It has been approximately a month since I have gone a day without posting on this Blog. This particular posting lapse was due to another road trip to Toronto, both to visit and train jiu-jitsu with one of our friends, and on the boating front, to visit the Nautical Mind bookstore. Let’s just say that the jiu-jitsu training was much less expensive, costing me only some muscle soreness and a bit of a scratched eye. On the other hand, we dropped so much money at the bookstore, primarily on charts, Mastercard thought it prudent to do a security call, just to make sure that someone hadn’t stolen our card!
Our bookstore booty included:
Maptech Chartkit reg. 4 for the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays area
Explorer Charts for Far Bahamas
Explorer Charts for Near Bahamas
Explorer Charts for the Exumas and Ragged Islands
Waterway Guide – Southern Edition 2010
Spanish for Cruisers book
The Adlard Coles book of Outboard Motors
Everyone says that the Explorer charts are THE ONES TO HAVE for that area. Who are we to argue? The Maptech charts are the same ones that I mentioned trying to buy on eBay. Apparently that guy doesn’t really want to sell them because even though I contacted him and told him that I would send him the money via Paypal, he never followed through. Oh well dude. The Waterway Guide covers Florida, and continues off from where the ICW version that we previously purchased, ends.
I think this should (hopefully!) pretty much do us for charts and cruising guides, at least for the next year or so, unless we decide to head to Cuba instead of the Bahamas for 2011. We’ll see.
Instead of a surfboard, you are on the bow of a Catamaran, surfing down some big waves on the leading edge of a storm!
Isn’t that sweet? Check out the Go Pro Camera website. Pretty awesome footage for a $270.00 camera! Thanks to our friend James for bringing this to our attention.
Follow up: I just noticed Boat Bits, one of the blogs that we follow, wrote about this camera back at the end of May 2009. I guess we aren’t too up to date.
Wait Mike! You said that you didn’t like being constrained by a budget. That’s true, where money is concerned, but the budget I am referring to is our energy budget, or in other words, how much electricity we have to run all of our boat’s tools and toys. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about increasing the solar or wind generating ability on our boat, and even the addition of a gas-powered portable generator. Some or all of those things are still in the works, but just about everyone recommends that the first step in the electrical input-output equation is determining what your needs are. Hence, the budget!
Disclaimer: This is yet another item in the long list of things I know very little about. More trial and error.
The Budget image below is a work in progress. I spent a chunk of the morning pouring over the various manuals we have for our boat gear, trying to find the manufacturers’ estimated power consumption for each device. Some I could find and others I couldn’t.
Assuming we could find what a particular device consumes, the next step was to estimate how many hours per day we will be using said device. Some are easy to calculate (for example an anchor light is on from dusk ’til dawn, or approx. 12 hours) while others are only used intermittently or while underway. Because of this, a portion of the figures in the image are correct while others are just placeholders. So, if a device uses 1 Amp and we run it for 12 hours, that equals 12 Amp/hours.
What do we have to draw from? Our boat’s battery bank can obviously only store a certain amount of energy. We have 8 – 6V batteries, each rated at 105 AH. Wired in series/parallel (my terminology might be off there) that should equal 420 AH at 12V (I certainly am leaving room to be correctly here). This doesn’t mean that we can use all 420 AH though, as the batteries couldn’t be depleted to zero without killing them.
Now here is where this gets really similar to a financial budget, at least for us anyway. Just like money, we are really good at spending the electricity. Determining how we will replenish the supply is the yet-to-be-determined part. Let’s see what we can come up with!
Yes, that’s “sewing the bucket” folks, not “kicking the bucket!” Encouraged by Drew’s comment on my sail repair post, I have decided to tackle the creation of a canvas bucket for Katana. The plans for the project, which can be found in the Pardey’s book The Cost Conscious Cruiser, will test both my splicing and sewing abilities.
