“Year 1 Problems — Part 1”

I wrote these problems and solutions after about a year of boat ownership. These were written stream of conscious, all in one long day. I’ve left them as a snapshot for what boat ownership is like, and as a fun time capsule.

For current updates and technical solutions, go to paperwing.dev. There have been many iterations since these solutions, and more thought went into writing them.

Why These Specific Problems

These are the problems that I ended up thinking about or working on for at least a few weeks. The kinds of problems that I’m always iterating on and can update. The smaller couple day problems are what actually take up the most time. Below are the big issues I’ve faced in mostly chronological order. Some are quick answers with me having forgot the original nuance. Others contain essays that are more top of mind.

1. What Kind Of Boat Should I Buy?

When we first became serious about buying a boat, we were dead set on a trawler. For a year I tracked trawler models and prices weekly from Craigslist. To get more experience, Korinne and I decided to become ASA Certified, which meant practicing on a small sailboat. Korinne absolutely fell in love with sailing. That was the beginning of the end of the trawler discussion. Don’t you want a shower I pleaded? What about a small office? Don’t you realize that we’ll spend more money repairing the sails than in fuel? Thankfully it was all for nought, and we eventually picked something better suited for our new “updated” goals.

When I was searching for a boat initially, I planned to get a first boat, and then after a few years graduate to my second. That’s a common sentiment I see online, and what I try to do with all decisions in life. However, I see a boat as more of a commitment like getting your first job out of college instead of just “a job”. You can course correct, but buying your first boat comes with so many costs of money and time that you won’t get back. As another analogy, it’s far more like inheriting a codebase than using a product. When a codebase get’s over a certain size, it’s just too impossibly big to fix everything. Working on it will always just be polishing, and to me a boat is very much like that. It’s not the manageable thing that I thought I could refactor, it is an endless product made by people before me which I could spend years trying to redo.

The best course of action is just to fix the worst bugs and use whatever floating codebase, but when safety is involved, I found that hard to do. Living upgrades kind of mattered, but I prioritized everything structural and safety related above all else. If you aren’t a control freak, you might have completely different conclusions and not care.

Catamarans

On the surface and due to all the marketing online, this seems the gold standard. And there are many great advantages to a cat, and some other overstated but still nice advantages. But first, the largest disadvantage and other negatives. The price of them is insane. It wasn’t this way when I started looking, and it’s already crashed back down a bit. However if you want anything with performance characteristics, it’s way too much to spend on a first boat. Secondly, berthing something that large really is a problem — at least in CA. I have a mooring which allows any beam so this initially didn’t seem a concern, but I go into slips more often than I would have expected. A large beam is a pain. From a sailing perspective, it’s also harder to “feel” what is going on than a mono hull. As a final downside, I used to think flipping over was not a concern when first reading about sailing. Knowing more now, if you don’t have a cat of a certain length, I wouldn’t feel comfortable going offshore.

Now for the positives that do seem worth it. Space is obviously much greater both for living and most importantly solar. And to have two engines! That’s so helpful, that I’ve seriously toyed with adding another engine to my mono hull. As for the stability that two hulls provides, I’ve been mixed on that. While sailing, a second hull would be extremely nice in certain conditions. However a monohull isn’t uncomfortable all the time (contrary to the marketing), and in certain conditions a monohull can even more comfortable. For stability at anchor, I assume a cat will be better, but our monohull is fine in most conditions.

If you have money to burn, want a lot of living space, and want to go far, a Cat is probably the way to go. If you plan to do nothing but costal cruising, want to live comfortably but still be on the water, I’d consider a cat but still go with the trawler. If you want to push your abilities on a budget while also cutting your amenities, a mono hull is the way to go.

Trawler

Trawlers are probably the best solution if you just want a place to live and want to take the boat to interesting places. They are pretty cheap in terms of fuel, can be very rugged, and obviously very comfortable in terms of living space. I was always a large fan, and now owning a sailboat, I see the utility even more. Motor sailing is preferable to bashing up wind. Also, many come with two engines, which is plenty of redundancy and what I would consider a necessity. Easily the best solution for most people in my view then, and now.

