Reminiscing About Our History

Well our plan has definitely worked out for the best.  I was laid off from my job and hubby left his job. We saved enough to buy the boat and fix it up, and live for a while, but the kitty is dwindling fast.

The transition of leaving the work grind is interesting, sort of like removing a brainwashing helmet from my head.  Weeks after leaving the job I dreamed about it and the people I worked around.  For months I had this feeling I have to get up and get ready for work and I know when it's a Monday.  Luckily, after 6 months these feelings are starting to fade.

Downsizing stuff in our house has worked nicely too, it has been therapeutic to get rid of stuff we've held onto for many years.  We wondered why we have held onto, stored, and moved these material things for so long, it makes no sense now.  

In my view, pretty much everything has a value, so I always try to sell it first, and if it doesn't sell then I donate it.  My philosophy is to take care of us first, and if we have left-overs then I give to others.

The sentimental stuff is so much harder to downsize.  Our children's art work (the two daughters are young adults) we kept very few, scanned them all, and either gave it to them or tossed. And their pictures we scanned all, and gave to family or tossed them. We scanned away pictures for months, I calculated about 6,000 pictures overall. I have two small boxes stored in the trunk of our car left to go, which we will scan sometime during winter time.

We bought three scanners in preparation for this downsize.  The first Epson stopped working, so we bought a Kodak.  The Kodak feeds the pictures, but has poor picture quality.  The third scanner is another Epson, like the other one it scans 3-5 pictures at a time, having to open the lid each time.  The Epson does have good quality of the scanned pictures.  And we have found a spot for each of them on the boat.

The other part of our transition is preparing to home school our son.  He is pre-school age now so it isn't too difficult.  He is also smart and healthy, so we are pretty blessed with a great beginning in our home school adventure.  I have to say that I am excited about home school with him.  I really do not know what our future holds, except that we want to raise our son instead of paying others to do it.  And we do not want him to attend public school, no offense to all those well meaning teachers out there, however the public school system is just another controlling bureaucracy that we are trying to get away from.

Our pets have transitioned well onto the boat. But they are a lot of work, always something to do with them, walk the dog, clean the cat liter, feed them. Both of them swim, and both have fallen off the dock into the water. Sort of weird that domesticated cats and dogs can swim by instinct at a young age, but humans cannot, puzzling.

Anyhow, our life aboard Harbinger is worth any difficulties we have come across or will cross in our future. We work as a team, hubby and me, outfitting the boat while caring for our son and the pets.

Our Fresh Water Tank

Our first weeks on board we used a leaky 5 gallon jug for all our kitchen/galley water uses, washing dishes and cooking. When my hubby bought the new water pump and wired it up, we had running water in our galley and head, oh what a glorious day that was.

Now I had to research and purchase a water filtration system that will take us into the future, sustainably. So I got a basic 10 inch filter to attach after the tank (easily replaceable filters) it will remove most of the chemicals and a 3m whole boat filtration system for drinking water it will remove chemicals and microbes. 

We currently have a aluminum water tank and its got white oxidation stuff on the bottom and outside of it. We are Leary of this tank and do not cook or drink from it. We are worried about the corrosion causing holes and for the tank to leak. Eventually this tank will need to be replaced. We just are not sure if we do it soon and replace all the hoses and install the water filtration, or wait until later. Probably, we will have to bite the bullet and replace it sooner than later. We've been looking at replacing it with the PVC tanks, which cost about $500, a spendy and time consuming replacement (aren't they all!).

For now, we'll keep filling up the current tank and lug in drinking water. Below is a picture of how we fill up the tank, we don't have a filling hole on deck to use, so we bring a water hose down to tank under our stair hatch. No big deal, it's easy to do, and the deck hole will come in time, once we get the new tank. Sometimes I get to close and it runs over or the hose gets stuck and sprays everywhere, well when things get wet it just gives me the opportunity to clean the area. 

We are also learning our water usage, on heavy use weeks we fill it up every 4 days on low water usage weeks we fill it up every 7 days. This will be important in our future to know how much water we use, and to conserve appropriately. The hard part is retraining our brains and teaching our son to not let the water run.

Cleaning Port Windows and Mosquito/Bug Netting

Naturally I clean the port windows with Vinegar, which works very well. The windows themselves leaked and were resealed with new gaskets and caulking in between glass by hubby. Now most of them do not leak, yeah. We have a few windows that we have to take out completely and find new bolts (somewhere? As of yet we haven't found them) and seal the whole thing, who knew there were so many parts to a port window.

Anyhow, with warm days the windows stay open and the bugs come in. As more flies came in, I lay on the sette, burning up, I think to myself there has to be something to cover those windows! Then off to Joann's fabric I went. First trip I bought the white mosquito netting at $2 per yard, and some cream colored nylon netting fabric at $1.50 per yard. I spent about $15 on this first trip. I cut some of the netting and I need something to keep it in place inside the window, and also figure out something for the hatches. Second trip to Joanns, we found these embroidery hoops made of wood, this trip cost about $20. Our galley port windows are 9 inches so the 9 inch hoop worked perfectly, but our head and v-birth windows are 7 1/2 inches, so I had to buy the 8 inch hoop and cut to fit.

Once I cut and measured to fit the windows, I cut the netting and put it into the hoop, as if I would use it for embroidery, then I hot glued the inside around the edge and pushed it into the window. I almost forgot to add a pull string so i can easily remove from window instead of grabbing at netting to pull them out, I tied the string to outer larger hoop and hot glued it. Now with hoops in place it allows me to open and close the windows without having to remove the hoop. The first day I put them up we went down from 6 flies to 2 flies, the next day we had just 1 fly, I was so excited. 

The hatches I haven't quite finished.  The salon hatch I used fishing line and sewed around the edge making it taunt around the hatch so we can open and close without having to remove the netting, this works really good. But our forward hatch in the v-birth I tried to custom make it with the wind scoop and it came out to small, so I have to redo this and figure out how to make a netting and also attach the wind scoop, a work in progress. Then the companion way hatch we've just lay a large piece of netting around it, and I'm thinking I'll use the fishing line with weights so that it will keep the netting in place and we can easily lift it up and down, to get in and out. I'll update those finished projects later.

Deck, aka Ready, Bag for Stay Sail

After many weeks of contemplating the colors and design of the deck bags, in light of deck paint and hull colors on boat, I finally pulled the trigger and bought the material.

I decided to buy remnants of various colors of sunbrella material at the canvas store downtown. And use different colors on the bag, made it unique, yet not too hodge podgie. I had three patterns to go by, I read the pattern in the canvas book, I read the pattern on sailrite, and I inspected the one deck bag survived on our boat (which happens to be for the stay sail). So I decided to use these patterns as my general guide, I can never really stick with a pattern, yah know. I also looked around the marina at other bags and noted the different clasps and zippers.

I had to order some tools for this project which turned out to be very helpful. My hubby always says the right tool makes the job better, so I bit the bullet and bought a $50 tool to set the twist fasteners.

It took me two days of measuring, cutting, sewing, and fastening to work out this bag. Let me say again that I love using a stapler, instead of pins, to prep my fabric for sewing and even test fit the bag. The staples are so easy to work with and they hold the fabric in place.

Here is a picture of the finished project, this is the stay sail deck bag (next is jib sail bag):

Beige on starboard.

Navy on port side.

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.