Living right on a knife’s edge of being overwhelmed.
We got back to the boat last Wednesday and immediately got back to work. Taylor is taking on the spray dodger. Basically the windshield and roof of the cockpit. These are generally canvas and vinyl and professionally sewn are $2000-ish. Way outside the Scooter budget. She found a sewing machine on facebook marketplace for $80 and got all of the necessary materials for $400.
With the help of her vast Instagram following, some youtube videos, and a ton of hard work, she’s well on her way to having the dodger made.
I got going on Scooter’s electronics.
Last week, we installed a new battery system. We upgraded Scooter’s house battery bank to a 200 amp-hour AGM battery, replaced the main switch to separate the battery banks, replaced the battery charger with something from our lifetime, and hooked up our charge controller for the solar panels. 12v DC systems are not my forte. Electricity isn’t really my forte. The extent of my knowledge comes from wiring subwoofers in my honda civic in high school. Needless to say, I barely squeaked passed circuits in college.
The boat looks like a catastrophe in project mode.
I ran the wires for solar and fitted the panels. This went mostly smoothly except our fiberglass top deck can (apparently) be almost an inch thick in places and no waterproof wire pass-through I found would work, so some industrial sealant (throwback to our window project) will have to do the trick.
Now Scooter has solar and we can move our projects off-shore and still have power!
This leads us to the last major electronic project scooter needs before her voyage. Our Autopilot. This has gotten me thoroughly whelmed. Our boat doesn’t have much of a binnacle so this requires some creativity. I got a 6”x6” electrical junction box for houses and started jigsawing.
This took the better part of a morning and I was so proud of my creation but so ashamed I didn’t take a better picture of the process, or mounting location. I have a lot to learn about documenting projects.
The housing didn’t fit between the top of the bar and the current compass mount. At this point, I was committed so I went after the compass mount with the trusty jigsaw. It was too large anyway. It turned out perfect, which is a relief cause I didn’t get permission from Hannah and Joe ahead of time. We’ll find out if they read their emails.
Nothing is mounted yet, unfortunately. Raymarine sends a 1-meter cable to connect the electronic compass to the interface screen with the EXPLICIT instructions not to mount within a meter of your existing compass, as if everyone wasn’t mounting the instrument right next to their compass. Whoever made that decision ruined my weekend. So I have a 3-meter cable in the mail and hopefully can wrap this up later this week.
The real fun started this weekend when Hannah and Joe were able to visit the boat. We got a little motoring in, a lot of laughs, and some key decisions made for the voyage.
Max and Eunice didn’t get along (to no one’s surprise), the crab pot drifted away in a hard current, the anchor got in a fight with the fiberglass dock box (Anchor won, security deposit lost), we gig’d some horse clams, and experienced the best bioluminescence to date. It was a blast having the original crew back together.
This was the first time we’ve seen them bright enough to capture on a camera. This 20-minute splashing session alone was worth every penny we spent on the boat.
Big news on Scooter. We found a fourth crewmember for the passage to San Francisco. We were nervous about getting enough rest with only 3, as shifts at night would be 4 hours awake, 2 hours sleeping. Better sailors might only need one person awake, but in our novice state, that doesn’t seem entirely safe. So it’s my pleasure to introduce:
Joe and Tay met Nelson years ago on a spring break trip gone awry. They were en route to Zion to meet me and some friends but pit-stopped in Colorado to do some Younglife-Backcountry-ministry-training. Their car broke down, and they were forced to spend the week at a Young Life camp and hang out with Nelson. Then a couple years later Joe ended up guiding for RMR together and became fast friends. His energy is unmatched (except maybe by Taylor). Nelson is a fly-fishing guide, ski patroller, and just really good at doing adventures. We’re so excited.
But if you were thinking about joining, we definitely have room for a fifth person!
Finally, If you’ve seen Taylor or me in the last 11 months, you know we have lived in our Sea Peoples Co hoodies and beanies. They have fantastic designs and materials and have partnered with us on some gear this year. Our first run is an organic cotton long sleeve shirt.
They’re $28 and will be available in 2 weeks. If you’d like to pre-order, get ahold of me. We’ll have more products coming out closer to our departure to SF but everything is a limited run so don’t wait!
P.S. Thanks for following along on the projects. I hope there aren’t going to be this many project-based weekly updates in a row in the future. I know boats are never-ending maintenance but I hope this weekend marks the beginning of the adventuring aspect. TBD.