I went shopping for a bit of line for the handles on Sunday, and dropped by Braithwaite Upholstery yesterday to pick up the required Sunbrella fabric. When I told Barry (Braithwaite) what I intended to do he offered to sew it for me. After I told him the whole idea was for me to practice my sewing he chuckled and sent me on my way with the fabric, free of charge!
Step 1: making a rope grommet which will be the “mouth” of the bucket. Ignore the helmet in the background… I have a habit of hitting my head on occasion.
They say that many people would rather talk about their sex lives than about their bank balance. I’m not going to disclose detailed info on either here right now but I will say that I have been investing a little bit of thought in to the latter of the two subjects (that’s money for those who have trouble keeping up). The Dinero page here is dedicated to the financial aspects of our adventure, initially focusing on how we got together the funds to purchase our boat. I plan on adding to it as time goes on but here is a bit of what I have been working on.
Many people are very good at working with a budget. I am not. For more than the last two decades whenever I needed more money for something I just found a way to make it. I guess I have the belief that our cruising adventure will follow a similar path. We do have some money tucked away in retirement accounts, but if you had asked me yesterday how much we have there would have been no way I could have told you. Today I rounded up a variety of papers, and checked some online accounts, to come up with a “close-enough” figure. My plan is to meet with a good friend and account manager to consolidate these funds and put them into a relatively safe investment that we can periodically draw from, if necessary.
As I have written about at length here, there are still some boat improvements that we need (want?) to make before departing. How much these will cost and where that money will come from is another subject to be discussed.
How are we going to deal with the day-to-day expenses of cruising? Yet another subject to be sorted out. With credit cards, debit cards and online banking, much of this day-to-day stuff should be similar to how it is at home. We do need to ensure that we have bank cards which will work in the dominant machines down south (outside the USA). Strangely, to me at least, I have heard that a (the?) dominant back in the Bahamas is the Royal Bank. We currently don’t have an account with them but perhaps we should open one. My current bank manager at TD-Canada Trust, who if he is reading this, is the coolest bank manager out there, advised us to drive across the border to the States and open an account at a US bank. We may very well do that later in the spring. It’ll make for a nice weekend outing.
Our little countdown timer in the right-hand side bar says that we only have 6 months until we begin our new life as “pirates.” Woo hoo! Now, I should point out that the 6-month thing is really just an estimate. We may end up leaving before that, or a bit after. We have decided that we won’t be giving our friends and family a firm date, to avoid any unnecessary pressure. When the boat and the weather allow it, we will take off. But in the meantime… 6 months! Woo hoo!
Perhaps you have wondered why Pirates were always shown with long hair and went by names like Red Beard and Black Beard. And every older sailor that you see has a beard (at least the males anyway). I know now that this is because of what a pain it can be to keep all that hair under control while living on a small boat, which is occasionally pitching back and forth in the waves!
Shaving:
There is a huge thread on herSailnet about shaving on board. Strangely, many of the posts on that thread are from guys (we won’t get into the question of why I was reading this particular thread) but it does point out that many women have issues with this. Taking long hot Hollywood showers on a boat are generally not possible. This leaves shaving with a cup (or bucket) of water, or as Rebecca shows in the photo below, from the transom of the boat. Now, this is fresh water she is using in this photo. Salt water may present another issue altogether.
While on the subject of shaving, I am a “cheap bastard” in training, and one of the things that drives me crazy is how expensive good razors are. We have downgraded to relatively cheap disposable ones, and to using soap instead of fancy skin-smoothing shaving cream. Does it work? Well, we can deal with it.
Hair care:
Getting an acceptable hair cut when away from home can also be a challenge, especially for the ladies. Rebecca and I had decided that she would cut my hair, and I am cool with that, but I thought that I would be one step smarter and just shave it all off. Below is my pirate imitation, sans hair.
My error was assuming that having no hair would be maintenance free. Believe me, with the difficulties of shaving (listed above) staying clean shaven like that was a serious PITA. Let’s just say that that particular style didn’t last too long. I think I’ll next try for the long-haired California Surfer look.
