"Free" Power

We have been talking about adding solar panels to our boat since before we owned one. The idea of harnessing the wind for transportation and sun for power is as romantic to us as red roses and long walks on the beach.

The time was right when we moved to Alaska, anticipating leaving Halcyon on anchor by herself for a few months with no power hookup. Having worked with solar power at PacificWILD, we already had an idea what we wanted and a relationship with a distributor. So, using some of our (oh-so-generous) wedding gifts, we made a great big order with Arizona Wind and Sun and then eagerly waited for the enormous boxes to arrive.

Technicalities:

~We purchased two Kyocera 140 watt panels (these should produce more power than we should need for our system…unless we live where the sun always hides…)

~And a Tristar MPPT 45 amp solar controller (MPPT makes it the most efficient solar controller there is. If you’re gonna do it, do it right, right?)

~We also got a small 10 watt panel and solar controller to keep our start battery topped up.

~An apparently endless spool of cable and a handful of fuses, and we were set.

We mounted the solar controller next to our Magnum charger/inverter, wired and fused the battery connection and the panel connection, and ran the cables into the cockpit as discreetly as possible. We wired the two main panels in series (and the cute little start battery panel on its own), and flipped the switch. No lightbults exploded and there was no smoke, so we considered it a success. Seeing a charge coming in would have been even better, but of course the sun was buried deep in the clouds.

That was the easy part. What we had been struggling over for months was how to attach the panels to the boat. Without a hard dodger or arch over the stern, there are not many stationary places that are both out of the way and in the sun. With them mounted on the lifelines, the new challenge becomes a mechanism that holds them out when it’s sunny/calm and folds them flat when it is rough.

We threw something together for the summer/trip south, knowing it would not be permanent. The edge of the panel bolted onto a piece of PVC, through which we strung the lifeline. That allowed the panels to hang down the side of the boat.

John then resourcefully used an extendable paint brush holder mounted to the rail to prop the panels out. It works, but it’s a bit unstable (solid lifelines would be much better), and the paintbrush holder is already rusting (not to mention that ever-sought-after hillbilly affect).

[So if anybody has any suggestions (short of building a hard dodger or arch)…I’d love to hear what you have done, what has worked, what hasn’t. ]

Finally, almost three months after installation, we got to see the panels at work- powering our batteries while we sat quietly at anchor. It is, indeed, a wonderfully romantic thought. Now if we could just get the wind to blow the right way….

The long awaited Water Tank Blog

 Enough of this cheesy wedding stuff, back to the nit and grit of boat ownership!

As promised, here is a [very] detailed account of our water tank experiment thus far. Warning: this is a very long and rather technical blog. This is not because I feel you are overstimulated or need a nap. This is because the blogs of other boat owners have helped us tremendously with all of our first-time boat parent worries. It’s a “pay it forward” thing.

If you don’t know boats and are bored enough to read on, here is a boat glossary to help with some of the nonsensical words boat owners use.

Last December, I came home to John taking a saw to the inside of our boat, which I told you about here. We pulled the seat apart, cut up the water tank, dragged the pieces out of the boat, and then stood, hands on hips, staring into a very dusty and oddly shaped hole. We scratched our heads. This was going to be interesting.

We spent about a month with a useless gaping hole on the left side of the boat while we researched and discussed various replacement options. We measured and sketched and measured again. We got quotes from steelworkers and plasticmakers. We got advice from all of our friends, whether we asked for it or not. We decided what to do… Then we changed our minds. There were 2 primary complicating factors for us:

1. we live very far away from the steelworkers and plasticmakers and even the boat stores. Any prefabricated tank quote we had to almost double because of shipping. Anything we made ourselves would have to be meticulously planned out so we ordered all the right pieces in all the right quantities. No quick dashes to home depot when you realize you don’t have the right size paint brush…

2. Our tanks were put in place before they added the cabin top to the boat, and are therefore larger than the companionway. If we had a tank made, the dimensions would have to be perfect to both fit through the door and maximize tankage once in place. This was a daunting task (hence this somewhat arbitrary experiment). If we were, say, 2 inches off, we would have a lovely 7’ long $2,000 hood ornament on our bow, and a very grumpy Becca.

