Liveaboard – Road and Ocean

Arriving and leaving

September 26, 2014December 6, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

We got back from the road trip nearly 3 weeks ago, and I’ve been so busy getting ready for our journey south to Mexico that I’ve not managed to even finish the story…

The last few miles in from Yosemite were familiar territory, but looking so, so dry. Leaving the mountains, we drove past a wildfire that looked like it had recently started – flames by the side of the road, and a few police cars arriving. We pulled into a lay-by a bit further down the road to see what was going on, as a bulldozer on a low-loader thundered past, sirens screaming. They had a spotter plane circling overhead, a helicopter picking up water from the nearby reservoir, and a couple of planes doing circles dropping red fire retardent powder. Checking back on the internet a few days later, it looked like they got this one under control quickly enough.

10,622 miles and 3 months later, we arrived back in Alameda. What an epic trip. The van held together, we adjusted to living in a micro space, didn’t bite each other’s heads off, and we saw an incredible amount of America. People always ask “what was your favourite part?” – I think it was the intensity of newness. New places, new scenery, constant change, different camp spots each night. Not one bit of boredom or dull routine in all the time we were away. The landscapes were stunning. The mountain biking, especially in the last few weeks, was awesome. Adjusting to being away from full time work was wonderful. The sense of freedom to go wherever we wanted, pretty much whenever we wanted, was addictive.

09-04 1100 California-dry-grass — Back in parched California

Each time we filled the tank with fuel I did feel that we were being excessively wasteful, driving around just for the sake of driving around to see places, burning up a whole load of petrol and spewing nasties into the air. I reconciled this with the fact that over the past year we’ve hardly consumed anything in terms of fuel, electricity or waste – living aboard the boat enforces that. And looking into the future, the wind will be our fuel, and the sun via our solar panels will power pretty much everything else.

We’re not sticking around the bay area, we’re going to get moving again. We live on a sailing boat. It’s built to be taken over distant horizons, carrying a crew of excited adventurers, not tied to a dock in a city, getting all dusty and grimy. I’ve always wanted to spend time seeing new lands from the sea, experiencing things that you’d just never experience as a tourist just passing through. But work is also calling… right now I’m on the way to SFO airport, going to spend a week in the UK company HQ with the tech team planning the next few months so I can continue to contribute while being out of the office. Our satellite phone turned up last week and I’m in the process of sorting out an airtime contract, so we should be able to stay in touch wherever we are.

The van is now delivering beer around the east bay; sold to a chef who’s just started a brewery. It felt strange to see it go, having had so much time in it over the summer. It was a home, a shelter from the sun and the rain, our life support machine, our transport and our one piece of consistency in a constantly changing few months. I sold my road bike. We’ve dropped a few bags of winter clothes, and my snowboard, at a buddy’s place (thanks!). Won’t be needing that in the tropics.

Even though I’ve been working steadily away on boat projects throughout the last year, there’s still been a lot to do. In the last couple of weeks we’ve:

Installed a watermaker to turn seawater into nice clean drinking water. At 3 gallons an hour it’s hardly going to match the flow of Niagara, but it should keep our tanks topped up and allow us to have freshwater showers.
Replaced all the stinky toilet hoses and pump so the boat now smells all fresh. A job that was surprisingly not as nasty as I thought it was going to be. The hardest thing was making sure I had all the right parts before I started, sine we use the heads on a daily basis.
Added an electric macerator pump to empty the holding tank when we’re out at sea. The local consignment store is very handy for picking up things like pumps second hand at good prices.
Spent hours and hours sorting out lockers and belongings down below.
Fitted an AIS unit so that ships and commercial fishing boats can see us on their instruments, and so that we can see them, even if it’s dark, foggy or stormy.
Rewired a bunch of stuff, fitted cabin cooling fans and a couple of new lights.
Made a drink holder for the cockpit so we have somewhere safe to put things when the boat is rolling around.
Replaced the masthead tricolour and anchor lights with LED bulbs to save loads of power.
Fixed the top rudder bearing which was starting to loosen. I hope it’s fixed, anyway – we’ve not had the boat out for a sail yet.
Tightened the steering cables around the rudder quadrant.
Painted the last 5 metres of the anchor chain red so that we can stop the windlass in time and not lose the whole lot overboard.
Had both main sail and jib repaired, with a third reef added to the main for super windy conditions.
Put the name on the stern (ssh don’t tell Neptune, we’ve not had our naming ceremony yet)
Added flag halyards for our Mexico courtesy flag.
Stocked up on boat and engine spares.
Picked up a new outboard engine and ordered a new dinghy. Decided to go with a hard dinghy that converts into a life raft.
Added an extra cockpit winch to haul in the jib furling line in strong winds.
Mounted an extra propane tank to the stern for our BBQ/grill.