As for Rebecca’s styling, like all smart men, there is no way that I will be talked into touching her hair. I’ve heard that we could occasionally run into other cruisers who do that kind of thing on the side to replenish their cruising kitty. We’ll have to keep our eyes and ears open for them.
It was back in November that Rebecca and I first started considering changing the toilet in our boat from a traditional MSD (marine sanitation device) to a composting head. Having since done a LOT more reading on the subject, we are now at the point where we are SERIOUSLY considering it. One major issue that we had to deal with is “will it actually fit on the boat?” I have been in contact with both the manufacturer and the Canadian distributor for Nature’s Head. Both have been very helpful, answering my email questions and offering to call me to speak to me on the phone. Yesterday we braved the freezing cold temps to go to the boat to take some measurements. Will it fit? It will be close! The distributor offered to send us one and if it doesn’t fit we can just return it.
To make the ultimate decision of whether to change to this new system we employed the famous Ben Franklin Decision Making Process. Google that phrase if you are not sure what I am talking about.
“My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one Pro and over the other Con. Then during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different time occur to me, for or against the measure. When I have thus got them altogether in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I judge some two reasons con equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out five; and thus proceeding, I find where the balance lies; and if after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly.” –Benjamin Franklin
Here is what we came up with on the Pros side:
changing will free up through hulls (holes in boat) which could be retasked to the yet-to-be-purchased watermaker
the new system can’t clog
no need to carry expensive rebuild kits for seals, pumps, etc.
much lighter as there will be no full holding tank in the bow of the boat
no need to find pump-out stations
For the Cons:
Number one is money. The new head will be just under a grand.
New system requires electricity (although a miniscule amount, this needed to be listed)
Liquid waste (which is basically sterile) needs to be disposed of every 3 days or so
We will need to carry a supply of peat moss or coir
It is a “different” system to get used to (the other head requires its own system too, but we are already accustomed to that).
We need to install it (the other one is already there and working)
Obviously those pros and cons are not equal. Rebecca felt that having to install the new head would be a deal-breaker given my limited handyman skills. I am pretty confident I am up to the task though. The $1000.00 is a biggy of course, but the stupid rebuild kits for the old one are almost a hundred bucks. So that would add up quickly. All said, unless something radical occurs in the next day or so, I think we will end up making the shift, or at least attempting to. We’ll see what happens.
I think as far as charts are concerned, we are good up until we reach NYC. Last week we received the NY State Canal Guide. It was only 20 bucks and we received it in just 3 days. They included a couple of extra maps and guides with it too so all in all it was a great deal. Too bad they’re all not that cheap!
We have some computer charts for our GPSNavX application for after we exit the Hudson River but we still need to acquire some paper charts for the area.
Yesterday I found a guy selling the Maptech Chartkit for the Chesapeake/Delaware area for a good price but… he won’t ship to Canada. I guess we’ll keep looking.
It’s minus 30 outside, with the wind chill that is (like that makes a difference)! Since there is no way I feel like venturing outside right now, I thought I would share a chunk of where we are hiding out these days, sans boat.
This is our living room / dining room / boat stuff storage area…
Have you ever dreamt of running away to live on a tropical island, spending your days basking in the warm sunshine while sipping piña coladas? We have. In fact, our dream included running away to live on a sailboat in the tropics, even though when we started we had never even sailed before! Zero to Cruising is the story of how we take that dream and make it a reality. Follow along... you can do it too!
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Where is Katana Now?
44 14.4 N 76 36.2 W
Countdown Until...
OUR NEW LIFE AS PIRATES: in 5 months, 20 days
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Katana’s Wish List
Things we "need" to acquire for departing:
•Mustang Inflatable PFDs
•Jacklines / Tethers
•Strikeshield lightning protection
•SSB Radio
•Spectra 150 DX Watermaker
•Increased water tankage
•Charts for cruising areas
•Wind Generator
•More solar panels
•Honda 2000 Generator
, will test both my splicing and sewing abilities. 
I guess we’ll keep looking.
