some scowish curiosity...

An apt use of lyrics, some math I'm having trouble with, and this really got to me...

So, here's a boat I've been coming back to for a long time.

Reuel Parker's Junk rigged Scow 33.

Part of the reason I like this design is it's mostly lumberyard materials. Formply is cheap as it gets these days and my exposure tests had it as good or better than marine ply and a whole lot better than pressure treated exterior ply. Down here in southern-most tRumpistan a 3/4" sheet of formply costs less than a 1/4" exterior which would be a huge cost savings when you're buying 80-sheets or more of plywood.

So yeah, this is going to be an affordable boat.

Another reason I like the boat is its rig. I've always thought that the junk rig communities' collective phobia with jibs is somewhat problematic to performance. Lastly, while I'm a big fan of free-standing masts, I've come around to the conclusion that a little rigging combined with a beefy spar makes all kinds of sense in terms of weight and cost.

The interior accommodation in the design is what I'd call very comfortable for a couple living aboard full time.

Truth be told, I pretty much just like everything about the design as drawn. The boat is easily built of affordable materials and I know enough about to boats to know it will float right side up and do the job.

So, why haven't bought the plans already (well that's a little too complicated for the moment) and why am I going on about the design again?

Well, Mr. Parker said something interesting on his website recently...

"Because so many people have shown interest in it, I have designed a new interior for the SCOW 33 design, and upgraded the Plans and Construction Notes."

Which means I'd like to know what Reuel Parker's new interior looks like. That said, I don't expect I'll like the new interior as much as the original but I'm opened minded so we'll just have to see what we see. 

Color me curious.

Listening to the Hadestown

So it goes...

Here's a project of interest...

John Scalzi making some needful points, a sky pilot getting it right, and Badtux pointing out the obvious...

A long time ago I read the book "Sailing the Farm" by Ken Neumeyer and while there is a lot of good ideas, some excellent information on seaweed and other content of a useful sort, it suffered greatly from the fact that a lot of the projects/ideas were just not practical aboard a boat or, in their current form of evolution, simply did not work. Which is not to say he was not on the right track or his theories were wrong but it was simply not quite ready for prime time.

Tragically, as fate would have it, Ken Neumeyer was never able to write a sequel to "Sailing the Farm" but I'm sure that if he had it would have contained a boat sized, scaled down, and demountable version of something like this solar dehydrator from Mother Earth News.

Actually, maybe it's time to look at "Sailing the Farm" again and see how we can apply current tech and materials...

Listening to The Platters (2015 version)

So it goes...

I see the future and it's smaller...

Some painful ink, this will explain a lot, and Brilliant at Breakfast has a theory...

We've just heard about some political moves to make sailing/cruising/living aboard much more expensive in the USVI...

How expensive you might ask? Well, a quick glance at the new proposed rates would make the USVI a NO FREE ANCHORING zone for anyone who stays over in the USVI. Folks who live aboard in the territory would see an increase (in my boat length niche) in mooring fees of 500% (bigger boats would see increases of 600% & 700%) and that's just the tip of the iceberg as, looking at the whole package, it is something of the death of a thousand cuts sort of thing.

Sadly, the USVI is not alone in getting serious about raising rates to the point where folks simply don't come in unless they have to and then only stay the minimum needed till they can get out of Dodge.

Welcome to the future...

I think we're going to need a smaller boat!

Listening to France Gall (it is Bastille Day after all)

So it goes...

Quick question about where home is...

Something about our open government, you might want to send your Rep a note after reading this, and an important note for those with guitars on board...

It's interesting what/how people worry about moving aboard...

Most folks considering moving onto a boat have a lot of issues/worries with the whole living in a small space, lack of mod cons, and trying to bring their "normal" life along in the process. A lot of those folks write to Boat Bits from time to time and ask about those questions and mostly seem a little put off when I tell them it is not a problem and it will all work out... Apparently "No problem, mon" is not a sentence a lot of folks understand.

One advantage to hitting a certain age is that you have enough life experience to step back and see how things work and having watched lots of people move onto boats and cruise both successfully or having it become a clusterfuck, I've noted that the very act of moving onto that boat is such a sea change that it simply evolves you to a different level and things that you worried about are no longer an issue...

Of course, if you have not moved onto that boat you can't understand that. It's a leap of faith thing. I might add, that when I say moving aboard I mean something other than just the physical act of taking up residence on a boat and there are no half measures in the process.

