I’ve been away a lot the last few weeks, and so haven’t really had time to either work on the boat or update my blog. Things have calmed down a bit, so now I’m going to talk about the top two priorities this winter – keeping the water out and the heat in.

First, heat. I decided to take a two prong approach, as recommended by the other liveaboards.

Firstly, I bought a little electric oil filled heater. These are (apparently) safe to leave unattended, since they don’t use direct heat, they are like little radiators, with a bunch of safety features.

Here is my one.

IMG_20141018_094634

I leave it on low all the time, this keeps the boat from getting freezing cold.

For when it gets really cold and I’m in the boat, I bought a Newport Heater, by Dickinson.

This is a pretty heavy duty little heater, and I will probably do a separate post about it. Here it is mounted in the position I’ve decided to put it in – Still to do – installing the Flue and the fuel feed, and getting the cushions redone so they don’t overlap with the heater hot air flow.

IMG_20141018_094701

 

When that is installed, I will be pretty well covered for heat.

keeping dry I have two dehumidifiers, one I bought a while back and another one that came with the boat.

IMG_20141018_094643

IMG_20141018_094653

They work in different ways – the top one gently heats air and circles it to avoid condensation while the bottom one actually takes moisture out of the air. Between them and the heater it’s pretty dry in there.

I have found a couple of leaks, one over the desk, one over the V Berth and one behind the sofas. None of them are very big, and they only seem to leak when the wind blows a certain way and it rains extremely heavily. I’m still going to try to track them down as my next priority though.

Liked it? Take a second to support Matt on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!