Adjusting Natures Head, Stool

Our head, or toilet in landlubber's world, is composting. We love it, except the urine jug. Initially we had it facing the back of the boat, or aft. But when spillage happened it would leak under the toilet causing a pool of urine on our white oak floor, yuk. So hubby turned it to face forward, toward bow. Now it sits upon a fiberglass step, where our last head was fixed to.

The only problem with this set up is that now the seat is almost 2 feet off the floor, our son who is 3 years old cannot reach it to urinate or sit on seat. I complained a lot, for about a day. Hubby found a folding stool, since space on a boat is limited a regular stool wouldn't have worked, but the folding stool work marvelously!

Refurbishing the Norcold Fridge

Our old Norcold fridge works pretty good. It just looks old and the inside gasket is somewhat worn.

Instead of buying a new fridge, at price tag of $1000, we are refurbishing the old one. I started with faux stainless steel contact paper, the stuff you line drawers with. I know it will not last forever, so I bought enough to cover it again. The faux contact paper cost $20.

Next will be to size and replace the gasket, there is a link online how another man replaced his gasket, so this is what we will do. The replacement gasket cost $30. We are in need of this because our fridge goes on and off more frequently than we would like, which means it is consuming a lot of power. The fridge itself works good, keeps our food cold and our freezer part is working well, keeps meats frozen. But we have to conserve power in the near future, we need a more energy efficient fridge. Hopefully the gasket does the trick!

After 

Before

Vinegar, My All Purpose Cleaner

I use Vinegar for just about everything. Cleaning stains on clothes or just about any surface, cleaning numerous stainless steel things on the boat, washing our feet if they get stinky, spraying moldy surfaces, and washing fruits n veges.

The best part about using Vinegar, as an all purpose cleaner, is if you spray near yourself no harmful chemicals hurt you. And if a child wants to help clean, no harm for them either. Granted its not all powerful, but it does a darn good job!

My Vinegar spray bottle.

Walking by the Water

Almost every evening I walk our dog at the edge of the water. I absolutely love the water.

As I walk next to the water I noticed other people are drawn to it too. There are people who just want to be alone and sit at the water's edge. Then there are the couples sitting closely looking out at the water. And of course there are the other people, who want to be in the water, in a boat or canoe or paddle boat or kayak. 

I'm not sure why I love the water so much? I used to be one of those people who sat alone or with someone and just looked at the water. I've always love to swim in any water. And I always enjoyed riding in a boat I just didn't grow up spending every summer on a boat or around boats. I acclimated pretty good to the water and the waves, only once on a trip to Catalina Island did I get a little sea sick on a charter boat. Every boating trip I took I enjoyed the ride on the water, I just didn't do a lot of boating and I never did ride in a sailboat. The sailboat experience did not occur until we took our class last year, just before me and hubby turned 40.

Growing up my sister and I spent many summers at the beach, soaking up the sun, playing in the sand, and swimming in the water. My parents let us hang out at the beach all summer long when we were teenagers, while they worked. We loved it, not sure if my parents did.

My dad was probably more a water lover than my mom, maybe that is where my love for water comes from. He was an avid swimmer and diver in his younger years and owned a motor boat when I was a teenager. I loved to go with him and learn how to operate the boat, it was so much fun. My mom and sister did not like it too much, as they get seasick pretty easy, so they went on very few boating trips.

Thinking back at how much time I spent admiring the water, I knew I felt comfort next to it. When we were planning our move onto the boat, I never questioned whether I could live on the water, I already knew I loved it and desired to be near it.

Now living on the water I feel like this is where I am destined to be. Living, loving, and floating on the water.

Here is a picture from one of our evening walks.

Herbs Growing in our Marina

I've been walking our dog everyday for the past two months in the marina admiring various gardens along the trail, never once picking anything. One day I threw the ball and it landed next to these big Purple bushes right in the middle of the gardens near the boat launch area. The smell over powered me, voila there in front of me were hundreds of plants full of purple blooms, it was Lavender. I picked some, then came home and read about what to do with them. At this point, I'm drying them out and saving the good smelling buds, thinking about what to do with them. What a wonderful surprise! 

The next day we were walking back from a trip to town and voila, there were more herbs in the gardens near the front of the marina. I'm not sure if I was just more aware after running into the Lavender that lead me to these ones or that everything is now blooming, either way I am glad I found them. I noticed they've also planted some strawberries, blueberries, and squash. It is fun walking about picking various herbs. I love to pick the basil and rosemary then cook with them. The fresh herbs taste the best!

Below is a picture of my fresh pickings of:

Lavender

Basil

Rosemary

Homemade Mosquito Repellant

For some reason there are Mosquitos attacking us each night when we sit on the deck to enjoy the evening. They only come out in the evening about 9pm. I read online different recipes, and made a repellant that works pretty good and with what I had on hand. The best repellant is a netting, but who wants to net the whole boat.

Here it is

1/2 citrus fruit, I squeezed 1/2 an orange, but most people use lemons
30 drops Lavendar
1 tbs Vanilla
3 tbs Witch Hazel

Fill remaining with water, I used about a 1/2 cup because my spray bottle is small.  It smells good, makes our dog n cat sneeze, and deters the Mosquitos well. And there are no toxic chemicals!