Matt, pondering our water tank space

 With the help of our very patient friend, Matt (an experienced sailor, boat builder, and good friend), we finally bit the bullet and put in an order with fisheries for everything we thought we’d need to build our own fiberglass water tank. We just barely got in before the barge deadline- otherwise it would have been 2 weeks before our materials left Vancouver.

 The order list looked something like this:

-5 gal West System epoxy resin

-1/2 gal cell-o-fill (filler, so the epoxy thickens and keeps shape)

-2 gal West System slow epoxy hardener

-20 oz West System micro-fiber adhesive filler (to make the epoxy more like glue)

-1 pt barrier coat additive

-1 4x8’ sheet marine plywood

-4x28’ roll of fiberglass,

-1 gal Blue Max liquid rubber

-1 pump kit (the pump kit makes measuring epoxy: hardener much easier—1 pump to 1 pump. I’d highly recommend it, no math, no mess, no measuring)

-1 resin roller

-1 bag mixing sticks

-1 syringe

-3 paint smoothers (an angled piece of hard plastic like a squeegee for the epoxy)

-3 deck plates

-3 1/2” plumbing fittings, one leading to the fill up, one leading to the pump (and then to the sinks), and one as a vent

-various paint brushes, rollers, gloves, masks, paint thinners, and rags

The dimensions of the tank make an odd looking trapezoid. It is 79” long and about 18” tall in the front. The aft end is 31” wide at the top and 10” wide at the bottom. By the forward end, the space narrows to 26” wide at the top and 7” wide at the bottom. The back is angled and rounded slightly. Including the baffles, there is about 70 square feet of surface area, and 100 gallons of volume capacity (if my rusty geometry skills are right).

About to saw off the tab

It was like Christmas morning, 5 days later, when our several palettes of goodies arrived. In the meantime, we had been vigorously grinding away the old fiberglass to create a nice, smooth surface, including cutting out and grinding down the two tabs on the hull side. (And that would be the Royal We—John did ALL of the grinding, and deserves credit for it—fiberglass dust is really pesky stuff)

The basic idea of this tank is to use the infrastructure already in place as the mould. So the hull on the outer side, the floor on the bottom, the bulkheads on either end, and the settee support on the inside. By laying fiberglass over those 5 sides continuously, all we have to add is a top and some baffles and we have the maximum size tank, with the fewest materials possible. Theoretically, at least.

So here’s what we did:

Step One- Tabs.    make strips of epoxy-hardened fiberglass that act as supports for the lid. To make them, we laid down a huge piece of plastic and set 2x4’s down as guides (to keep the fiberglass perfectly straight while it’s curing). Then we cut strips of fiberglass about 2” wide, slathered some epoxy down next to each board, laid a strip of fiberglass in the epoxy, slathered a whole bunch more epoxy over the top, laid a second strip of fiberglass, another slather of epoxy, and then smoothed it all out. We started with a paint smoother, then moved to the resin roller to make sure all the air bubbles were out. Then we had a beer.

Step Two- Funky plywood shapes.    The space we are filling with ‘tank’ runs the length of the settee and the depth from the edge of the bench to the hull. It extends under the storage compartments that would normally hide behind the back settee cushions. To waterproof this part of the tank’s “ceiling”, we cut a funky-shaped piece of marine plywood that –miraculously- fit snuggly in this “ceiling” space. We fiberglassed the bottom of the board with epoxy mixed with the barrier coat (to waterproof the epoxy) and hot glued it in place (the hot glue simply holds it there until it is fiberglassed in place)

