We're looking for the trash fence...

Last night after about 2.5 hours in the sewer I finished mounting the Spectra Capehorn Extreme membrane and clark pump unit. The unit is mounted on a piece of 3/4" marine grade plywood with 1/4"-20 machine screws and tee-nuts on the back, or in this case the top of the board. I took the unit into the sewer and propped it up on tupperware containers to get it roughly into place. As I laid on my side in the sewer I marked the final location.

The board itself is mounted to two cross-beams supporting the salon floor. I originally had planned to mark the location, pull the unit out, remove the board, then mount the board alone and then screw the unit back to the board. As I had everything in place, I realized getting to the machine screws was going to be a lot harder than getting to the lag bolts so I decided to mount it en masse, with the unit attached to the board.

Putting in the aft bolts (the ones you see in the pic) was fairly easy as the sewer is deep and there is a decent amount of room between the rear edge of the watermaker and the refrigerator compressor which sits aft (and out of frame) of the watermaker. Because the sewer is not as deep as you go forward and the mast and maststep impede access, the forward lag bolts are not as easy to reach. Given the impinged space I was only able to get 5 bolts into the board. The forward outer most corner is not bolted. However, the frame of the unit is wedged between the joists and the hull so it's not going anywhere and there is not room for it to wiggle.

I have some concerns that the fact the unit is wedged will cause a lot of noise to be transferred to the boat, but I won't know about that until we turn it on. If it needs to be moved I think the only option will be to angle it more or to find a completely different location. Hopefully it will be fine where it is.

This project isn't done yet, but this was a big step. The membrane is about 40" long and it either takes up an entire settee or the entire workbench in the aft cabin, so just getting it out of the way makes the boat tremendously more pleasurable to liveaboard especially since the other settee is covered with the contents of the hanging locker where all the pumps and controls for the watermaker are installed.

Next steps are to finish all the plumbing and then setup a test run with Emerald Harbor Marine who will come out and look things over before we power it on for the first time. Sooo clooooose to done... ;-)

This weekend Dawn and I took a Wilderness First Aid Class from Remote Medical International (web) (Facebook) (Twitter). The class is oriented towards “wilderness “ which is defined as anywhere more than 1 hour from medical care and the examples in the class were specifically focused on hiking and camping scenarios. We really wanted a medical class oriented towards sailors and especially those who plan go cruising, but currently this class does not seem to be available in Seattle. There have been classes off and one such as this, but right now they are not available. So any criticism I have doesn't really have anything to do with the class itself, but just that it wasn’t exactly what we wanted to begin with and so it misses in  key areas.

The class is well run with a sound curriculum and our instructors Janet (EMT) and Phoebe (RN) were HIGHLY trained and knowledgeable. The class was comprised of 27 students was and covered the basics of First Aid from walking up on an injury with no prior knowledge, identifying life threatening issues, stabilizing the patient and making EVAC or “stay and play” decisions. It covered many kinds of injuries and illnesses that one might encounter in any scenario: fractures, wounds, allergies, abdominal injuries, spinal injuries, etc. and how we could treat these problems without a lot of magic gear.

All of this involved hands-on activity of actually splinting people, dressing pretend wounds, moving injured parties, etc. This part of the class it the best! One of the coolest things gear things was a SAM Splint which is a lightweight padded aluminum splinting tool that can be used in many ways, definitely a must-have for our medical kit.

If you have never had First Aid and if your main focus is on hiking and camping or other types of activity where an EVAC is possible even if it might take a day or more, this is a great class and I would highly recommend it.

For cruisers who plan to be so remote that EVAC isn’t a reasonable option, the class doesn’t go to that next level of when you should give antibiotics, or pain medicines, using SSB for medical assistance, etc. But again, that isn’t what this class is intended to cover, so I’m not knocking the class, I’m just mentioning that to set expectations. Also in Seattle, I believe this is probably the best current option so it's worth it if you need a refresher. We are still going to look for that ideal class and will probably refresh our CPR too at some point.

I also managed to work on some water maker wiring, nav station computer wiring and to get up early to go this class… Whew that was a long weekend! More on the other projects in posts yet to come.

Dawn and I have been selling off, donating, gifting and throwing out everything at the condo which won’t go with us to the boat. For the past week we’ve had no place to sit but the floor and after tonight we will no longer have a bed. So that pretty much makes it official, as of tonight we’re officially moving aboard Deep Playa!

Part of moving aboard means making sure Deep Playa isn’t just a boat, but a seaworthy cozy home. Dawn has been doing the lion share of these projects; converting the shelves in the v-berth to cabinets, adding a cabinet at the head of the v-berth, lining the hanging locker with cedar, and testing out her new office (see pic at left).

