We had a chance this week to do an outing we’ve always wanted to do with the kids: explore Everglades National Park. Yeah, right. Have you ever seen a map of the place? We explored maybe 1% of the park. It’s so big that you have to drive from one area of interest to another. Even with the driving, we only spent time on four trails along 20 miles of the 40-mile main road that runs between Homestead and Flamingo. And that was enough for one day, giving us a great overview of what the park has to offer in the way of natural beauty and wildlife.

We started at the Ernest Coe Visitor’s Center, then drove through Cypress swamp and breathtaking amounts of grassy wilderness. We hiked on a boardwalk through a Mahogany hammock (an island of hardwood trees in the grass), then on to the scenic Pay-hay-okee overlook where you could see why the natives who lived there called it the “River of Grass,” over to the Pinelands Trail through forests of Slash Pine and Palmetto, and finally, through the Royal Palm wetlands area. On the Anhinga Trail, we were not surprised to see…Anhingas (a large bird resembling a cormorant with black-and-white wings). It was, apparently, mating season, and there were a few nests of not-so-cute-and-little baby Anhingas. We thought we might also see a few gators, but we didn’t. We saw a lot of gators, a slough-ful of gators—more than I ever wanted to see, and a lot closer, too.

I had opted to put Rachel on my back in the Ergo early on, not because of alligators, but because it was the last hike of the day and her legs are astonishingly short. But after seeing a few big, leathery hides lounging in the grass near the path, I was glad that I had. In fact, I went up to a park ranger to ask what, if anything, kept one of those bad boys from taking a bite out of my toddler. His answer was unsettling: because she was on my back. He admitted that they were all pretty fat and happy due to a plentitude of fish, but that we must always exercise caution around wild animals. As I was talking to the ranger, a large black fellow decided to cross the road, made it half-way and stopped on the warm pavement. Jay asked a follow-up question, “Do they often lie in the path like that?” The ranger said “no” and went to get a closer look at the situation, and maybe nudge the gator on. We went the other direction and had a good chuckle.

Then we saw the mud hole. Full of gators. I’ve never seen so many large, wild reptiles in one place. Even at the zoo in Tampa, where they have plenty of alligators, there’s at least a fence between you and them. But here were a lot of gators in one place, piles of gators, in their natural environment, only a few steps away. Even for hardened Floridians who have seen a gator in every neighborhood pond, this was thrilling. Rachel’s comment, from my back, summed up my thoughts perfectly: “Teeth.” 

Take Two has gone viral, and not in a good way.  On the eve of a long-planned family vacation, the unthinkable happened: a stomach virus.  With half the crew already affected and the other half sure to follow, we had no choice but to cancel the trip.  It’s a huge bummer, but like I always say, a day spent on the bathroom floor is best spent at home.

Doctor Mom thinks she has the bug identified and of course there is no option but to let it run its course.  I like to play the “where did we get this” game.  I’m not looking to blame anyone for our misfortunes.  I just want to know who to avoid in the future.

One of the possibilities that I had to consider was that we got it from Take Two’s water supply.  This was easily ruled out, but it doesn’t seem all that unlikely.  Many people are shocked to learn that we drink Boot Key Harbor.  Yes, we really do.  No, we really don’t think that was it.

Apparently some cruisers only make water in lagoons of clear gin.  We don’t have that luxury.  Our water usage is such that we have to put water in the tanks daily, and ferrying it from shore in jugs isn’t practical.  So unless we’re tied to a dock we’re running the watermaker, and unfortunately the water under the boat isn’t always as clean as we could wish.

Although it sounds unsavory, I haven’t read anything that leads me to think it is unwise.  The watermaker is intended to remove salt, and those parts are smaller than most bacteria and viruses.  Our water is probably cleaner than city water.  In fact, I think the only health risk with drinking reverse-osmosis water is that it is effectively demineralized.  Like drinking distilled water.

In any case, a little extra caution couldn’t hurt.  Who knows what could be lurking in our tanks?  So I’m planning to equip Take Two’s drinking water tap with a WaterFixer ultraviolet water sterilizer.  It will cost $400, take 24Ah/day @ 12VDC, and need a $20 bulb replacement every year.  That’s a small price to pay if it helps avoid this kind of misery.  