Why we ultimately did not go with a trawler, was simply because of the complexity of systems. I did the stupid thing that developers do where they don’t want to over optimize, but couldn’t resist the siren call. Trawlers ended up representing far too much waste. More money than I was comfortable spending on something I didn’t know, significantly more than I needed to live, and really difficult engines and systems that I would need professionals to assist with. Having something over provisioned in all these areas would have in retrospect made for a much more gentle learning curve about life on a boat. By pushing everything to the most efficient, I never have enough fuel, water, electricity, working equipment, whatever for emergencies.

The downside of being over provisioned in this way, is that much more will be breaking down at any one time. In my incredibly simple boat I have things break all the time. Much like how a codebase gets simple bugs out of nowhere sometimes, a larger codebase made by someone who only kind of knew how to code, is going to have a lot of things wrong with it that you’re going to completely have to refactor. Depending on your requirements for the boat, a trawler really is a much bigger investment of energy if you’re trying to motor very far and in difficult conditions. If you’re just living on it and costal cruising, get a trawler every time.

Monohulls

Having decided that we wanted to sail, I originally wanted a boat that could sail well, but was also good for living. As you might expect, that is not a winning combination. There is an incredible amount of debate about what makes a sailboat performant. I can’t tell you what works as I only have experience with ours, but our goals eventually became sailing ease and performance, simplicity in fixing/ maintaining systems, and keeping costs down. A monohull has been a great choice for that.

Our Boat Search

I wanted a boat made of fiberglass, with a narrow beam, a deep keel, and great upwind performance. I crunched all the performance numbers, made a short list of boats with the features from the late 1970’s - 1990’s and recorded prices on Craigslist and yacht world for at least a year (did this for trawlers for the first year before shifting focus to mono hulls). This was great because unlike a house, boats come up all the time and can be moved where needed. It’s true some boats are “one of a kind”, but there will always be another “perfect” boat if you’re willing to wait a year. No deal should be too good to pass up.

After creating my shortlist, I went and actually viewed a few of those boats to see how it felt inside. Pictures can only tell so much, and you have to feel the space and current condition. You did read books on conducting your own survey right? If this is your first boat, you probably won’t be able to do a good job at the self survey. General condition I think I did pretty well, but I had no idea how to understand if the engine was good, I didn’t really intuit design decision implications, and I mostly just tapped around looking for soft spots on the deck. The best strategy is just to try and gauge how invested and knowledgeable the previous owner was. Many owners were even more clueless than I was.

What I quickly found was that the 1970’s boats were too old for the amount of work. Even with my inflated sense of what I could accomplish, these old boats aren’t worth it without experience repairing. In my entire time, I didn’t find a single boat which checked every box, and even the best maybe got 2/3rds of the checklist. And this is for mission critical concerns, not living. All I can say is try to keep an open mind, and when you find one where the owners really know the boat and have things documented — go for it. We eventually ended up with a wood cored, wider beam, shallow keel, bad upwind performance boat. All those years of research and assumptions out the window.

2. How Do I Actually Buy A Boat?

Context On Boat People

So before giving advice on how to buy a boat, I want to say people that are into boats are a little off. That includes us. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. With most boat services I’ve ever tried to get (haul out, broker, delivery captain) it’s mostly been filtering for people who aren’t just drunk and will do the work. In cities, this is much better, but often you have to settle with the best of bad options. For a recent example of this, I had been waiting 10 months to haul out in a local boat yard that was supposed to be a 4 month wait. I called monthly, and I was always “next on the list”. Thankfully there was one other haul out location where the owner ended up being absolutely amazing to work with. Still, he did have a trashcan of beer cans, and told me he has 19 different Trump flags which he rotates through. So at the very least expect colorful.

In general, you have to know what you’re getting into, and grow to love it. It’s a bunch of off beat, sexist, mean old men who you can eventually break down by being kind. No one else has the time or patience to put up with boat bullshit unless they are really going for it. There are great professional people out there of course, but they are wildly overbooked and expensive. Amongst actual cruisers, it’s a totally different experience. But that’s for another time and a bit more experience.