You can see the tabs ready to support the lid

Step Three- Tabs Again.   When the tabs were dry and hard, we scraped and sanded the excess epoxy off the sides and ends, cut them to fit the four lengths we needed, and hot glued them in place, so half of it hung over to support the lid.

one of the newly filleted corners

Step Four- Filleting. Fiberglass does not like to bend into 90 degree angles, so we had to get rid of all of them. To do this we made a witch’s brew of epoxy, hardener, cell-o-fill, and micro fiber filler until it was the consistency of peanut butter and smoothed it along every edge inside the tank. It took three coats in some corners to get the angle obtuse enough to please the fiberglass gods. Then two sessions of concentrated sanding, making sure every little bump and drip are smoothed out (so we don’t end up with holes in the fiberglass). 

Here's Matt, rolling on the epoxy

Step Five-  The Big Step.     Matt came in to assist in this crucial step, where we laid sheets of fiberglass inside the entire tank and rolled on the barrier coat added epoxy. Finally, the big gaping hole started to look like a tank! Because it’s cold and
wet here, and ensuring the epoxy cures right is the very most importantest step of the whole process, we plugged in a few electric heaters and covered the whole setup with big blankets to keep it warm and dry while the epoxy cured. 

Step Six- The Lid.    We measured and cut (and then re-measured and cut a bit more) a piece of marine plywood for the lid of the tank, to fit perfectly inside the frame and rest lightly on top of the
tabs. Then we fiberglassed both sides, ensuring the bottom (inside) side had the barrier coat additive.

rolling out the airbubbles in the epoxy on the l

Step Seven- Make Baffles.    Baffles are blockades inside water tanks to baffle the water so the

molecules can’t band together and plan an escape, using momentum to throw themselves violently from one side of the tank to the other. In our case, they are 2 pieces of fiberglass cut to trisect the tank, with several holes to allow the passive water through. We made them just as we made the tabs, but bigger (epoxied 2 rectangles of fiberglass together for each one, let them cure, and cut them to fit). We added triangle supports for better structural integrity. Then we used the same filleting concoction along every touching edge, to glue them firmly in place.

Step Eight- Break. Take a month off and get married in Mexico. 

Step Nine- Add view ports.   We drilled three large strategically placed holes in the lid of the tank and epoxied the three view ports in place, making sure to coat the newly exposed wood very well. The three ports are centered over each of the three sections created by the baffles, so we can theoretically reach every corner of the tank to inspect and clean.

 

Step Ten- Access ports for the view ports.   We saved the original piece of plywood John cut out to rip out the old tank (the ‘seat’ part of the settee), so we simply cut three squares out to use as “doors” to the newly installed view ports. We also painted this piece, as it was old and sad looking.

Step Eleven- Plumb.   We drilled a ½” hole at the lowest bottomest point in the tank (where the old tank was plumbed as well) and silicone-d one of the fittings in place. Once it dried, John hose clamped the flexible piping to the fitting and teed it into our water system. Then we drilled another hole at the top of the tank and did the same thing to plumb it to the fill up port on the deck. The third fitting also leads to the deck, so the water has somewhere to go in case we overflow the tank.

Step Twelve- Clean.   It is up for debate how safe it is to drink out of an epoxy-covered surface. It seems to me it’s no worse than plastic or metal. But to minimize the potential effects, we scrubbed the tank really well. With vinegar, then soap, then more vinegar. When epoxy cures, it secretes a waxy stuff that can taint the water, so the idea is to scrub as much of that away as possible.

Step Thirteen- Gunky blue stuff.    It was recommended to us that we coat the tank in BlueMax liquid rubber. You can check it out here. It’s pretty cool stuff, and seemed like a smart addition to the tank. This was not actually on the original order, but a friend happened to have some for a project he hadn’t yet started, and let us buy it off him. It’s almost the consistency of silly putty, and the goal is to slather it on as thick as possible. We used paint brushes, but it was more like smearing and pushing than painting. We coated the entire interior including the baffles and lid, and used exactly 1 gallon. 