Brb.

“I must know.” –Buttercup
“Get used to disappointment.” –Westley, from The Princess Bride

I have a bag of lemon drops in my “junk” drawer in the galley. These are no ordinary sweets; they are symbolic and sacred. We’ve all heard the proverb, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” If any of our children receives a hard knock or has an unpleasant task ahead and takes it with a good attitude, I hand out a lemon drop as a reminder that although we can’t always choose our circumstances, we can choose our response.  Disappointment is part of life on planet earth. The sooner children learn to accept this and move on, the better. Flexibility is a trait that can be cultivated when plans change.

Today we were supposed to get on an airplane in Ft. Lauderdale and fly to Boston, and then drive to Sugarloaf Ski Resort in Maine for a week of snow fun. Our children have never seen real snow (the oldest were babies when it last snowed in Atlanta and don’t remember it), so this was to be a real treat—we were looking forward to skiing, skating, sledding, snowboarding, snowshoeing, snowmen, snowball fights, snow angels, and hot cocoa in the lodge with snowy vistas out the window. Two days ago, one of our children came down with a stomach bug which is passing like wildfire through our family of seven, making a quick recovery impossible. Because these were reward tickets from Jay’s work travel, they were not easily re-booked. In short, we had to cancel our trip.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel sad and disappointed. Aside from the loss of our snow vacation, we were to stay with my best friend from college in Maine, and now I won’t get to see her and her family. We were planning to go see Old Ironsides (the U.S.S. Constitution), which is moored in Boston Harbor, and had done a mini-unit-study in preparation and now that’s for naught, too.  Our illness is having a detrimental impact on my mother-in-law’s plans, as well. She had come to spend a quiet ten days here cat- and boat-sitting for us, and now she’s stuck here with a sick family, afraid to go home and expose Jay’s dad, a CPA in the throes of tax season, to what we have.

But after shedding my initial tears of disappointment, I reminded myself, and the children, that everything happens for a reason. We may not be privy to the reason, but we remain thankful in all circumstances. That’s part of our family code, based on the belief that God knows what’s best and can see things we can’t see. Remembering that helps us to let go of our expectations and look forward to what He has for us instead. I don’t yet know what it is, but it seems that we are to be here and not there for some reason. That, in part, is why I always say, “Lord willing” about any of our plans. I’m not being cynical, just realistic. If our sailing life has taught us anything, it is that you go when the weather is good, and you stay when it’s not. And weather, like other plans, can change very quickly, so you have to be alert and prepared for anything. That’s the adventure part of our life.

What adventure will this unexpected “lemon” bring us? How are we going to turn it into lemonade? I’ll keep you posted… 

Have you ever shopped at the pink shack at one end of town only to find that you (literally) missed the boat and they’re all out of eggs and butter, then hiked over to the other end to the blue shack to find that all they have left is a limited selection of canned goods and some frozen mystery meat? Unless you’ve been to Staniel Cay in the Bahamas, chances are that you just got in your car and went to the local grocery and found whatever you needed. But if you do relate to the island shopping experience, you just accept that it’s part of the “adventure” and you’ll be substituting canned for fresh ‘till the boat comes in. For the landlubbers, all it takes to mimic the island grocery is a flood, hurricane or a big snowstorm—the shelves are wiped clean in just a few hours and won’t be restocked for many days. Unless you store large amounts of whole grains or canned goods, you’re going to be up a creek without breakfast, lunch or dinner!

Unless you are a serious “Prepper,” you have only a few days’ worth of few stored in your home, and what you have is probably frozen, dried or canned. I recently discovered that a friend of mine here in the Keys has a pantry full of freeze dried whole foods and when she brought some samples to Homeschool PE, I was amazed at the taste and freshness of food that has a shelf life of 25 years (unopened)! Amanda showed me the Shelf Reliance catalogue full of THRIVE Foods and when I found out she actually sells it, I decided to host a party in the marina so the other boaters around here could share my excitement at finding “the missing link” in our provisioning chain.