Craigslist

As stated before, I started on craigslist. Unless you know what you are doing, I would consider that a dead end. If you want a smaller boat to play around on it’s a good decision, but anything above $30,000, I would say it’s more comfortable with a broker to handle escrow and what not. I talked to so so many people, put multiple serious offers on boats on craigslist, and even had one accepted. The owner then said he “was not comfortable with a haul out survey” (even though we agreed on that), and I had to pull out. Boat people are very particular, and most seem rational until you start organizing surveys and transferring money. The people who really love their boats absolutely can’t be logical about them, and you want a boat that was loved unless you know what you’re doing and can make all the necessary fixes and upgrades. If you aren’t the type of person to buy a fixer upper house, then you should not buy a fixer upper boat. I’m not saying deals aren’t out there, and I’ll probably be an idiot and try craigslist again if I buy another boat. However, I feel pretty decent about buying things, and thought I had made a deal that would go through at least twice. It was really really difficult to make work, and hopefully that was just part of the after covid boom. Going up market in price might make it easier as well.

On A Surveyor

A bright spot in the industry to me. It’s hard to really say how talented people are, but I ended up going with someone who I thought would be subpar based on just a recommendation from my local yacht club. My top 3 preferred surveyors were all booked up. He wrote very little was wrong with the boat which was at first concerning, but the few things he did write were dead on. I remember he pointed out how the prop had a little play. The owner of the boat who I trusted (and still really trust) scoffed at this, and from what I read online it wasn’t a big deal. Low and behold, it ended up being a problem a year later. He was also very professional, kind, and quick concerning correspondence and what not.

To find my preferred surveyors I went off recommendations from random forums. The people that I contacted turned out to be great and competent, just incredibly busy. Even still they made time for me, took completely unnecessary interest because they thought the boat I was surveying was cool, and clued me into the fact that the sellers broker was messing with me (more below). The lesson seems to be that word of mouth is a really good indicator for who is worth it. If they have a good reputation, just realize they will be incredibly busy.

On A Broker

Get a buyers broker. They don’t even have to be good, just get one. I wouldn’t actually let them find a boat for you, or trust them in that regard. However, they make the paper and emotional work that comes through so much easier. In theory you can negotiate the price down further if you don’t have a buyers broker, but that’s easier if experienced. Buying a more expensive boat is closer to buying a house than a car — even if the prices are similar. After the 5th time going through the process, you’re just going to want to wrap it up and buy a boat.

I originally tried to get a buyers broker for the paper work process, and the guy dropped off the face of the earth. This was despite having the money, and a boat I was certain I wanted to buy picked out. I took the advice of the sellers broker to just work with him. That turned out to be one of my largest mistakes. He seemed nice enough, and I thought we could wrap things up quickly as I knew exactly what I wanted and for what price. In the end, the second he got me to sign, he disappeared and started intentionally delaying the haul out so that I couldn’t get my preferred surveyor. I realized too late in the process that this was all intentional and a sales tactic. Worked out in the end, but how weird. Was lucky to have multiple surveyors say it was a grift, and speculate on why he was doing this. I’m still not sure why he felt that was necessary.

All that to say for first time buyers, just be annoying and persistent. Or get a buyers broker so that you don’t have to be. It’s not like buying a car. These purchases are emotional for everyone, and fall through a lot. Things would have been so much easier with even a bad buyers broker to schedule haul outs and ask basic questions.

Overall Thoughts

For me the process was painful enough that I only want to do it once. I used to think it was just because I was inexperienced. However, as I’ve watched others with much more experience have the same problems of looking for years, I’ve realized either post covid is a different world, or the older boats are simply getting too old now days and have too many issues out there. If at all possible, I would say buy a cheap one to learn on and lose a bit of money, but for many I know they don’t have the money and time to go through multiple boats in the beginning. Best case scenario, make the money and time to get a cheap 20 something footer first. But if you are like me and intent on going all in, just know it could be a long slog.

3. How Do I Move The Boat?

Our first dilemma was if we should sail it up ourselves, or get a delivery capitan. We had to go around Point Conception, otherwise known as the “Cape Horn of the Pacific”. Given that we had never sailed a larger boat beside an ASA course, we opted to go for a delivery captain. That turned out to be an incredibly difficult process. If surveyors were professional, delivery captains went right back to a little insane. After talking to many of them, I eventually realized most delivery captains really just know how to motor, which in that case, why do you need a delivery capitan? There are of course incredible captains out there, but they are taking out the huge boats going far distances. They don’t often have time for your small boat going a couple hundred miles.

