Living Large

Our first winter aboard a boat, we sort of roughed it. We had a wood stove and while it was nice in a lot of ways (nothing beats the smell of a wood fire), it was hard to keep warm. It went out often (we had to refill every 30 minutes or so) and it kept us cold at night (we weren't willing to get up every 1/2 hour to refill it!)

Every winter we get the boat to be a bit cozier. You may recall that last year, we purchased a rug heater from Speedheat Floor Heating and it was a fantastic thing.

This year we decided to take it a step further by buying cheap carpet and laying it out in the entire boat. Let me tell you - Madrigal is COZY. We've been walking around in our socks all day and we're in bliss. Willie has been laying on the floor like a normal dog (he wouldn't even sit on the floor before). Honestly, it's amazing. It makes Madrigal feel so much more like a home (it's unnecessary in the summer, but since we can't move the boat around in the winter, it's made all the difference in the world.)

Anyway, we love it, and wanted to share.

Just one more day...

Here we are, still on the hard. It's been a long and arduous journey to get where we are now...

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic. I blame the heat. It's been roasty toasty since we got here (upper 90s, 100s, etc.) which means the average temperature in the boat during the day has also been upper 90s, 100s, and even 105 on Wednesday. Turns out, I'm a baby when it comes to this kind of heat without having the option of going swimming.

sanding sanding sanding...

blisters ground out and drying in the heat...

Good news though - we are bottom painted and ready to go back in the water! In fact, we were ready to go in this morning but (as our luck seems to have it) the workers aren't here today. This worked out fairly well, as I have a load of work to do and it gave me all day to work on it and Justin cleaned up the boat which is very nice.

Friends are a fabulous thing, and Mike (aboard Gaia) returned from his 621 day cruise a few days ago and was kind enough to help Justin paint the bottom of the boat on Wednesday. In his ever adventurous behavior, he attempted to sail here with his newly aquired sunfish, but realized he might never make it here in time as the winds weren't in his favor. He instead took the ferry from Boston to Quincy and it's a short 1 mile walk from the ferry stop to the boat yard that we're in. The painting was quick and we were free to hang out, have some nachos, and just enjoy the evening. It's very nice to have Mike back in town.

Gaia in Boston Harbor

Oh! Speaking of Mike...

We hung out with him for the 4th of July. We didn't really have any plans aside from "let's hang out with Mike." So we went to Gaia and decided to go visit our friend Mark up the Charles river for the big fireworks. We wanted to let the blisters on the hull air out a bit anyway, so it was a great day to take off and have some fun.

Long story short - we found Mark and climbed aboard. There was a ton of food...tasty food. We were settling in for the fireworks when suddenly there was a knock on the hull from ~6 kayakers and canoers, asking if they could raft up to us. What a funny thing, yet not entirely surprising. I think there were at least 17 or 18 people that ended up climbing aboard (with baked goods, no less...they were prepared!) and hung out with us for the fireworks. A good time was had by all, and as soon as the fireworks ended we all climbed back in the dinghy and spent the night on Gaia. Willie was with us too - he loved the dinghy, hated the fireworks. I think overall, he was happy to have gone :)

A few of the canoers and kayakers.

Didn't get a chance to take photos of the finished bottom yet. That'll be the next post!

Ludwig

Well, it's that time again. Time for heat. Many of you will remember our posts about heat last fall. Unfortunately, the downside of having a shiny new sailboat is that we are once again on a boat that has no heat. So, we've had to purchase a new system. This time, we've opted for dickinson's propane system. It is a bulk mounted system with a double walled self venting flexible flue. It has a nice little window so that we have a cozy flame and it has a built in fan to push the heat around. Nice.


The trouble is that we have no good bulkhead to mount it on. Our solution was to shorten the starboard couch/berth. It was really too short to sleep on anyway and even Jenny had trouble trying to do so. So, we cut the cushions down to size and then I built a teak storage area on a 45 degree angle. The heater can mount on that and it will be nice and low for optimum heat. There is a good spot above it for the chimney to run through. Now we are just waiting for the actual heater to arrive. The propane tanks will be mounted safely and out of the way on the stern rail.


The cushions are going to be cut a bit shorter still. We are just waiting for the heater to show up so we can be sure of just how far away we feel comfortable with cutting them.


Also, there is a new member in the family. Our friends Mike and Alyssa are sailing south toward the bahamas or anywhere else they feel like going. Mike had a motorcycle and needed to get rid of it. I've always wanted one, so Jenny and he worked out a deal and she bought it for me for my birthday. yay!

Rat Bike Extraordinaire!

I'm thinking of naming the bike Ludwig. After Ludwig von Mises.

heat!