We carry about 200 pounds of grain on Take Two, which we grind in small batches (Oat Groats, 7-Grain Mix, Hard Red/White Wheat Berries for bread, and Soft Wheat Berries for pancakes, tortillas, and other baking). When we take long trips, we cram the freezer full of quality meats, and the auxiliary fridge full of dairy items and fresh produce and the canned goods locker full of beans, fruits and veggies. In addition, we carry dried fruits, beans, milk, pasta and rice. It doesn’t take long for things like eggs and milk to run out, and fresh produce doesn’t make it past week two. And boy, do I hate eating out of cans. Aside from sodium content, taste, and nutrient loss, there’s the worry of toxins in the cans or can linings themselves. And then you have cans filling up the trash. So how do we make sure we get good protein and enough fruits and veggies for long-term travel? That was a real problem, until now! We just put together a big Shelf Reliance order so we can try a little of everything, then slowly replace all our canned goods with freeze-dried THRIVE food.

The party at the Tiki was a great success. We sampled food straight from the cans—freeze dried strawberries, pineapple, bananas, sweet corn and vanilla yogurt bites. We served some easy recipes using freeze-dried ingredients, like spinach dip and chicken salad. We even cooked up a warm dish (wild rice with mushrooms and chicken) and served a dessert (granola dessert bar with berry compote). The products are well-labeled, color-coded, and easy to use. But it’s the taste that sells—one bite and you’re hooked. I have done some experiments on my own and discovered that freeze dried eggs make a great mayonnaise (who knew?) and work well as a substitute in recipes when you run out of the real thing. I made some crepes this morning for breakfast that were a revelation!

Whether, like Amanda, you live in a place with seasonal storms and “one road in and one road out,” or, like me, you live on a boat and need to carry your own grocery store with you, or maybe you love to camp and want to pack convenient and easy meals—I think you too might get excited about THRIVE foods. Right now, since I had the party this past week, if you want to give freeze dried a try, you can take advantage of event pricing until the end of February. I would encourage you to go to the website
www.amandab.shelfreliance.com and take a look at the catalogue. If you like what you see, you can order by calling Amanda (use the Contact Us form to request her #) and just mention that Tanya sent you her way.

Why just survive when you can THRIVE? Ten reasons to give it a try:

1. Lightweight and Easy to Store
2. Long Shelf Life
3. Whole Foods with Unadulterated Ingredients
4. Nutrient Retention
5. Great, Fresh Taste
6. No Toxic Can-Linings
7. Convenient and Easy to Use in Recipes
8. Shop From Home and Ship to Your Door
9. Cost Effectiveness and Reduced Waste
10. Go Shopping In Your Own Pantry for Fresh-Tasting Ingredients like Meat, Produce, and Dairy (Never run out of eggs again!)

Any fool can go to the store and buy frozen waffles and make a perfectly good breakfast. But it takes a special kind of fool to make my recipe. First, you grind the grain and stir it into the batter. While you’re whisking that up, preheat the old-fashioned cast iron waffle pans (being careful not to burn yourself). Finally, cook up one waffle at a time, oiling the waffle irons between waffles, or else you end up with waffle crumbs for breakfast.  By the time everyone had gotten an egg, a piece of bacon and a pile of waffle crumbs this morning, I could have gone to the store, bought waffles, fixed breakfast and done the dishes. But what would be the fun of that?

We recently watched Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Cast Away make fire with sticks and coconut coir. His hands were bleeding by the time he got his first flames to ignite. He does a victory dance around the bonfire on the beach of the deserted island and boasts loudly to the stars about his creation. After his rescue, he picks up a lighter and clicks the button a few times with an ironic smile on his face. It’s so much more rewarding to do things the hard way.