In our case our engine is 10HP, and we were trying to cross Point Conception so I got a very eclectic group. Originally I got someone local who was a marine mechanic and happened to be renting my mooring. Seemed a good reference to have, and said he had crossed Point Conception multiple times. As we were mainly motoring, I thought he would be an ideal captain. A couple weeks before the trip he called me freaking out because he tried to blitz Point Conception in bad weather. It had apparently gone very poorly, and he was too scared to make the trip.

So after this I started calling literally everyone, and everyone was too afraid to make the trip. Something that I just hadn’t considered would be a problem on buying the boat, as I assumed captains would sail it. Eventually Korinne and I just had to go for it ourselves as I couldn’t find anyone. So we waited a few weeks for a weather window that might work, and then with no experience beside a little bit of motoring and docking, ended up night motoring out of Long Beach on our way up to Santa Barbara. Thankfully, everything was completely fine. I knew at the time it was risky, but in retrospect it was very stupid as our engine head gasket blew up shortly after that. If that had happened that night, we would have been in a horrible position. Thankfully that time, everything went without a hitch and our first sail on the boat was a great memory of seeing meteor showers in the sky, and much throwing up after surfing waves.

When we made it to Channel Islands, I caught a break and one of the many people I had called heard that I successfully made that first part of the trip. He wanted to join for the last two days (which included travel for him), and charged nearly $2,000 all in I think. I didn’t reach out, he just called because he liked the boat. Previously he wouldn’t make the trip because I didn’t have an auto pilot (kind of valid to be honest), but now I think just needed the money. He ended up being the usual crazy boat person, who in retrospect, had simply never been a delivery captain and didn’t know how to sail any boat but his own. His reference was a well known delivery captain, and he claimed to have sailed the entire world. I’m unsure as he really struggled with simple stuff, but I now realize other peoples boats can just be that different. Having said all that, I have never met a man at that age with that kind of stamina, and you could tell he did love to sail and had experience of some kind. I was very glad to have him and the kind helper he brought along. We passed point conception later than the weather window I had planned, and with maybe 10 - 15 knots of wind, it was no big deal.

All that to say, maybe just live in a big city if you’re going to buy a boat.

4. It’s Incredibly Cold and Kind of Humid

So really this is the first glimpse of the insulation and condensation control discussion — huge subjects that will come up more. First the easy parts for getting warm. We had great successes with flannel sheets that we bought from the 90’s, and a wool blanket that Korinne found from some cheap mill she had to call in Canada. That paired with a down quilt for our backpacking, and wearing our down jackets to sleep, kept us warm enough. The condensation would still drip on our faces every morning though which was annoying.

On fighting condensation the common wisdom is to get as much ventilation as possible so that humid air can’t “settle”. That works to an extent, but if it’s cold enough, you’re going to need a ton of wind for that effect to work and stop the condensation. We slept with all the hatches and port holes open for awhile and at least for us, it didn’t make much of a difference unless really windy. In fact, in the winter because the air is so cold, the absolute humidly isn’t actually that bad so condensation is simply happening because it’s so cold. Where mold is a huge problem for us in the summer, in the winter cold air can’t hold as much moisture.

For more permanent solutions, the most important thing is to get a heater of some kind. We were lucky and a kerosene heater was already installed in the boat which I’ve found to be an amazing heater. The most important thing for lowering the humidity, is to take fresh cold air from outside, and heat it up and bring it inside. The cold air might have a high relative humidity, but due to being cold there is only so much water it can actually hold. When you bring it inside and heat it up, you can feel the relative humidity of the boat going down and the sensors confirm it. Propane heaters introduce more humidity into the air, and we have other reasons for disliking propane that we’ll discuss later. If you live in a cold climate, you need at least a kerosene, diesel, or wood stove which can bring in air from the outside and dry it. Having used kerosense, I can highly recommend it as we use very little fuel each year, and it’s a very safe fuel to handle. I know kerosene heating is big in Japan, but in the US seems to have been outlawed for homes in CA at least. That might be a concern in the future and why the limited popularity. Diesel is also pretty much the same thing and easier to get.