… plus a bunch more small stuff.

Just 3 weeks to departure! We’re mentally ready – excited of course, and also a bit apprehensive – we’re going to be learning a huge amount in the next few weeks. We met a couple of Brazilians in the marina next door that are fitting out their boat to sail down to Patagonia where they’ll be climbing – they’ll be sailing down the California and Mexico coast about the same time as us. And there will be loads of other people we meet on the way too.

A couple of days ago, when we still had the rental car, we spent the entire day shopping for food. The Big Provisioning Run. Somehow the boat has managed to soak up hundreds of tins, pasta, rice, sauces, jars and a load of UHT almond milk which we may not be able to get once south of the border. That’s all gone under a screwed-down floor panel in the galley. I’ve been trying to stow everything as far aft as possible; ever since we added the new anchor, windlass and chain, Rafiki has been bow-down by a couple of inches. Not ideal, but not much we can do about that. Just before we go we’ll stock up on fresh food. We’ll be near shops pretty often – it’s not like we’re crossing an ocean – but from here forwards everything we buy will most likely need to be ferried out to the anchored boat by dinghy, so it pays to get the bulky and heavy stuff on board while we’re at dock.

Can’t wait!

Exhausted

October 30, 2013 Chris Tanner

It’s now a whole week that we’ve been in San Francisco, well technically Sausalito, which is nicely north of the city and generally sunny when the town is in fog (we’re told). We don’t quite feel like locals yet, but we’re getting there. We’ve met a bunch of people with nice American names; Chuck, Joe, Terry, Cesar, Delores, Brett. We’ve got phone numbers that start with 415. We know the difference between Mollie Stone’s and Trader Joe’s, we know what you can buy at Best Buy and Dollar Tree. We’ve had breakfast at a Mexican-American diner just around the corner. We’ve not yet had a burger though…

It’s been a hectic week, getting everything sorted out. A stack of things have been knocked off the todo list, the boat is all ship shape and running just fine on the domestic side of things, and I’m starting back at work tomorrow.

We’ve moved the boat to slip 1000, which is right next to the main walkway (inside the gated marina) – handy but not so private. It’s a good spot to meet people though, catching folk as they go by. We catch the wind, too – it’s the westernmost slip in the marina, which means the wind whistling off the Marin headlands hits us first. The other night we put our new cooker to the test on it’s gimbals; the boat was over ten degrees on the dock! They say it gets windier sometimes too. Whoopee. We might look to move to another slip at some point.

The marina showers are hot and powerful (I’ve fixed the one on board but it doesn’t really compare), and the toilet block is clean – though the heads on board works great and we get the holding tank pumped out every other week, so no drama there. It gets a little chilly at night when the sky is clear, so we’ve ordered a new electric heater which we’ll stick on a timer to warm the boat up before we get up in the morning. The on board fridge is running just fine, if a little noisy at night, and the water heater gets a nice lot of washing water ready in a few minutes when we need it. The new cooker (thanks mum and dad!) is amazing; we’ve not yet used the oven in anger but I can see it’s going to do the trick. After wondering what to do with the old one for a few days, I left it outside the marina gate and when I got back from the shower it had gone! Job done. Hope it went to a good cause and not the land fill.

We put our bikes together and had a short pedal up the way to the coffee place next to Proof Lab surf shop. We made an epic, traffic heavy, late night trip to Ikea and Home Depot, and bought a load of stuff including a set of DeWALT power tools – Man Toys. Grr. We’ve put pictures up and taken a door down between the main cabin and the front cabin. It was just getting in the way. We’ll get a curtain up there instead. I fixed the shower pump that wasn’t working, removed all the old 1980s Decca navigation equipment, and applied for an MMSI number for the VHF radio (it’s like a boat signature, so that if, god forbid, we have to hit the emergency DSC mayday button, the coastguard know everything about the boat immediately). We sat in the Social Security office for me to get a number so I’m on the books. We opened a bank account this morning with the Bank of America – not something we’d planned to do, but I needed to cash a load of travellers cheques and they’d only do $500 at once for non account holders. Now I have one for work to pay my wages into which will be handy.

Both of us are exhausted, with everything around us being a new experience, there’s a lot to take on board every minute of the day. We just got back from a drive south to Half Moon Bay to pick up a new van (more about that later) – which left us both shattered. It’s not hard driving, just new. Eyes out on stalks all the time. Bring it on.

