SEQUELS II...Return of the revenge of the sequel...

SEQUELS II, The Sequel

In the recent Hollyweird tradition, I bring you Sequels….lots of em.

First and foremost:

SNAKE FARM, RETURN OF THE ELECTRIC EELS

Now with even more and bigger snakes.

I am, of course, referring to the wiring patch sprouting around our battery bank.  When we first wired up, I used what I thought was 10GA wire to connect things.  On our trip up from Sue Creek, though, the power handler on the aft motor kept telling us that, while it had enough voltage, it couldn’t draw enough current from the batteries to run full blast, which made for somewhat of a harrowing…..and rather leisurely….voyage.

On examination I discovered that I had, in fact, connected stuff with 12 GA wire.  Not, IMHO, heavy enough for the tasks at hand.

So, like every good American, I went on the web: finding a site for pre-made, 4 GA battery connectors, which I figured would be good for anything including welding and operating the Tesla quantum death ray new lighting on the bow. We received the parcel from the vendor in due order (they sell parts and connectors for electric golf carts) with 10, 14” cables with heavy insulated fittings on each end for about $38 bucks.

See the difference?

So here’s the new and improved snake farm

And the banished weenie snakes, overworked and deserving of our praise and a long rest.

It remains to be seen if this solves any of our problems, but the system certainly looks a heck of a lot more robust.  Will do a followup in a few weeks on this.

We also have for your viewing pleasure:

ICE CAPADES II, REVENGE OF THE WATT METER

You may recall a few entries ago we install a new fridge on Floating Empire.  The trouble was, it was after two days of clouds which followed two days of heavy rainstorms.  As a result, our battery bank was in a lame condition.  Pluggin in the new gadget, the fridge of course had to run continuously for hours until it cooled down, and by that time, the power controller on the batteries was giving us a low power warning……

….so we shut it off…

…..only to go through the whole thing the next day…..

See, the problem is, our battery bank wasn’t getting a chance to recharge.  We’d be showing 12.4 volts only to have the fridge and inverter combo knock it down to 12.1 when they kicked in……then 12, then 11.9…….

So I finally just went, bought some ice, and left the system off until my batteries are back up to their healthy, normal 13+ volts.  Then We’ll try it again, starting the system around 10AM, shutting down for the night, …..lather, rinse, repeat.  This seems to be working for a number of folks with solar cabins, so it should work for us, right?

If you do get a fridge for your small solar system, do yourself a favor, make sure you battery bank is up and use block ice to cool the fridge down initially rather than draining your system to do it.  You’ll be glad you did.

And of course, Finally:

MOVING DAY II:  THE REVENGE

In which we had to go back to our storage locker, dig out half a ton of stuff to get to a box we needed, put it back together, only to discover when we got home it was the wrong box….

sigh

Stay tuned.

M

A tool you'll need

Just wanted to pass this along.  IF you use barrels for floatation, you're gonna need a bung wrench (also called barrel stopper wrench, barrel stopper tool, and a number of other more confusing terms.).  It's cheap (the plastic ones, which are all you need, run around $10) and looks like this:

It will let you get in between the barrels, even when in the water, to loosen or tighten the bungs, adjust floatation, see if they're unaccountably full of water, etc. etc.

I mention this because we DIDN'T have one until today, and were using all manner of inappropriate and half-witted things to make do.

Get one.

M

No S**T, The joys of the composting toilet.

Okay, first of all, I'll say this again, what I have to tell people, ad infinitum ad nauseum:  No, it doesn't smell.

The composting toilet setup aboard Floating Empire

It amazes me why on earth anyone would mess with blackwater systems, pumpouts, incinerator toilets, luggable portapotties with holding tanks you have to empty, when they could just use a bucket and a sawdust toilet.  This thing has proven so very easy to live with, so very easy to do, that I'm almost surprised anything else exists.

Our toilet is simple:  We have a 5 gallon bucket.  We cut off the top rim of it so it would sit inside ANOTHER 5 gallon bucket.  So the top 1/3 or so bucket is affixed to the toilet box cover and the lower one sits below, kept aligned to the upper one by the nesting design of these things.  This also keeps the liner in place.

The cut off half bucket...okay, so I was a little jagged.  The fitting is from the urine diverter that we ultimately decided we didn't need.  The rim of the upper bucket keeps it from popping through the plywood and it's taper keeps it nested in its lower cousin.  Apologies for my arm being in the way, but I had to hold the thing open somehow.....

We line the lower toilet with a biodegradable bag and put 2" or so of either sawdust or wood pellets (more on this later) in the bottom.  We have a snap on toilet seat and cover made by LuggableLoo on the top bucket section, which gives us both a toilet seat and a snug closure.

