Welcome to my blog!
Back at the end of 2013 I decided (apropos of nothing) that I wanted to live on a sailboat. Armed with only a copy of This Old Boat and my blissful ignorance of anything to do with boats, sailing or handiwork I bought the first boat I looked at, a mere 3 hours drive + 2 hours ferry ride away. What a great idea!
Luckily the boat (a Cherubini designed Hunter 36) turned out not to have anything too disastrously wrong with it, so with a lot of time, money and reading I managed to get it into a livable condition. And then I discovered I liked sailing and decided to sail around the world.
Well, I got as far as Mexico before firstly Brexit and then Covid scuttled my plans. So I sold Gudgeon, the Hunter 36, down in Mexico and am now back in BC with a second boat, a Rafiki 37 called Sooner.
Wiring up Sooners DC: Part 1 – The old wiring
So this has actually been an ongoing project over the last (checks calendar* seven?! wow) months and I've been putting off writing about it because I wanted the first post to be the overview and I was CONSTANTLY changing my mind and blah blah blah. Anyway, it's...
Rewiring Sooners AC Part 4
Sorry about the gaps between posts - dealing with some personal stuff and it's really hard to get motivated to write. Anyway, onto the post... So on my last post I had confidently declared 'The last part of the AC rewiring project...' which turned out to be as untrue...
Summer updates
It's been a while since I did a new post - most of the reason for that is that I've been really busy finishing off the redo of the entire DC system, which is going to be a multi-post series - but I wanted to make the first post the design. Which is a great idea,...
I got an article published!
A very quick (and braggy) post - I got my first sailing article published! It's in Good Old Boat magazine, May/June issue. There was also a nice little sketch of Sooner plus an embarrassing quote from me. And yeah, that's all I have for this post.
Refurbishing the Head: Part Two
So after part one, I'd removed the old toilet, glassed up the two thruhulls, and removed all the old hose. Now to put stuff back together again! As mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I'd decided to go with another composting toilet. I've covered my reasons...
Refurbishing the head: Part One
So Sooners head (bathroom) wasn't in a great way when I got her - the lockers were in need of some attention, the head (toilet)(this is another case of boat stuff all using the same word for different things, like 'tack') was old and needed maintenance and was a bit...
Hauling out
Hauling out is probably my least favourite part of owning a boat. It costs a lot of money, you are on a bit of a schedule to do work as every extra day costs you even more money, staying aboard the boat in the yard is miserable (I believe 'shitty treehouse' is how...
Rewiring Sooner’s AC: Part 3
The last part of the AC rewiring project was to replace the panel. The old panel looked like this Of note, there is only one on/off breaker type, the rest are push button meaning that there was no way to turn anything except the water heater on or off. Also, there...
Rewiring Sooner’s AC: Part 2
After I got the smartplug and galvanic isolator installed, it was time to tackle the inside bits of the 120 volt system. The first order of business was to replace the 3 AC outlets with GFCIs. These are the things you'll see in bathrooms in houses, and basically trip...
Rewiring Sooner’s AC: Part 1
Sooner's wiring is unfortunately standard issue 'old boat wiring' which is to say, pretty bad (see previous blog post on the state of gudges wiring) and sorting that out would be the first priority, as 'fire' is one of the two sure ways to lose a boat. She has a...