Folks who decide to live aboard and cruise but want to keep their options open (translated as keeping their shore bound life in stasis or worse, keeping it in full tilt boogie and trying to jump between the two) are not going to get into that headspace needed for a successful transition because they simply have not made the leap of faith needful to evolve to that next level. Face it, it is hard to enjoy your life at anchor somewhere beautiful if you are worried about whether your lawn back "home" is getting watered enough.

Actually, "home" is the key word to a successful transition to life aboard as you simply don't start really living aboard until you think of your boat as your home and that, not whether or not you can live without a washer/dryer, is the key make or break issue.

Like the man said... "Home is where the heart is"

Listening to Mylene Farmer

So it goes...

A must see/read...

Dmitry Orlov was at the Northern California Ecofest and explained why sailboats make so much sense in a world where we've reached "Peak Everything"...




This is just the sort of presentation that would be great to share with our land bound friends who just don't get it!

Propane, stoves, and back up systems...

Attainable Adventure Cruising had an interesting post on propane this morning which got me thinking in a couple of directions...

The first is how, as much as we try, there always seems to be a joker in the mix and that the best we can do is always to try and have a work-around waiting in the wings. In this case someone won't fill your bottles because of how old they are but if they were in date it might be the fact that the filling station was closed for a holiday or in the Caribbean simply that there was no propane available on the island until the next cargo boat arrives... There is always something  waiting in the wings to make life interesting.

The other day when I was researching solid fuel stoves and heaters I noticed that Navigator Stove Works had a really neat drop in alcohol burner for their stoves that made all kinds of sense...

It especially makes sense for those who have a solid fuel stove and are going to be spending some time in the tropics where you may not want to turn your interior into a super sauna... Plus it is a back up system, which is no bad thing. That said, the cost of the drop in burner has a certain "ouch" factor at $215 each!

That said, for  handy boatfolk, adapting a commercial alcohol backpacking stove would hardly be difficult. Or, an even better stove you  could build one for pennies from scratch might do the trick.

Our passage stove for years has been a SeaSwing that uses a propane bottle but as the price for the one pound bottles keeps climbing (at the store yesterday I noticed they were $7.98 a bottle) to silly prices, the thought that swapping over to an alcohol stove to use in it starts making all kinds of sense.

Of course, alcohol stoves don't put out as much heat as propane or kerosene stoves do, but if I run out of propane on an island where none exists I can still have my morning coffee even if I have to burn rum to do it...

At least on this island rum is a lot cheaper than those one pound propane bottles!

Listening to Quicksilver

So it goes...

Water, water everywhere redux...

As today is Blog action day 2010 and the subject is clean water, I'd thought a repeat of this post would be no bad thing...

One of the first things that living on a small boat teaches you is your place in the eco-system... Unlike most land dwellers, you know exactly how much stuff you consume, how much waste you generate, how much electricity you use and how many hours of sun/wind or generator used to replace it. In other words, living on a boat gives you a clue (which I guess makes most land-dwellers clueless?).

Water for most newbies on boats is something of a panic-attack inducing conundrum as the wasteful practices ingrained in the resource wasting land dwelling model is very hard to break and trying to make these ingrained bad habits work on a cruising boat... Well, that way lies madness!

On the other hand, water IS serious stuff. We need water to live so it is something that does need to be factored in terms of how much you use, how much you actually need, how to obtain it, and how to keep it.

Throwing money at the situation with something like a watermaker or turning your boat into a sailing tanker truck seems to be the two most popular initial answers to the problem of having enough water. The real answer is getting in touch with the need/want equation and begin using what you need, rather than what you want or think you need or, in other words, get smart and waste less...


Speaking of waste and water, here is a great presentation on a perfect example of silly waste/being dumb where water is concerned and a great example on how what we think is true, simply is not.

Wet and wetter...

The rain down here for the last few days has been... well, the word biblical does come to mind...

You may not be able to see the full extent of the water level in the dinghy but that is about eight inches, and pretty impressive for less than twelve hours.

All warm and fuzzy...

Living on a boat is not for everyone and while we do OK, it is not without the occasional "wouldn't it be nice to live in the real world" moments...

Like a garden would be nice and as much as we try and sort out various cunning plans to have even the most minimal onboard source of produce, the best we can do seems to be sprouts... Not knocking sprouts, but it sure would be nice to have an onboard source of tomatoes and zucchini that made sense.