Over the past few years, a non-trivial amount of blood has been lost, a LOT of sweat has been wiped from our brows and even a few tears from our cheeks and it feels damn good to say this so I’ll say it again (in caps even)…

WE ARE LIVEABOARDS !

Around the time of the Seattle Boat Show I announced we purchased a Spectra Capehorn Extreme. Since I had just broken my clavicle though, we delayed delivery for several months. Now it’s here and you can watch the unboxing video in all it’s glory!

I’m actually cruising along on the installation, but I’ll save information on that for another post once I get some pictures taken.

Dawn and I held a Yard Sale this weekend to get rid of the stuff we’ve accumulated since we sold the house and moved into the condo bout 7 years (?? – Dawn knows) ago as well as stuff we’ve had forever but just doesn’t make sense to take on the boat. Prior to the big garage sale we also let our friends come over and get first dibs on things and immediately we were left with pretty much nothing to sit on! I had initially thought this was going to take a little longer, but all of a sudden I realized, we’re probably going to be liveaboards in a week or so!!

After the yard sale we took a very full car load of stuff to Goodwill and a stack of computer stuff to InterConnection being mindful to get receipt slips so we can itemize our deductions in our 2011 taxes.

We still have a pile of “valuable” designer or “cool” clothes stack of sporting good stuff, a desk and a bedroom set, that we’re taking to Buffalo Exchange, 2nd Base and listing on Craig’s List respectively.

It’s nice to get rid of this stuff, but man will I miss those boots!

I am very pleased to show off the new nav station bench and and desk. This replaces the cooler and board I’ve been using for years. You can see more pics of the pieces coming together on flickr.

The 1/2” cabinet grade teak has all been finished with at least 4 coats of varnish. The desktop has an additional coat of a heavy duty varnish.

You can probably make out the hinges in the bench, it does open and has a pretty decent amount of storage.

The only thing left to complete is to put a locking clasp of some kind on the lid.

In addition to the desk I also mounted the new 19” Viore LED Monitor (LED19VH50). That’s the large monitor on the right of the picture. It’s mounted with a standard VESA mount and can directly off of 12VDC!!! The size of the monitor is important because It’s mounted on a door that opens and the monitor has to swing over the top of the original desk.

I’m VERY excited to have this completed. Next step in the aft berth is to put up the headliner; things are coming together !!!

Boat US has launched an iPhone and Android app for sending out your position, contacting Vessel Assist for a tow and browsing the Boat US directory. Panbo has a good write-up on the Vessel Assist part.

When you start the app you’re required to fill in all the settings which includes among other details about you and your boat an email and phone number for both you and an emergency contact.

The Share Your Location feature is pretty cool it builds up an SMS or Email message with a Google Maps Link and sends that to you and your emergency contact. On the iPhone it used the standard iPhone email and SMS forms so you can add and remove additional people from the message if you choose.

Couple of suggestions:

1. I’d like to see this natively tied into Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare as well, but I was able to “hack” around that by setting the phone number of my emergency contact to Twitter’s number and it worked fine. I could also just add that to the TO: in the message but it’s not as elegant.
2. Picking an Emergency contact should be something you do by browsing to the contact and picking them, not typing in their information. Who even knows anyone’s phone number anymore.

The BoatUS Directly was really just a link to a set of links that open up the web browser. I was kinda hoping for BoatUS Deals nearby (like Foursquare) but for guest moorage at marinas, deals at West Marines, nearby services, etc… THAT would be useful and awesome!

Obviously this requires you to be near land AND a cell phone tower, but for a lot people that covers all the boating they do. It’s a great start and I’m look forward to seeing their improvements over time.

OK, that last test post from my phone is kinda cool. The wordpress iPhone app was VERY buggy for awhile and completely useless. They claimed to have fixed the bugs so I downloaded the update and now it seems to be working!!

Cool thing about that is I can write updates and post while we're out sailing and include the location which will show up in the post and on the map of the blog. In the long run, I am hoping that map will look cool and show all the places we go.

NOTE: I set the location for this post manually in the Wordpress post editor so you can see the map action. (Map Action seems to be devoid of action right now... tying to figure that out... there are a lot of moving parts making this work or in this case not work)

testing wordpress from my iPhone including location

We sold almost all of our big items which means the workshop is looking a tad tidier. I still have the RADAR for sale and I've lowered the price to \$200.

Furuno 1730RADAR includes Radome, CRT & cable whichwas cut in removal Manual – \$200

I'm going to take a bunch of pictures of it, measure all the cable lengths and fillet out the splice so it'll be easier for the new owner.

If you're interested drop me a note in the comments.