Here's the snap on toilet seat from LuggableLoo.  You can also see the upper and lined lower buckets.

Whenever  you use the toilet, you throw in a handful of absorbent material.  We've used crushed dry leaves, sawdust (not from treated lumber....it inhibits the decomposition process), pine based cat litter (don't use the clay stuff), and wood stove pellets.  As long as you throw in enough to lightly cover what you just...uh...left, there's no odor except one of damp wood.  No, really, it doesn't smell.  It doesn't.  Not at all.  My Cat box smells more than the toilet does.

When the lower container is 3/4 full, we pull it out and either put it in the compost bin or throw it in a dumpster (can you do that?  What do you think happens to all those disposable diapers?).  The last time I tossed it in a dumpster, the bag broke.  It looked like a pile of wet oatmeal, no odor but one of decomposing wood, no loose liquids at all.

So then you reline the lower bucket, toss in another 2" of material, and you're ready to continue.  With the two of us living on the boat, we dump the thing about every 5 days or so.

As for the biomass, our big accidental find was the hardwood pellets for pellet stoves.

Yes, these things.  Compressed hardwood sawdust made for pellet stoves.

We got a bag of the stuff for use in our gasifier stove, and when we ran out of sawdust, I remembered what happened at the big box store at which I had been working when one of the bags of the stuff broke and got wet.  The compressed pellets, made of hardwood sawdust, expanded as they absorbed the water.  As a result, the pellets are a good deal more compact than sawdust to carry and store, but expand rapidly to absorb any moisture from the compost and seem to decompose just fine.  Better, a bag of the stuff is about $5 for around 40 lbs., which will last you months.  Be sure to get the "natural" kind that doesn't use oil as a binder and has no other additives, and be aware that not all the pellets are compressed hardwood.  Some are cherry pits or other materials.  Read the bag.

Seriously, folks, this is the absolutely easiest way to deal with your leavings and to meet Coast Guard regs.....

and, really...it doesn't smell.

M

(check our Morgainne's companion blog to this one, lifeartwater.blogspot.com)

The secret to living large is.....

....time.

I know, I wouldn't have believed it either, but that seems to be it.  Not money, not position, not location or fame or luck....it seems to be mostly a matter of having your own time at your own disposal.  When we were both working, we very much didn't have that as an option.  When you have no time, you have to settle, you have to eat what's quick (and often what's more expensive) because that's all the time you have.  When you have no time, you have to travel fast, talk fast, live fast, and at the end of the day you find you can't remember what the hell you did all day because it was just the same as yesterday, and none of it....the time, I mean, which is, after all, your life....was yours.

Take a look at this:  This is a simple, robust stew, made from locally sourced ingredients:  local potatoes, local smoked sausage, local carrots and onions, all from local farmstands we bothered to discover.

You may note it's being cooked in a legged dutch oven, cooked slowly, with time to adjust spices.

We topped this off with a dessert of local cantaloupe, wild raspberries that we picked ourselves, and shaved dark chocolate and a glass of Cabernet. Nice, eh?  My point is this:  we had the time to find the farmer's markets, to start the coals, to take our time cooking the stew, to forage the berries.....we had the time at our disposal.

The results were delicious, healthy, and satisfying.

Time.

Carpe Diem

Seize the day.

(check out Morgainne's companion blog at lifeartwater.blogspot.com, you'll be glad you did )

A Plea for Assistance....no not the financial kind..

....though of course if you'd like to contribute to our efforts, we'd be happy to have it.

We've just learned we can't stay here in Middle River through the winter due to icing concerns and Floating Empire will need to be moving to a new home over the next three or four months.

Doggone it I was just getting to like the place.

If you know of a Chesapeake area marina that we could get into and that is hospitable to live aboards, please pass us along the information.  If you or someone you know has waterfront along the bay or any of its tributaries and would be willing to host us at anchor or dock for a few months, we'd certainly appreciate that as well.  As we're completely self sufficient, all we need is a calm place to tie up or anchor and a spot to park the car.  We'll take care of the rest.

I just figured many minds looking for a place is better than just us.

Foraging

So today we returned with long pants and stout shoes to the abandoned raspberry patch to make ourselves some ultra local dessert.

The results were a dessert of fresh local cantaloupe, fresh picked berries, a bit of sea salt, and some shaved dark chocolate.

yum

So here's my question.  We've had some folks suggest we put together a blog purely of food on the boat, cooking for small kitchens, limited facilities, and lots of creativity.  We're both former restaurant owners and caterers, among many other things, and have quite a love of food.  Would you be interested?