We have the technology to make our lives easy—to get from point A to B at mind-boggling speeds, to feed our families with little or no effort, to do our most loathsome chores for us, and to entertain ourselves in all the hours we have left over after not hunting and foraging, sewing our own clothes and hand-washing our dishes. Unfortunately, without a little pain and suffering, we don’t seem to appreciate these fruits easily gathered, and without hard work we can’t enjoy that which should be rewarding. We end up with too much stuff and too much debt, leaving us feeling trapped and depressed. What should make our lives easy makes things more complicated, and, ironically, though harder, the simple life beckons.

Herein lies the dilemma of the Neo-Pioneer. A generation of young people has sprung up who are tired of resting on their laurels or on the accomplishments of others and want to try things the hard way. But where to begin? And once begun, where to stop? Some folks we know have left the citified life and are trying their hand at farming, others move out of the fancy house and into an RV or boat to try the simple life of a nomad, and many have opted to home-school their children, grow their own veggies, treat illnesses with herbs instead of antibiotics, read books instead of watching TV, make bread, build things with their hands, and in other ways learn the art of self-sufficiency.

Unfortunately, while many of us have degrees in Political Science or English or other Humanities, we have no earthly idea how to make something as easy as granola from scratch, let alone how to raise a chicken or fix a broken motor. I speak for myself, but many others as well, when I say that I’m getting an education just trying to teach my children these new old-fashioned skills. We’re learning together, a process that involves a lot of time and energy and varying amounts of pain on the way to that glorious sense of accomplishment.

Sometimes I go too far, finding an extreme while looking for balance. The things I do for my family often end up looking more like punishment. While I admire the purist who lives in a tent or a cabin of hand-hewn logs, eating only what he gathers or grows, or the sailor who lives by wind and stars alone and eats the fish he catches, I am also thankful for things like engines and electronic charts and grocery stores. I love my blender and vacuum sealer, and can’t imagine life before cell phones and computers. The trick, of course, is to find the place in the middle—somewhere between old-fashioned and new-fangled. And each pioneer has to find that place for himself. A glutton for punishment, I will keep trying to do things the hard way, asking the tough questions (Can a goat live on a boat? Should I sprout the grain before I grind it? Can Jay brew his own beer?) and writing about my experiments. For the next few weeks, at least, I’ll be making pancakes instead of waffles.

We may not always be models of quiet and decorum, but it absolutely astounds me the number of people who think that right before sunrise and right after sunset are perfect times to run their generators.  So I'd like to offer this rule of thumb for those who might be confused: If you look around the harbor and see that it is calm and peaceful and that a number of people are out enjoying the beginning or end of the day with a beverage and maybe a friend, that may not be the best time to run your @#$% generator!

We have a neighbor right now who for the last two days has fired up his very loud generator at around 7am and 7pm.  This morning I hopped in the dinghy to figure out who it was (I was leaving for work anyway) and found the culprit four boats away.  I thought for sure it would be an open frame gas generator being used under the cover of darkness.  To my surprise it was an inboard diesel generator.  But there was very little water in his exhaust, and there was a thin stream of water shooting out from higher up on the hull.  

This probably means that the water jacket on his exhaust elbow is clogged.  The stream of water is probably from a vent line to an anti-siphon loop in the raw water supply.  The water is supposed to mix with the exhaust gases to cool them and muffle the exhaust, but with the jacket clogged it has nowhere else to go.  In the meantime, his exhaust hoses are probably delaminating from the uncooled exhaust, and the engine is probably running very hot due to the restricted water flow.  If the generator is overheating, that may be why he runs it twice a day.

I now feel much more sympathetic toward this guy.  His generator shouldn't be that loud.  He probably doesn't know his exhaust is dry and he's pissing off half of the harbor.  I still maintain that it's better to run your generator during the day, but I suspect he's going to find out about his problem a whole lot faster this way.

A friend in the harbor brought over a Minifish sailboat for us to play with the other day.  A Minifish is just like a Sunfish, only a little smaller.

I was skeptical at first, but before I knew it two kids hopped aboard and took off.  No encouragement, no pointers, no sage advice from dear old dad.  Poof.  Gone.  Like ducks on a junebug.