Seals warming themselves on the end of our dock

From here onwards they come to us every other week

Time to get dirty

October 24, 2013 Chris Tanner

One thing I’ve not really had to do much of over the past few years is build things. Somehow I’ve managed to get by with a basic set of tools, borrowing where I didn’t have what I needed, and I guess a fair bit of luck with things not breaking. And a bit of planning – buying stuff that didn’t need much fixing up.

Now, however, I have a whole new list of projects reaching out ahead of me for at least a year; working on the boat, converting a van… which needs tools! Like an excited kid at Christmas I spent an hour at Home Depot in the power tools section, figuring out the best combo. It all had to be battery powered, too – so that I can repair stuff and build things offshore. I ended up with a nice new set of DeWALT 20v tools. Just the fact that I’ve devoted an entire post to this shows how much I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty and building / fixing stuff again. It’s been a while!

Liveaboard!

August 15, 2013 Chris Tanner

Woo hoo! Today we got an email from the marina saying we had a liveaboard slip if we wanted. Yes please! Whilst we would have been OK with a standard slip, where we would have been “sneak-aboards”, we’d much rather play by the book on this one and have the security of a permanent place to rest our heads. It also makes long term parking more legit for the van we’re no doubt going to need to use as a shed, and makes it easier when we’re having guests over … the list goes on.

This ups the monthly cost of the slip of course, and further commits us to this move, but who am I kidding, we’re already committed, it’s just a bit scary sometimes thinking about the big changes just around the corner.

We’re looking forward to meeting the other liveaboards in the marina, should be an interesting crowd.

Stowaway!

July 16, 2013 Chris Tanner

So I’m back in San Francisco for a few days for a meeting – this time however I’m staying on the boat, which I’m really looking forward to. I stepped aboard, scaring a couple of small birds who flew across to the neighbouring boat, chirping angrily. I soon discovered a nest in the folds of the sail! There were no eggs in it so I guess they were either preparing for a family or have already had their birdlets “fly the nest”. Rose tells me they are Rosefinches, a common household bird around here. The bloke definitely looks da man with his bright coral-red plumage. After about half an hour of hanging around trying to figure out where his home had just gone, he and his lady friend moved on.

Time for me to start working on our new home; as usual with any new boat there’s a long list of things to sort out. In fact two lists; domestic and, let’s say “nautical”. The former is fortunately a lot shorter than the latter, considering the first thing we’d planning to do is move aboard to live. Having bought the boat back in April and then being in the UK ever since, I was a little apprehensive of what I would return to. Would there be a couple of inches of water in the bottom? Would everything be damp? Would the boat still be afloat?! As it happens everything was in great shape. I’d left the 12v electrics on for the automatic bilge pump [which, checking later, I discovered will still run without the 12v main power on]. One of the two batteries was completely flat, and the other was fine. Must be a power leak somewhere, or else 3 months of running the automatic bilge pump flattens the battery. Everything on board is dry, bar a couple of small water marks under one of the cabin ports where it had dripped. The toilet (heads, in nautical terms) is a bit stinky; I need to get to the bottom of this; it might “just” need new pipes.

On the nautical front I need to sort out the anchor chain – rusted away to almost nothing, go up the mast to see what’s on the top, check diesel, oil, tighten alternator belt, inspect the electrics, check seacocks and hoses and make sure I get familiar with all the inner workings of this new machine. It’s a bit like a cross between a car and a house, with all the complicated parts of each, squeezed into a small space. Engine and propulsion, sails and rigging, steering, 12v and 110v electrics, plumbing, gas, kitchen (galley), toilet and shower (heads), hot and cold pressure water, fridge… The great thing is it’s all stuff I can work on myself; unlike the van back in the UK which is all electronic. Fun times!

One pleasant discovery was the way that my 3 large bags of stuff disappeared very easily into the stowage on board. Rose and I have been thinking a lot about how much we can bring over when we come later this year. 3 bags each? How many books? Paintings? How many clothes? We’d been planning to just bring what we could carry with standard baggage, a bike and one excess bag (all full to the gunwales of course) … it’s good to know we can fit more; but should we? I’m working through a new book; “The Voyager’s Handbook – The essential guide to blue water cruising“, which says;

“In narrowing down the list of what you will bring, you will help define your new self, this person who is about to embark on a great adventure and a totally new way of life. In moving aboard and living with fewer possessions, you will begin to separate your many wants from your fewer needs. The possessions you carry will mean more, and you’ll realize how little most of what you gave up mattered to you.”

I’m looking forward to taking a step further in simplifying life.