We Love the Windscoop! A Natural Air Conditioner

The days in the Pacific Northwest this year have been warmer than usual. We had a heat wave one week and those high 80s make our boat hot in the evenings.

Our neighbors have a Windscoop, or chute, to help with bringing air into the cabin. We were so hot that week instead of making one, as I have a pattern for one in my canvas book, we decided to order a Windscoop online, had it delivered. It arrived and wow how nice it is, keeps the boat cool and brings the wind right in.

I noticed our scoop is not 4 directional, it pretty much brings the air into the cabin from one direction. Currently, our boat is facing north, and most of our wind has been coming from the north or west, so we get nice breezes, especially in evening. When we have to replace this one I will either make or buy a 4 directional scoop to adjust for wind shifting automatically. 

With all our hatches and port windows open the bugs are coming in, which is driving me crazy, so the obvious next project is for mosquito netting over each hatch and window. We are not sure if the Mosquitos are unusually numerous this year because of the heat, but whatever the reason we know every evening we get inundated with Mosquitos. And we all have bites from them. I imagine we will do a netting over or inside the hatch and have to figure out how to secure and maintain a netting over the windows, a work in progress. 

Sanding Sucks

We've been sanding all sorts of wood around our boat: floor in galley, the cap rail, the hatches, the scupper covers, bow spirit, and more. Most of this hubby has done, but me and lil guy have helped out. We use the orbit sander for flat surfaces and a triangle sander for those hard to reach spaces, and our hands for everything else - which is a lot.

Our lil guy loves to sand when we are out there, he picks up triangle sander, as it has no moving parts, and sands cap rail. He does good and it entertains him, and the cap rail needs lots of sanding. He doesn't put a lot of pressure on triangle sander so it really doesn't do much, that sander you really have to put pressure for it to get into the wood.

To this point, we have almost finished the starboard side of cap rail, a big project because we have to clean under it and get it ready to seal and prep for paint around it too. For we are planning to paint the boat, deck, cabin, above water line, and when we pull it out we wi ll paint below water line. We also h ave paint for bilge, and hopefully one day we will paint that since we have already dried it out.

Back to our cap rail, so we have to finish sanding and cleaning the starboard before we move to port side. It is all teak so we are using cetol to cover it, not a varnish. We cannot wait till it is done, it will look awesome and make the boat pop. Then we hear it will only last 6 months, so it's pretty much in vain, but we will be so proud when it is done. 

The sanding of deck and cabin is hit and miss, I think as we find a hole or blemish we cover it and get them ready for paint, sort of feel like everyday we are working toward a overlapping project. Fix the leaks and prep for paint, replace this and that. All done in hopes for a nice boat!

Stove, Propane Tanks, BBQ

We have a stove, it is stainless steel, called a Shipmate which is original to the boat (from 1976, they are out of business Shipmate, their stove works good many years later). It took us a couple months to get things situated, propane working and what not. Now that it is working we love it! It has 2 burners, and small oven. The metal around the knobs are a bit sharp and the oven door is on a spring so it shuts really hard. We have become proficient in cooking 2 burner dinners and I just now made biscuits in the oven, it worked great! So excited to cook more in the oven.

We also have a BBQ, Magma all stainless steel too. Operated by propane too, we are using a Coleman 1lb currently, but there is option to plug into braced tanks on stern. At first it took some time to get used to it, a little small and located off our stern, so if something fell from off side it falls in water. After cooking several times on it, we started liking this new BBQ. Keeps the heat out of cabin on hot days and gives meat the BBQ taste.

The propane tanks, there are two, hubby mounted to stern railing since they originally were in an old life sling cover that was delapitated and did not have a locker of any sort. We weighed the options of purchasing a locker for over $500 or making something to hold them, but we decided since they are aluminum we will just get the stainless brackets and mount directly to rail, then cover with canvas. We did add a rope with clip to each tank so when we take them out of brace for refilling they are secured to rail should something happen when realesing them from brackets. These 6lb aluminum tanks hold 1.5 gallons of propane. After we made sure they were completely full, we went almost one month on one of them. One just recently emptied and we found a refill station within walking distance. Which helps out tremendously since our car isn't working too good at this time. Next on project list is for hubby to (fix car so we can get things to finish projects) make regulator brace since it is not mounted to anything, and for me to make propane covers. Never ending projects!

Lee Cloth!

This was a quick and easy sewing project. I found a book on the boat, for canvas works. Inside it had all sorts of sewing projects for a sailboat.

The Lee Cloth is in our pilot birth. I bought remnant canvas at fabric shop near downtown. I followed the instructions, measuring isn't easy so we just estimated at our widest point between top and bottom. Then the length for 6 ft birth is about 4 ft, which is same on each side space for head and feet.  And cut fabric the sew up hem on each of sides. Place grommet on top corners. Then eye bolts at each top corner of pilot birth, tie grommet of lee cloth to eye bolt.

Nice easy project. I already have a list of new projects: wind scoop, spar bag, deck bags for stay and jib sails, fix repairs and errors on interior cushions, put up a water cover and safety netting, and the list goes on and on.