Pellets burn very, very fast. Because of this, we decided to try a recommendation from a marina friend to try coal in our solid fuel stove. After 48 hours (about 30 of these spent in front of the fire, trying new tactics) we seem to have found a happy medium with the pellets and coal burning. The coal was hard to start and burns slow, but it also dies easily and randomly, and the combination seems like quite a brilliant discovery on our part.

In the meantime, we've had a lot of boat projects.

I finally finished our curtains. The back windows are enormous, and covering them for the winter might actually help us keep the heat in. It is a nice change, because previous to this, we didn't have 100% privacy. The curtains I had hung in the back were see through, and now that we're on a more trafficked dock, we are happy to be able to close ourselves in.



We've been staying warm another way....FOOD. The stove gets everything nice and warm in here, and we're all (Justin, Gollum and I) working on getting an extra layer of fat to keep us warm.


We don't fancy the idea of sinking, as that would NOT be a warm experience. Diver Dan is the man to call to change our zincs, which keep our boat rust-free and happy. It was about 45 degrees outside all day, and the water temperature seems to be about 48 degrees. This was right before he jumped in to change the zincs. We could hear his bubbles while he was under, and this was possibly the most amazing sound I've ever heard in my life.


Gollum isn't sure what to think of the cold weather, but she loves Aunt Pat's blanket and keeps wrapping herself up in it.


Ahh, the flames.

We have been taking insane amounts of trips to Home Depot in friends cars lately to purchase this and that. Today, we spent our time and money on a few stove related projects. Here, you can see the new aluminum sheets that we put down on the floor to save our carpeting. We've already dropped a couple of hot pellets and made a few small burn holes, so the sheets should prevent that and keep us a bit safer. You can also see the new cement board/firewall backing which will keep the bulkhead cooler.

I also made the screen that is sitting on the port side of the picture (haha). I noticed the amount of heat we could feel when we had the door of the heater open, but didn't want sparks to fly out. The screen seems to be working great so far. I doubled it up so that it gave the sparks less of a chance to fly out.


This, in essence, is all sources of heat on the boat. You can see the wood/pellet/coal stove, the coals, the pellets, and the space heater.


Sometimes I have to get a bit closer to feel the full effects of the fire. You can see the new damper that we installed in this picture.


Hot, hot heat.

The screen in use.


We currently have no indoor thermometer, so I have no idea what the temperature is, but I can say that we're keeping it much warmer in here than the outdoor temp. We have a few fans running (the built in fan, a fan from my parents, and a space heater fan...without the heat) and the coals/pellets are keeping us nice and toasty!!

-Jenny

flue the coop

Yes. It is finally here.


As the above picture shows, we have a bulkhead in our main salon with a full length mirror on it. This is pretty much right as in the center of the room/boat as one can get, so I hung the heater on some crossbars on brackets to either side of the mirror. I think that tomorrow I am going to get an extra piece of steel to go between the heater and the wood hanging brackets I made. These pics are just of the quick-fix setup I have so that we can test the thing out.


The cat seemed impressed during the install phase


This picture is of me lighting it for the first time. Unfortunately all did not go splendidly well. As it turns out the flue (aka: chimney stack) is way too tall and straight for such a little woodstove. In other words our boat is too tall for it. What it caused was a gigantic roaring fire with massive amounts of suction pulling the flame about 2 feet up into the chimney. There are no pictures of this incident because we were too busy freaking out and trying to put the huge fire out. Haha, silly boaters in their floating tinder box. Well, luckily it seems to be an issue I can fix pretty easily. We just have to go to a woodstove store tomorrow and buy a flue damper so that we can close down the updraft a bit and keep the fire from taking in so much air. I certainly hope that this does the trick. We'll be awfully bummed if it doesn't. If not though, there are a couple tricks I have up my sleeve to make it calm down a bit. Lesson learned: less air flow = slower burning, more manageable fire that can get nice and toasty; more air flow = giant raging mad fire that burns all our pellets away instantly and never gives much real heat.

In the meantime though (it was Sunday so woodstove shops were all closed) we were able to make some little bitty fires in it just to play with it. It would burn up all the wood in a matter of minutes, but still fun to play with while we can't do much else.

In the meantime though, we found this amazing thing called an ecofan. Basically it is a fan that is entirely metal, not electric or anything, but runs off of the heat generated from a woodstove. You set it on your stove and the heat causes the two different metals in the fan to create an electric current and thus powering itself. We've found great reviews on them and will likely be purchasing one to help push our stove heat around the boat. Of course, we have to get the stove working properly first.

So overall, we are happy with the stove, just needing to do some chimney work to get it tweaked a bit better first.



Oh, and just in case you wanted one, here is a picture of our pumpkin from Halloween :)

We'll update more as we get along in the heater proper-install phase, hehe. Also I'll try to get some pics of the shrinkwrap frame etc up. Going to try to shrink it up next weekend or perhaps the one after. Depends when we can borrow a heat gun and some labor help.

-Justin