Then there is the constant struggle to make things fit... Sure the guitars are hassle making but trying to make accessible room for a pair of bikes and professional film equipment on a 34-foot boat that is workable is just plain crazy making! While I'm all for simplifying, there really is a point where doing without starts eroding the quality of life. And make no mistake about it the whole basis of the live aboard lifestyle is all about quality of life... Just something to keep in mind.

Then again... If it was easy everybody would be doing it!

Sadly, life is very seldom easy and worthwhile stuff even less so. So every once in awhile it is needful to point out this whole living-on-boat-and-cruising-gig is not just cute kittens, tropical breezes and awesome sunsets. It's just life and like all things there are messy bits.

The worst part of cruising...

It may surprise some, but the single biggest hassle most folks on boats have to deal with is not fixing engines, repairing sails or dealing with problematic customs and immigration officials...

The really hard part of cruising on a sailboat is simply doing the laundry.

Not only is doing the laundry a hassle at the best of times but it eats up fresh water and anyone who has been on a boat for a while becomes seriously stingy about water usage which makes doing the laundry doubly frustrating... It's a yucky job at the best of times and all that water going down the drain!

Over the years we have tried just about every sort of hand washing regime including buckets with plungers, buckets with hands, washboards and suchlike and it just seems a little backwards in 2010 to be doing your wash in a bucket...

We've also tried manual pressure wash machines which sorta/kinda work and currently have a small electric agitate only machine which works but we never ever use so it just takes up room in the cockpit locker...

We have considered the various RV/Small apartment units but having noticed that most folks with these systems seem to be doing very expensive repairs on a regular basis and even when they work still wind up taking their laundry to the local laundry service if one is handy.

Actually the problem has never been about washing clothes, as washing is easy. The real problem is in the rinsing of said clothing and that is the difficult part of the equation as it is the part of the process that eats up water, time and energy.

I keep hoping for some sort of George Jetson harmonic dirt removing gun or robot thingy...

Not going to happen!

I do see just a little glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel with a new washing machine that Electrolux has up its sleeve though I'm afraid it is still in the concept stage.

Apparently this unit is so small you can hang it on a wall and while it only does small (cruiser sized?) loads, the important thing is it uses less than a gallon per load. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for this one when it comes to market...

A new blog of note... The INTERVIEW WITH A CRUISER Project

I get a lot of mail here at Boat Bits about the various aspects and reality of cruising or living on a boat outside of the comfort zone that is home...

A new blog/website is The INTERVIEW WITH A CRUISER Project which looks like it is on to something much needed for those considering a life afloat and voyaging...

Check it out!

A cool seagoing garden...

Water, water, everywhere...

One of the first things that living on a small boat teaches you is your place in the eco-system... Unlike most land dwellers, you know exactly how much stuff you consume, how much waste you generate, how much electricity you use and how many hours of sun/wind or generator used to replace it. In other words, living on a boat gives you a clue (which I guess makes most land-dwellers clueless?).

Water for most newbies on boats is something of a panic-attack inducing conundrum as the wasteful practices ingrained in the resource wasting land dwelling model is very hard to break and trying to make these ingrained bad habits work on a cruising boat... Well, that way lies madness!

On the other hand, water IS serious stuff. We need water to live so it is something that does need to be factored in terms of how much you use, how much you actually need, how to obtain it, and how to keep it.

Throwing money at the situation with something like a watermaker or turning your boat into a sailing tanker truck seems to be the two most popular initial answers to the problem of having enough water. The real answer is getting in touch with the need/want equation and begin using what you need, rather than what you want or think you need or, in other words, get smart and waste less...


Speaking of waste and water, here is a great presentation on a perfect example of silly waste/being dumb where water is concerned and a great example on how what we think is true, simply is not.

More tools and a couple of books...

Except for the odd mast falling down and going boom, we don't have much of a problem with things breaking on "So It Goes" and it has always been my contention that most breakage on boats is crew induced and we pretty much don't break stuff...

Not having an internal combustion beast driving the boat also goes a long way towards keeping the repair list and expenses down as electric propulsion systems by their very nature are about three steps less than IC engines in hassle and expense factor. Throw in that the cost of components are low enough that when we head off to the boonies we can easily have a spare motor and controller tucked away in a locker for that WTF moment. The fact that a spare electric motor costs less than most basic IC repairs,  means that you can color me (Mr Cheapseats) a very happy camper!

