Aboard the EV Tesla's Revenge

Madman in the Galley

I'm sitting here in the galley of Tesla's Revenge, sun streaming in the open hatchway.  The coming weeks are going to include a massive amount of work on the new vessel that we hope to share with you, including:

Pulling the Mast.
Construction of a new wheelhouse.
Installation of a rather large number of solar panels.
Installation of a new battery bank and inverter.
and, of course,
Installing and testing our new electric drive system.

All this mess should take us about three months (he said, being wildly overly optimistic) and then we should get to take you folks along on some travels, first around the Chesapeake, then into the Erie Canal system and the Great Lakes and Canada.

This is gonna be a metric craptonne of work (that is, of course, the technical term) but we love making things. 

Stay tuned.  This is just beginning.

M

Bittersweet

Here's a shot of The Floating Empire, making her voyage to her new home, witnesses in attendance.

The Floating Empire sails off on her new adventure.

I'm sentimental about stuff in my life, and this is no exception.  The Empire has been our home for going on four years.  We built every inch of her, sweat and blood literally in every screw driven, every board cut.  I'm so very happy not to have had to break our little ship, and delighted that she's in the hands of someone who will give her the care she needs.  We're off to new adventures with Tesla's Revenge, new creations, new places, but still. . . .

I shall miss her.

Many more photos over at Life, Art, Water of her departure.

And now, our new saga begins.

M

Moving Day

Moving is always such a treat.

Yes, that was sarcasm in case you missed it.

Be it house to house or boat to boat, moving is a pain in the butt. You get to wonder such imponderables as “where did all this stuff COME from?” and “what is this and why did we save it?” among other favorites. Yep, it's a joy.

For those of you who have followed this blog you know that we're leaving our beloved barrel shantyboat Floating Empire, and moving aboard a new vessel, now dubbed Tesla's Revenge, an electrically driven solar boat with which we want to do some traveling. We'd been afraid that we would have to demolish our shantyboat, but, happily, a new owner has emerged to give Empire the TLC she needs and she'll be off on a series of new adventures.

But that leaves us downsizing yet again. I kid my wife that we're going to keep doing this until we can fit our possessions into a single briefcase. She says it'll just make it easier when we go to Mars.

The slow, sad work of disassembling parts of our home.

The new vessel is coming along. . . .clumsily . . . as we're having to continue rebuilding and refitting the boat while we're living on her. Tesla's Revenge is a former Cal 2-29. We've shifted over the Empire's battery bank (all eight o them), and will be pulling the mast (the mast supports have some issues), building a pilot house over the cockpit, and equipping her with a 5KW motor and 1000 watts of solar panels.

New homes for old stuff

Then the real fun begins, probably about midsummer.

As we reflect on Floating Empire and our last three years on the water, its amazing to think what a wonderful choice moving aboard proved to be: the adventures had, friends made, and all surrounded by the beauty and grace of the water. We wouldn't have had it any other way.

The Floating Empire, now off on a new adventure.

On to the next adventure.

Lots more photos over at Life, Art, Water, check em out.

MUCH more shortly.

Happy Spring

M

This just in....

We have found a new and happy home for our beloved Floating Empire, (allowing us to complete work on Tesla's Revenge with a clear maritime conscience. )  Stay tuned.

whew
M

SPLASH

We'll it's official.  Tesla's Revenge is in the water.  Now the real work starts.

Touching up the keel is a wee bit unnerving, being under 8000lbs of boat in the sling.

Here she sits, afloat and upright and everything.

Magellan, true to his name, was quick to come explore.  Not sure what he thinks of it all.

Many more pictures of the splash and christening over at Life, Art, Water.  Check em out!

MUCH more later. Stay tuned.

M

Building a Composting head, pt. 2

So the final, simple act in putting our new head together is to attach the seat.  We've used in the past the "Luggable Loo", a snap on "emergency" seat cover designed specifically to work with a 5 gallon bucket.  In order to make things easy, we cut off the top of one bucket to which to attach the seat, leaving enough length for it to nest in the full bucket of the receptacle beneath.

The toilet seat will snap onto the cut off bucket top, which will rest on the top of the toilet housing.

So you only need to drop in and line the full bucket, dropping in enough biomass to absorb the liquid (We continue to successfully use wood stove pellets.  They're compact and tidy), pop on the lid, and then put in the cut off bucket top and lid.

Looks rather nice, and the hatchcover is a neat way to conceal the biomass.

This is such a simple system, I'm amazed more people don't use them.  The blackwater ones reek, and they're a nightmare to repair.

More soon

M

AND AN UPDATE:
A lot of folks have asked us to put all the blog articles on composting toilet construction and care and feeding in one place, so we've consolidated all those pages along with some additional material and created a little Ebook.  The thing is available by the below link on Amazon for Kindle.  It's free if you have Kindle Unlimited, otherwise it will set you back a massive .$.99.  It was the easiest way to put the thing together and distribute the information, and if you do download, you'll be giving us grand total of $.35 to help us further the stuff we're doing here.  If you're interested, just click the picture or link below: