Month: January 2018

Tool of the Day…. Jigsaw (and a lot of bleach)

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So we made the decision to tear out the traditional marine head and to replace it with a composting toilet. Before you call us crazy, here are our reasons:

No need to find a pump-out

It is illegal to dump toilet waste within three miles of shore, so all waste gets stored in a holding tank until far out to sea or until pumped out at a marina. Our holding tank is small; only about 14 gallons which won’t last long for two people living on a boat full time. We don’t want to be in a beautiful anchorage in some tropical paradise wishing to stay off the grid for days or weeks at a time and feeling the pressure to find a pump-out service.

No maintenance

Even the highest quality marine toilets require a lot of maintenance to keep to hoses clear, the pumps in good working order, and to prevent clogs. When a marine toilet does go wrong, the results are notoriously messy. I’ll leave that to your imagination! In theory, the new generation of composting toilets require some monitoring and periodic emptying, but there are no moving parts to fail. We shall see.

Storage

We are really being optimistic, and decided to turn the old holding tank into additional storage for tools. Although it was tempting to seal the whole thing off and pretend it never existed. So we pumped out the contents of the tank, and cut off the top to see what we had to deal with. Keep in mind that this tank lives directly below our bed ……

Hmmmmm….. pretty. Some bailing and scooping was also required to get to the goal of an empty tank. And rinsing, and scrubbing, and sanding (as we have already discussed). All of this was my job, so Mike says I get a pass on emptying the toilet for the next four months. I think it should be six months!

We also pulled all the hoses, and plugged the through-hulls where the hoses used to run.

Every project requires a nearly infinite array of tools and results in a gigantic mess. The boat looked like this 99% of the time while in the yard.

Step #1 of this toilet project was successfully completed when the old toilet was removed, the tank cleaned and painted with a coat of very thick paint, and Mike fabricated a new cover for the additional storage space. Now to select, order, and install the replacement toilet!

Tool of the Day… Orbital Sander

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Living the glamorous life of the boatyard!

It is hot and dirty and smelly. Especially as my job is to sand the remaining debris from the black water holding tank, so that we can repurpose that space for storage. Oh yes, there is a much longer story here! More about the holding tanks next time!

Believe it or not, this tank looks a heck of a lot better than it used to!

Last night, I dreamed that Mike sent me back to work to earn money for all the things we’ve been ordering from Amazon 😀

Change is Hard

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Ok, tell me something I don’t know, right? Yes. We finally made it to Florida by the end of October. But unfortunately we weren’t quite ready to sail off into the sunset. The only people we knew in St Petersburg were our boat broker, the boatyard manager, and our landlord. Not much socializing with that crew! And our first apartment was a big disappointment. Great location in Old Northeast St Pete, but…… it smelled like a huge ball of mold and mildew. We went through boxes of tissues, and soon found that we could smell our own clothes whenever we left the apartment. Yuck! So much for a cheap VRBO! Not to mention we couldn’t quite figure out streets versus avenues and how you could really have an address of “on the corner of 2nd and 2nd.”

But we buckled down and started to find our way around. By the first weekend, we were officially Florida residents (can you say “no state income tax”?) which came with a little twinge of sadnesses as our Colorado licenses came back to us with big holes punched in them. And we put that vacation mindset behind us and got to work at the boatyard.

Now boatyard life is not glamorous. It’s hot and dirty and you have to climb a ladder to get to the boat up on its stands, and there’s always a whiff of chemicals and rotting fish and perhaps body odor. But the Salt Creek Marina was very accommodating and allows do-it-yourself boat projects, so we were grateful to have found this particular yard.

And also very lucky that all of the boats in the yard successfully weathered Hurricane Irma in September. Phew! We pulled off the tarps that covered the companionway and the mast, and pulled the steel wool out of the thoughhulls and took the foil off the portlights, and she appeared not much worse for the wear. Just a little water on the cabin sole, but not bad for an entire summer of storms.

We had a list that was three pages long of things we wanted to fix, replace, or maintain before putting the boat in the water. But our first surprise wasn’t even on the list at all. When we pulled up the cabin sole, and checked out the bilge, we found several liters of diesel fuel in the bottom. A teaspoon or two might not have been too bad. But liters?! First task was to investigate the fuel tank and discover that the bottom of the tank had corroded completely through. The good design of Pacific Seacraft boats allowed us to get to the tank easily, but we had to pull the whole thing out and order a new one from the factory. THAT’S and expense we hadn’t planned on!

Thus began the series of boat projects that (everyone tells us) you just have to expect when you own a boat. But we didn’t…..

We have a full tank of gas, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

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There are faster ways to drive from Colorado to Florida. There are more direct ways to drive from Colorado to Florida. But for pure “friends per square mile” value, you gotta drive to Florida by way of New York, Vermont, Virginia, and South Carolina. And you gotta drive some of it in a gigantic moving van, towing a car. We literally chose our hotels by looking at Google Earth pictures of hotel parking lots, to make sure we’d have enough room to turn around.

We spent a fantastic month visiting family and friends all along the east coast on our last bit of vacation before settling down and focusing on boat projects. Thank you to every one of you who welcomed us, fed us, showed us around your home towns, and generally caught up on each other’s lives after months, years, or even decades apart.

Mike’s high school friends Tricia, Michelle, and Bill from Holland, NY (population 3,401)

Excellent ciders and gourmet burgers in Rochester, NY with Jenn’s brother Jeff

Fantastic fall weekend in Underhill, VT apple picking and beer tasting with the Thompson’s and with many of Mike’s AXP fraternity brothers.

Trying out the surprisingly wonderful restaurants in Oswego, NY with Jenn’s parents.

Proving that old friends are best friends by spending several days in northern Virginia visiting the Werbels, Wolfs, and Tebbes.

Starting to really get the itch to be on the water with a very relaxing visit with Matt and Sarah Kline in Annapolis.

And making friends with the pet chickens staying with Rachel and Paul in North Carolina.

Visiting Jenn’s Aunt Mary Ann and Mike’s very first Lockheed Martin boss, Jerry Calvert in Greenville, SC.

Our final big stop before Florida was to visit Jock Covey, the previous owner of our sailboat! We had the privilege to meet his new love Sophie, meet fellow sailors and explorers in the St Mary’s, GA boat yard, and to really get excited about our next steps.

At long last, we made it to our first temporary lodging in St Petersburg, FL where we could finally explode the poor, exhausted Volkswagen, and realized we still have way more possessions than can fit on a boat! Hooray for a successful road trip!