Step Fourteen- Wait.   There is a recommended 2-week curing time for the Blue Max, so we’re hanging out for now, drinking out of a 5-gallon jug like we have been for the last year, waiting for the grass to grow. (And the tank to dry). This waiting time works out well anyway, since we’ve just moved again and are orienting ourselves with a new job. In the meantime, we have placed the lid in place, put the settee back together, and sat on that side of the boat again for the first time in 7 months!

Step Fifteen- Finish!   The very last step is to give the tank one more good scrub, glue the lid in place with epoxy, and fill it up with water.

If you have leaky old aluminum water tanks, I hope this was helpful. If you have questions or want to talk more about what we did, please leave a comment- we’re more than happy to share the rest of our limited knowledge and experience.

If you don’t have a leaky old water tank and are not yet snoring on your keyboard, sorry for the long-winded somewhat technical ramble. And I bet you wish you did have a leaky old water tank, so you could grind fiberglass and smear goop like us :-)

***UPDATE 7/12: Do not use Blue Max on your fiberglass water tank! It does not stick to fiberglass, but is meant for concrete. I have spent way too many hours with my face jammed against the top of the tank, shoulder distending, fingers stretched to the very corners to "peel blue" from the entire inside of the tank.

Cave Dwellers

Let me explain this picture. 

Once upon a weekend not so long ago, we had a sunny day. (shocking, I know) Motivated to utilize every ounce of dry, John removed one of the stanchions (metal poles holding our lifelines up that are attached through the deck with screws) with the intention of cleaning out the screw holes, drying out the deck, refilling the holes, and rescrewing the stanchion. The holes under these stanchions cause never-ending leak-chasing and need to be routinely rebedded to cut down on the raining inside the boat.

Unfortunately, as far as he got was removing the stanchion and making a big mess before the rain returned. He taped it up and covered it with a tarp, waiting for another dry spell to finish the job.

A week later (yes, that's right, it did not stop raining long enough to dry the deck for 7 days), we had a particularly bad rainstorm. I woke up almost falling out of bed. John was nudging me as far as I could go, because on the other side of him, our boat had wet the bed. The tape, the plastic, the cover, the bowl- they had failed. Our bed was soaked.

That was what we call "the last straw". 

Out came the full-boat cover (a convenient and not cheap throw-in when we bought the boat).

That's only half of the cover, the thing is huge

The previous owner warned it would take about half a day to sort out which way is up, stretch it over the boat, and tie it around all the dozens of bits and bobs in the way.

We were pleasantly surprised when two hours later we had a big tent on our boat.

And now, we live in a cave. But it's a dry cave, and I'm not complaining.

How to Build a Somewhat Arbitrary Water Tank

First, collect your materials. You will need:

-tape measure

-exacto knife

-sharpie

-very long straight edge

-lots and lots of tape

-And as much cardboard as you can find.











 
Step 1. Take measurements off of your meticulously drawn diagram and change them, somewhat arbitrarily, based on your uneducated guess of what will fit through the companionway. Measure those new somewhat-arbitrary lengths on some cardboard and start throwing tape down.

 
Step 2. Add another side, but make sure it is the mirror image of what you actually want, so the entire exercise becomes somewhat arbitrary. 

Step 3 - 16. Continue using somewhat arbitrary measurements and miles of tape to make a flimsy cardboard mass roughly the size and shape of your old watertank



Step 17. Add more tape.



Step 18. Carry it, awkwardly, to the boat and attempt to shove it down the companionway without collapsing the flimsy shape of the cardboard mass. Get frustrated, and forget to take pictures.




Step 19. Place it, somewhat arbitrarily (since it's actually a mirror image of the shape it should be), in the open space where your water tank used to be. 
Stare at it. 
Scratch your head. 
Ponder trying to fill it with water. 
Go to bed, feeling somewhat arbitrary.