These kids live on a sailboat and have been around boats most of their lives, so I was pretty sure they knew which end was the front.  And they’d been to a 2-week sailing camp a couple years ago, where they learned on Optimist prams, so I figured they knew the basics of sailing.  But I’d never actually seen them do it.  And I did not expect them to do it with so much confidence.  Watching them zip around the harbor in that little boat puffed me up like a proud papa.

Something I found remarkable about all this is that they sail intuitively.  Like most things we try to teach them from books, they have disdain for sailing theory.  They don’t give a rip about the points of sail.  They probably couldn’t tell you the difference between a sprit and lateen rig.  If you try to explain it, they’ll fidget and roll their eyes.  But with a tiller in one hand and a sheet in the other, off they go.

The electrical system is arguably the most important system on Take Two.  When docked at a marina, the electricity we use comes to us through a shore power cord just like it would in a house.  The power is virtually unlimited and we can run heavy loads like air conditioning without giving a thought to how much we’re using.  But away from the dock, the only constant supply of power we have is from batteries with a limited capacity, and we have to use intermittent sources like generators and solar panels to recharge them.  Thinking about power is part of our daily life.

Our current setup is four Lifeline 8D absorbed glass mat (AGM) lead-acid batteries providing a 510 amp-hour (theoretical) capacity at 24 volts.  We charge the batteries through a pair of Trace PS 2524 inverter/chargers with a combined charging current of 130A.  The chargers are supplied by a split-phase 12kW Northern Lights diesel generator burning 0.4 gallons/hour.  

The generator is set up to be controlled by a GSCM from Atkinson Electronics.  We send start and shutdown signals to the GSCM from a Flexcharge programmable timer.  Automating the generator this way allows us a degree of flexibility to leave the boat unattended, but also helps keep things on schedule in case we aren’t paying attention.

We can monitor the battery state of charge with a Victron battery monitor.  It measures the current flowing in and out of the batteries and attempts to calculate how much capacity remains, and how much time until we have to charge.  The monitor also has relay outputs that we can use to manage the GSCM.  

For a while, we had things set up so the battery monitor decided when to start and stop the generator based on battery state of charge, and we used the timer to institute quiet times when the generator wasn’t allowed to run.  Practice showed that generator runs were longer and more consistent than we anticipated, and the monitor did not remain accurate for more than a couple days without a full recharge to synchronize it.  The straight timer approach proved simpler and more predictable.  

When you live on a boat you get tuned in to every sound and motion.  It can be a little nerve-wracking to have a big generator starting and stopping at random times.  Besides, we like being able to plan activities like running the vacuum cleaner and clothes washer for times when the power is “free”.

For the health of the batteries, they should never be discharged below 50% and really should always be charged back up to 100%.  But due to internal resistance, all lead-acid batteries heat up and accept less current as they approach a full charge.  So recharging to 100% takes a lot of time, about six hours for us.  This isn’t a generally a concern when unlimited shore power is available, but is impractical to do with a generator.  

Instead, we stop the big generator after charging for an hour and a half.  Typically the current being accepted by the batteries is below 40A by that point, which is about 80% full.  This is not great for the batteries, and we’re probably significantly decreasing their advertised life span (measured in discharge cycles).

We had hoped when we installed our 750W solar panel array that they would provide enough power to top up the batteries after the generator does the bulk charging, but it doesn’t really work out that way.  After the refrigeration and water maker loads, there isn’t much left for the batteries.

We would like to add a pair of wind generators to help out with this.  We’ve observed other boats’ turbines spinning away on cloudy days and dark nights with envy (and irritation).  But wind generators are not subtle things, and we have yet to figure out how to mount them unobtrusively on Take Two.

Instead, about once a week we fire up our little Honda 1000 gas generator to get a full charge on the batteries.  The Honda is inverter-based, meaning it is a DC generator that uses an inverter to form its AC output.  The boat’s chargers then turn that AC back into DC for the batteries.  While there is some loss from all these conversions, a DC generator is able to reduce its engine speed when demand is low, which saves fuel and makes it perfect for finish charging a lead-acid battery during its low-acceptance phase.  

