Ships Blog Single Posts
Previous Post <<<------>>> Next Post
Date:Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:45:00 GMT
Rowing
Slack tide
This morning Hannah made waffels and fresh blueberry syrup made from blueberries we
picked a few months back that we had frozen. I have to say life is pretty
good!
Today we waited till slack tide to row ashore. Much easier. Slack tide
here is about noon and 6pm. We spent the day in Beaufort walking the
streets and talking to people. We met a nice couple of old women with a JW
stand and sat and talked to them for about an hour. We went to the Museum
and the National park service welcome center. We checked the size of some
glasses to see if they would fit in our holders on the wall. We met our
neighbor in Russamee. It's a custom wooden cutter ketch from 1972. Mike
just finished re-caulking it. I forgot how many feet of caulk he said but
it was a LOT. It's a really cool looking boat. It looks like a little old
sailing ship. We're always suckers for a wooden boat. He single hands it
and has a hard tender and long oars and an ancient old 2 stroke motor that
will likely never die, unlike our little 5 horse power Mercury.
For dinner we had baked beans, Hot dogs, chips, Humus, and Fudge. Sam is
still working on cleaning fiberglass and oiling teak. We're up to 4 coats
of boiled linseed oil on the toe and rub rails. They're starting to look
pretty good. I'm also up to 4 coats on the other deck boxes and hatches.
We're just starting the deck edges right next to the toe rails as well. All
the teak "outlining" we're going to linseed oil. I'm still deciding on the
deck it's self. I really like it wood look but the grey offset by the oiled
teak is cool as well. What I don't want is for the teak to get damaged.
I've been thinking a lot about energy and boat systems. Most people have
solar, wind and tons of batteries. They then have propane stoves reverse
cycle air and a generator. We on the other hand have a 10kw generator,
fewer batteries and an electric stove. It is a single point of failure (the
generator) but much simpler and everything starts and ends with diesel rather
than adding propane and lithium to the list. Solar and wind are rarely every enough and
are very expensive compared to diesel even at current rates. We can use air
conditioners and space heaters with the generator. The biggest problem is
actually noise. But it's only for a couple hours a day and a wind
generator, unless you're getting a really expensive one is very noisey as
well. From a purely survival point of view, if you can't get diesel you
won't be able to get propane either nor batteries. As long as society
exists at all we will have to have some diesel. At some point conversion
will become necessary but I think not at this time. The bottom line is I need
to keep good care of this generator for now. Would I like to have lithium
batteries and solar panels? of course. But at the moment I can't figure out
a good way to attach solar panels to this boat as configured. This is a
bigger problem than it looks.