That said, other electrical devices on boats are not so user friendly and we face a constant uphill battle to keep all of the various electric and electronic goodies on "So It Goes" working and Radio Shack level tools are simply not up to the task. A really great basic electrical tool set up is available from Adafruit (who does one of my favorite geeky blogs... remember the Bedazzler?) and is just the thing needful for modern day electrical repairs. They also sell a bunch of neat kits which the building of would give you the skills to deal with what ails your chart plotter or loose connection in a running light. Of course, you will also need what I consider the bibles of marine power knowledge from the Ample Power folks "Wiring 12 Volts for Ample Power" and "Living on 12 Volts With Ample Power" as compared to what else is out there, they are simply the best.

A neat wheelie-dealie... Swirl

Just my opinion, but a lot of folks take the wrong tack on choosing ever more complicated and expensive systems for their boats when they should be looking at how they can simplify.

These days there is a lot of great design effort devoted to making life in the third world better and just maybe if we were to look at what is available on that front we'd be a whole lot better off.

For instance... Take a look at the Swirl which is a means of moving water easily between places with the added bonus of also being a way of washing clothes. Not such a bad idea! There are a lot of spots that would be great places to cruise but being able to move the boat (or dinghy) up to a dock and get water is just not doable. I remember being someplace where the nearest water was up the beach and just a mile down the road and after ferrying a dozen jerry cans I realized there was a whole new meaning to the word... PAIN! Something like the Swirl on the other hand, would have made it pretty close to just a reasonable stroll!

On the other hand you can take the western approach and buy a washing machine (Splendide 2000S for $1500 for instance) and a watermaker (between $3000-$10,000) with a means of powering it, and so on... Most of the folks we have come across on our travels that have built in washers seem to have a lot of expensive problems with them and still wind up doing their laundry in a bucket or taking it to someone on shore to do for them. All of a sudden a bucket or wheelie-dealie starts to make a little bit of sense?

On the costs of cruising... Sort of

One thing I keep hearing is that the associated costs of cruising keep going up and while you cannot argue that some costs are going up it is not as dark a picture as some would have you believe...

There are any number of ways to save money while sailing without cutting back on the quality of your life and lifestyle. it just takes some thought and industry!

The biggest change you can make in your outgoing expenses is to simply track what you are spending... After a couple months of WTF moments as you peruse what you spent and where the money goes it becomes easy to cut back.

Another way is to learn from others! A really good place to start would be the various blogs that are doing the eating on $30 a week thing...

Some time ago a friend pointed me to a blog called Running With Tweezers as they were in the process of doing a series on no small political import... Namely eating a diet that related to what a too large portion of the USA lives on (the average for people on public assistance spend between $21 and $24 a week on food)... Hence the Eat on $30 project.

It was a good series. So good in fact that many other bloggers are running with it as well and "Running With Tweezers" and numerous others are doing it again, read about it!

Another short list Schooner...

Another boat from the short list Jean-Pierre Tutard's aptly named "Jolie Môme" (which translates loosely as a fine bit of stuff) is a boat that resonated the minute I saw it...

An interesting design on several levels it is a more modern hull form than most schooners sport as well as twin rudders, twin keels and other "modern" ideas mixed with a very Gallic interior arrangement with a serious dash of "out of the box" thinking that makes for an interior that simply makes all kinds of sense. At 12.80 meters (42 feet) this just may be the best interior for its size anywhere...

One of the big problems ... NA's don't get, since almost none of them actually live on boats or even in a lot of cases sail them very far, is the ergo dynamics of actually living on a boat. Not that they don't do all sorts of clever and crafty new ways of doing interiors but most simply don't work for voyaging and living aboard. Which is what I call the "lots of beds, no storage and no livable space tango". Tutard is not one of those guys... He is the real deal and his boats make sense.

Case in point... Just look at this interior plan!
Its accommodation is on two levels and includes a dining area below as well as a dinette on the upper level which makes for a great place to navigate from and do the watch out of the elements... Who needs a wheelhouse?! But the real beauty is the ergo dynamics are spot on... Sure I'd lose a bed in there somewhere and do something else with it but as a builder that is easy and the spaces available unlike some designs (the DIDI 38/40 comes to mind) are actually of a size and location that you could do something with them... Instead of coming to the conclusion that the only thing that actually fits is, well... another berth!