Winter Projects

When we bought the boat (9 months ago now!) we talked a lot about our "winter projects" list.
This is an imposing list of things to fix or change, best done in the "quiet" months of the year. The list contains such daunting tasks as:

-add refrigeration
-remount engine
-replace water tanks
-refinish sole (floor)

Now it's the end of the December, and we're still talking about our "winter projects". I'm starting to recognize that this "winter projects' list could simply grow year after year without shrinking much at all. There is always a reason not to start the project yet.

Well, I worry no more. Two nights ago, I came home to this:

This is John, crouching on the seat under which rests (one of) our completely useless leaky water tank, surveying the best way to saw open our perfectly functional settee.

There were no power tools out yet, but a whole lot of head-scratching had already taken place. I encouraged it. In fact, I went to the shop to retrieve the power tools!

And three hours later, it looked like this:

Night number two saw us scrunching ourselves uncomfortably trying to finagle the tank out the boat with out scratching the wood.

We now have a very practical...pit...in the boat:

While our maimed tank sits, broken and dejected, on the dock:

Sorry broken and dejected tank, but had you not sprung so many leaks we would not have disowned you quite so readily!

Next step: order new tanks in strange dimensions and hope Santa's sleigh has a cheaper delivery option than Shearwater and Canada Post... 

And the first (of many) winter projects is underway.

Provisioning

Somewhere in the middle of Van Isle, John and I found out we had been granted a positive LMO, providing us permission to get a work visa in Canada. The rest of the race we fought to focus on racing, anxious to get home and start our next adventure. We returned to Seattle the night of Sunday, June 19th and set our ETD as Sunday, June 26th. That gave us 6 days to get ourselves and our boat ready to leave Seattle indefinitely, navigate up the coast, and live in a remote part of the world. Needless to say, those 6 days were somewhat stressful...

But I kept a (3-page long) list of 'to do's' and 'to buy's', and one by one we scratched items off that list. Mostly we bought food, supplies, tools, and boat parts that we might need one day, anticipating the enormously high prices to buy things and have them shipped to Bella Bella.

I didn't document the week very well (something to do with that somewhat stressful thing) but I did manage to snap a picture part way through organizing some of our provisionings. This is about half of the non-perishables I managed to fit into those two lockers. We are set on canned beans and ketchup for a long long time...

Kind of like camping...

Welcome to our home:

Yikes!

We have officially moved out of 8035 and onto our new home, Halcyon. We also decided to replace the battery bank on the boat. At the same time. Perhaps not recommended. And thus- the catastrophe you see before you. For two weeks, we lived like slobs with no place to put things (so we could access the back of cabinets to run wires) with very limited luxuries. We ran a power cord from the dock and hung construction lights so we could see. We plugged in a little electric heater so we could feel our toes. We brushed our teeth and washed our dishes using nalgenes of water (that we had to walk up to shore to fill). We could use the head, since it is completely manual. But we couldn't cook (no electricity meant no power to the solenoid that provides us propane) so we ate sandwiches, salads, and cereal. And don't get me wrong- I love camping. But I also love going home after camping to a warm meal and running water.

But it was not in vain:

We have power! Those are our beautiful new batteries, with all new connections and cables. That is only step one in the re-wire process, but it was the biggest and most disruptive. A shout out to Brian Lind, who made it all happen (if slowly:-) )


So the batteries are in, the power is back on, the boat is listing to the right, and a few things are put away.

In the meantime, we are awaiting word on a Canadian work visa that will allow us to shove off from Seattle and head into the Great (Big Scary) North to work for PacificWILD. You should watch this documentary called SPOIL (produced by our good friend Tripp Jennings) to get an idea of what we would be working on. It's about 45 minutes long and features Ian McAllister, the founder and executive director of PacificWILD. (if the link doesn't work, just youtube "SPOIL documentary").

And throw some luck our way that the bureaucrats in Canadian look favorably down on us and kindly grant us this visa!