AC generators like our big diesel must run at a constant speed regardless of load in order to make the correct line frequency.  And diesels like heavy loads.  So a light load on an AC diesel generator wastes fuel and wears on the engine.

The dilemma we face now is what to do with this situation.  We don’t particularly want to bite off any huge projects, so the answer may simply be that we keep on as we have been.  By far the cheapest option is to continue burning diesel.  But we may not have that option for long.  The generator is 13 years old and the inverter/chargers are 10.  

So as we near the end of life on some of our more expensive pieces of equipment, we need to at least have a strategy in mind for how we’re going to manage our power needs in the future.  And it would be really nice to replace something before it fails.  If our big generator were to die today we’d be in a real pinch to replace the power it provides.

The primary focus of our next electrical system will be to reduce our dependency on diesel and the machines that convert it to electricity.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that we expect to be rid of diesel entirely, but we want to use less of our fuel capacity for daily power, and we never want the failure of a single device to be catastrophic.  If we’re going to depend on a diesel generator, it will need some kind of equivalent backup.

I think there are several aspects to a full solution:

*  We should reduce our daily power usage.  We have no desire (and little ability) to become misers.  If anything, our personal usage is only going to go up as our kids get bigger; more food, more laundry, and more showers.  Our best opportunity to use less power is probably to upgrade our current AC-powered refrigeration to more efficient DC-powered units.  This would also reduce our need to have an inverter powered up 24/7.

*  We should increase our ability to charge from alternative (non-diesel) sources.  We already have a decent amount of solar, so wind seems like a logical next step.  

*  When our current batteries die, we should change to batteries that we can charge on our own terms without risk of damaging them.  I want the bank to have enough capacity that we don’t have to charge them every day, and can afford to wait for the sun to shine or the wind to blow.  When a generator is running, I want those batteries to take max charge current until they’re full.  No more of this acceptance rate business.  I think Lithium-Ion (LiFePO4) makes this possible.  

*  Finally, any future generator should be sized (and the corresponding chargers also), so that the engine operates at a healthy load and uses fuel efficiently.

Hopefully we have a while yet to ponder all of this, and won't have to do it all at one time.

We had our rig inspected recently, something we try to have done every year.  The mast and standing rigging passed with flying colors.  The rigger was really impressed with how good they looked for their age, and said we might get five more years before having to re-rig the mast.

But the crossbeam bridle has a boo-boo.  This tiny little crack is a risk to the mast.

The crossbeam goes across our bows and keeps them pointed in the same direction.  It also creates a place to tack the forestay, which holds the mast up and carries the headsail.  To oppose the upward pull of the headstay, the crossbeam depends on a wire bridle raised in the center by a strut to create a big triangle.  The bridle is 5/8” wire with 1” forks on both ends and a turnbuckle to tighten it.  Pretty big stuff.  Replacing it is not going to be cheap.

But we really can’t ignore it.  Take Two’s mast fell down about 12 years ago when a minor fitting broke.  The problem probably showed up first as a little crack just like this one, but nobody noticed.  The rigger has seen two crossbeam failures in his career, and both resulted in the mast coming down.  For a variety of reasons, that is something we’d rather avoid.

Of course nothing is guaranteed, but we do what we can to mitigate risks like that.  We try not to push the boat (or ourselves) too hard, and we fix problems when they come to our attention.  So we'll have some rigging work done in the coming weeks.  The inner forestay chainplate has already been repaired, but not yet reinstalled.  After that is done and the crossbeam bridle is replaced, we'll give the rig a good static tune.  In the meantime, we'll replace the spare jib halyard and get the sail itself to the loft for a professional repair of the patch Tanya made in the Bahamas.

When I’m away, boat maintenance falls on Tanya’s shoulders — like she doesn’t have enough to do.  But sometimes things happen unexpectedly and just can’t wait for me to get back. 

Recently she had to diagnose an air conditioner problem and make a temporary repair.  I’m proud of her for that, but when I went back to make a more permanent fix, I had to laugh out loud. 

[flickr: 8054249296]

Purple electrical tape?  I don’t even know where she got that.  Maybe she has a toolbox somewhere with flowers painted on it.