One of the other things you will find in French designs is that the French are into cooking and entertaining and that this is a core part of life so there is actually space to have a bunch of friends over for drinks and a feed, with space to pull out a couple of guitars with the brandy and play music. Sounds kind of nice, sort of like home!

For those with rig issues... Well the rig is well thought out and a lot easier to sail than most people would think. Easily single handed and a breeze for a couple... No rocket science involved!

For a smaller boat of Tutard's you might want to check out is his P’TIT HOM (Little Man) which packs a serious amount of boat into 36 feet!

Hell as we know it... Boatyard blues

On the hard is never fun...


Of course since I need to paint rain has been a daily part of life as we know it and much attention is spent with the weather reports... None of them good! But we are making progress and the new self-built composting head is almost a reality though the process of installing it has the interior of "So It Goes" something akin to a bomb site.

The other less than good stuff is that the mosquitoes here are pretty amazing and I have bites in areas I'd as soon forget and then of course there are the chickens.

Living in the Caribbean, one is accustomed to goats and chickens pretty much everywhere. In the boatyard I have a Rooster who is way too up close and personal and crows pretty much 24/7 and all I'll say about that is...

Buffalo Chicken Chili (from one of our favorite food blogs)

Making money cruising...

One of the big questions, right after "How much does it cost to cruise?" is the flip side of the coin "How can I make money while cruising?"

In my own case not being independently wealthy when we made our first foray into long term cruising we really did not have a clue. Figuring we were smart and had some skills and that something would come up... and to misquote that line from "Shakespeare in Love", something always did!

As far as the nitty gritty goes though, having all of the tools we used to build Loose Moose 2 and the skills to use them was a help. These days there are a lot of people cruising who don't have basic boatwright skills and are always needing something done. Having the necessary tools, I also made dinghies, self-steering gears and so on... On boats people always need something.

But you don't need lots of tools (well you do but that's another thing entirely) and for instance, if you wanted to set yourself up as a rigger, a couple of Crescent wrenches, a vise, a tension gauge or two, a hack saw and Bosun's chair is pretty much all of the tools you need to set yourself up as a rigger... Well you can't forget the skill set involved as that is the main deal... Your talent!

Since we also had a sewing machine, we did sail repairs and made flags (lots and lots of flags in fact)!

One of the things we had invested in was a Hookah rig and whenever I took it out and used it, people would find things they needed done underwater... Cleaning hulls, finding stuff, underwater repairs, salvage and such became a regular part of our income. That hookah was one of the best investments we ever made!

Of course its not all boat stuff... Over the years we have seen people supporting the cruising habit by cutting hair, doing computer work, building websites, baking, freelance Chef for charter boats, and running websites that bring in income. All sorts of stuff! By and large lots of services and products are needed in the cruising community, and more often than not a cruiser would be much happier buying hand-made fishing lures from a cruiser rather than a store.

While these days we have a Yacht Charter company, plus I still shoot and make films, so we're more of a nomadic sailing office these days as opposed to a sailing workshop, but as we begin another cycle of cruising and voyaging we still have the Tools, Hookah and Sewing machine because diversity is a good thing. And, in these difficult times, being versatile gives us confidence that we can make a decent living whatever the economy does! Fact is, we are looking at all sorts of alternate earning streams from website income producers to doing our own book and film publishing.

Mow your lawn Lady?

In the galley...

Since we we were talking about money well spent...

Just about the most used item on the boat in the galley department is our pressure cooker and we use it for everything from chili and other bean dishes to BBQ ribs and roasts. Lately we have been cooking breads and cakes (Check out Simply Spicy for this great Walnut Bread recipe). Fact is, there is so much you can do with a pressure cooker, that one of the things on my want list is a second pressure cooker/fryer!

Another thing that pressure cookers do extremely well is it makes cooking dried foods, like beans, easy. But these days with it getting ever harder to find decent and affordable vegetables while cruising, we are finding that a stock of dried vegetables is a great way to provision for long term voyaging while keeping our budget happy.

Of course getting used to using dried vegetables, just like pressure cooking, has a somewhat steep learning curve. So, before you take off into the sunset, it makes a lot of sense to work both into your cooking pattern and menus gradually. For example, the whole TVP (textured vegetable protein) thing is new to us so in the not too far distant future we are trying out some of Harmony House's TVP products to see how they work and taste for us. What is really nice about Harmony House is they have sample kits of all their various products so you don't get stuck with a lifetime supply of dried beets if you decide they don't work for you... YUCK!

We'll keep you posted...