of the two sink but it kept falling into the sink when it shifter around.  Tamera said she wanted a cover for both sinks with finger holes for removing it.  We took some measurement and made a template out of a shopping bag.  I finished in a day and we went down to test fit it.  I had to shape the corners to fit and take it back to the house for final coating. 

I had been kicking around the idea of another book shelf on the back of the recently installed galley cabinets.  I did not pursue it due to all the other things that still needed attention.   Tamera explained the error of my ways and the next thing I knew I was out in the garage at the house cutting, sanding and coating a new book shelf for Kooky Dance.

Both of these projects were made from scraps of wood left over from other projects.  The sink cover is actually wood from the crate the dinghy kit was shipped in.



There are also all the sewing jobs.  Mostly done by the expert hand of First Mate Tamera.  There is the dinghy cover.  This has been a particularly difficult job because there are no strait lines to work with other than the center line.  Add to that the cover also includes the straps for securing the dinghy to the deck.  There is also the skeglet to deal with. 
We have made two trips to check the fit and I think there will be one more for sure.  I still need to install the D-rings to the dinghy chocks for securing the straps to.  I will wait to do this once the cover is complete.

Tamera has also made a "cockpit pocket" that I started calling the "cock pocket".   I tease her but it is another one of her really good and useful ideas, that are becoming too numerous to remember them all.  Pardon the picture, I was being sneaky and Tamera did not catch it until it was too late.
This pocket slips over the compass binnacle and secures at the bottom.  It holds sunscreen, charts, binoculars, and cans of beer.  It is pretty sturdy and did I mention it can hold cans of beer.










With the addition of the monitor wind vane steering the aft boarding ladder is not as assessable as it once was.  In addition the easiest place to get on an off the dinghy will be from the side of the boat and not the stern.  So I needed a ladder.  I took some measurement and made some drawing and went down to the local welder to get it fabricated.  I really think the fabricator should offer his customers oxygen when he tells his customers how much he is going to charge them for said ladder.  Anyway it turns out I did not need the oxygen but just thought I did.  Besides he probably would have charged me for that as well. 
The ladder may actually look kind of heavy for the application but my intention here was to also be able to use the ladder as a gang plank if we have to med-moore.  It is 8' long and plenty stout for such use.
This ladder will be stowed athwart ship and will actually serve to secure the inflatable Zodiac dinghy when it is deflated for passages. This gives me something stout to secure the dinghy to and keeps it off the deck and sail trim lines. 

Effects of getting this close:

I am surprised at my reaction to all this progress.  The more that gets done the more things seem to pop up that still need doing.  Add to this is a feeling of intense apprehension.  I don't know everything we are going to encounter out there, I don't know if we are ready, I don't know how I am going to adjust to this new lifestyle, I don't know how long the money will last, I don't know if I am going to make some stupid mistake that damages us somehow.

What I do find is inspiration from my first mate.  I am reminded that we are a team and that we have worked well together for 28 yrs.  Her drive and momentum is pulling me alone regardless of any apprehensions I have.  I go through periods of intense anticipation and then apprehension.  I get a little sad about the friends we probably will not see for a while and the house we are saying good by to after 15 years of fixing it up the way we liked it.

I still want to do this but it is taxing my courage to do so.  Our boat card has the saying from one of my favorite movies "Cloud Atlas"; "Our survival demands our courage" and by golly they are right.

Scott is retired !!!

Scott is a free man and ready to enjoy his new life !!  The retirement party was great fun and we will miss all of the great people we met while living in Texas.  We hope many of them get a chance to meet up with us someday in some exotic location.

Thanks all for making this a fantastic day in our journey.

This was the highlight.....the Alarm Clock Smashing Ceremony.....so much fun.