Leave us comments in the link below....

oh and check out Morgainne's blog, lifeartwater.blogspot.com while you're at it.

More shortly as I get it uploaded

M

The Big Chill Arrives!!

I may try to get in a couple of posts today.  The biggest news is, of course, that Saturday AM bright and early the Fedex man dropped off  our new fridge, which is a really cool thing.

Of course we had a few worries getting it in....one of which was: if the dimensions they're providing us were off by as much as 3/4", we couldn't get it through the door.  We already had that problem with our chairs, if you'll remember.

Fortunately, the 19" quoted was the 19" we got.  Thanks to our friend Lee and a bit of acrobatics, we got it on board and through the bow doorway.

Because of some of our weight distribution issues we're putting it in the stern (sadly, in Morgainne's studio space) for the time being....

So here's it's new home, next to the new steps.  It seems pretty well made....

....but do they really consider this itty thing an ice cube tray?

Since we've had a few cloudy days, the startup has put a bit of a strain on our electrical system, mostly because the fridge has had to run full blast in it's initial cool down, but once that is completed, we think it'll be just fine.  I'm looking forward to NoT slogging ice to the boat every day.

More to come shortly
check out Morgainne's blog, lifeartwater.blogspot.com
M

Apologia

Hi folks,
A lot of things have happened on Floating Empire over the last few days, including work on the floatation, some new cooking stuff, and the installation of our refrigeration.....

Unfortunately we're having some tethering problems getting online.

I have lots of pix and video and cooking stuff and small animals and flexi the pocket monkeys and spanish moss and wise gerbils and stuff to post....

But the bandwidth just isn't there tonight.

So please bear with us.  tomorrow (Sunday) we shall venture to the public library and upload all of this exceptional and inspiring material which will probably include the secret of life (okay, 42), winning lottery ticket numbers, the secret to getting that special job and seducing that special person and, of course, chocolate.....

....oh, yessssss chocolate.
 
But for tonight, I can't make things upload except for this pathetic text.  Stop in in the evening tomorrow to be edified and enlightened, excited and educated, and to have your excitement expedited.

....promise :)

M

The Barrels

You may remember early in our launching that we were down on the forward port side, and that it turned out that we were missing a barrel bung and that one of the forward barrels was leaking due to a cross threaded one.

Well now we have a different issue.  Two of the barrels on the same side have begun to deform, becoming flat on the bottom and losing floatation.  I'm at a bit of a loss.  So today at some point I'll go in the water, see if any of them have taken on water, and see what's going on with the #2 and #4 barrels on the Port side.

Sigh, always something....

but it beats the hell out of faculty meetings.

M

Busy Day

Been a busy day here on the Floating Empire after two days of solid rain, deafening thunder, lightning....did i mention the rain?  Yeesh.

But today was pretty and a bit cool and we could actually get some things done.  First we ventured to the wilds of Ikea to get some folding chairs for the dining area.  We had bought some lovely faux wicker chairs before we started this thing.  They're great, comfy, durable, stylish......the only thing we failed to ask was: is there any door or window in this boat through which these chairs will fit?

If you're curious, the answer to that one was "No".

So they sit stylishly stacked on the bow.  We're probably giving them to a friend.  So we went to IKEA and snagged some lovely, equally stylish, black wood folding chairs for the dining area that we can make disappear if need be.

Then we tied into our major project for the day, which was the new aft stairs.  We had been using a ladder....I mean Lowes fibreglass painter's ladder....to get up and down to the sleeping loft.  Not only did it take up too much freaking room, the elderly cat couldn't manage it, so either she got upstairs somehow and couldn't get down (so she just pee'd in place) or stayed downstairs and sulked.

So in my right mind and in possession of multiple power tools, I built a new set of steps in front of our power system to help us ALL access the loft.

They take up less room, aren't in danger of falling over, and are much wider in the tread department....unfortunately, though

Kallisti, though a beautiful cat, is not the brightest crayon in the pack, and has yet to figure them out without either needing help or hurting herself...

sigh....

Dinners have been wonderful.  yesterday, we caught our first crabs and made them into a great little meal.

And then today, after a lovely lunch at Shultz's of lump crabcake, we found some small fillets and had them with a monster salad and fresh bread for dinner.

(apologies for the low light levels)

We hated it as you can see....

My point is, we're living rather large in our new and simplified lifestyle.

We ordered the edgestar fridge today, 3.1 cubic feet that runs at a massive 35 watts when it's on.  Full review when we get it installed and running.

Comment, damn ye.

and check out Morgainne's blog, lifeartwater.blogspot.com

M