Of course, all the warm dry air in the world will mean nothing however if you can’t retain its temperature. And when the heater is off, that happens remarkably quickly in our boat. Even with it on, the heat never really makes it down to sitting level and instead just heats the top half of the boat. And this is where insolation becomes a necessity. Our boat is “Cold Molded” which is similar to “Cored” boats that I read would not need extra insulation due to their thickness. At least in our climate, I have not found this to be the case and insulation is a requirement.

Choosing a particular insulation is a large subject covered better in other places, but for us, we debated the most between cork and armaflex. The pros of cork is that we thought it would aesthetically be more pleasing, was easier to source, and had better sound insulation at the cost of a lower R Value. Initially I thought we needed insulation only for stopping condensation in the winter so wasn’t that concerned with the R value. However it ended up being cold even in the summer, and I eventually realized how important keeping the heat up was for fighting humidity. We opted for armaflex rolls. The cork that we could find was mostly too dark as well, which hurt the aesthetics part of it. For a short time I seriously considered aerogel type materials. I found them at a reasonable cost and we have limited head room, but it seemed a little too difficult to use and unproven.

For actually getting the armaflex, you can’t buy it online and it was difficult to find prices. I eventually just had to call an industrial supplier (Distribution International) which didn’t have any of the aramflex with adhesive already connected. I just used contact cement instead. They sell special contact cement for armaflex, but I just used what was available at Home Depot and had no issues. You can buy armaflex in rolls or sheets. The rolls are harder to work with, but less material is wasted so I would probably go with that again. For prices, it was somewhere around $325 for a box of 3/4th inch thick armaflex, and $500 for a roll of the 1 inch stuff. We’ve just used 1 inch on high impact areas like the v berth and invisible areas so far.

When adhering the amaflex, the best way we found was to take a roll of paper, and make a template rather than trying to measure. Then you cut out a little larger in the template, but still not too large or you’ll have issues. I tried both 1/4 and inch and 1/2 inch extra around and they both were too large and made it more likely to sag. When adhering with the contact cement, we found it easiest to only put contact cement on maybe 1/5th of it, fit that one fit in, and then adhere the rest of it when you can very that it will fit in correctly. Once you apply the contact cement to both sides, there is very little room to “shift” it once it sticks so it’s too difficult to glue the entire surface at once.

For aesthetics, aramaflex sells a paint that is white acrylic and water based. It’s quite expensive and I’m not sure what’s different about it than regular acrylic water based paint. I ended up going to Home Depot and using generic acrylic water based paint that was high gloss. This started to look ok after 3 coats of paint. Make sure to paint all the cut out armaflex before adhering it as it doesn’t work well trying to paint above your head. If you want it to look good however, you’ll eventually need to add a headliner and wrap that in marine vinyl. Hopefully your boat came with a headliner that you can either reuse, or at least use as a template. Otherwise it’s a hugely fiddly job to try to get all the headlines right and I’m not even going to attempt it for a long time.

As a final note, I tried velcro-ing insulation and a number of other options to try to avoid permanent insulation — they created too much space and weren’t worth it. Hopefully we never have to replace this particular insulation, because we took off one piece that we stuck wrong, and it was incredibly annoying.

5. It’s Warmer and Now Incredibly Humid

Now that the cold has finally ended and you’re enjoying the summer, shouldn’t the humidity be gone? In other climates probably, but where we live it becomes a perpetual cloud of fog and not much wind for the summer months. I’ve tried everything to deal with this while not using a ton of electricity. The only solution is to bring in the air from outside that’s colder (typically 60-ish at night here) and heat it up and keep the heat. The exact same solution as the winter just with less dramatic results. Or run a dehumidifier with excess electricity (which I have little of).

I want to go into a bit of other solutions that I tried that seemed promising but ultimately didn’t work. The most promising was to take in air from outside with little computer fans which I found talked about here. The computer fans really have been great for making air move through out the boat, and do have a noticeable effect (I measured with little wind sensors which I’ll release as open source at some point). However, they don’t really help with condensation and according to all my sensors, don’t make any difference in humidity. It certainly feels better, but I can’t find any evidence that it’s actually working and there is still plenty of mold everywhere. I also tried what that article suggested with putting a smaller electric heater. The heater worked quite well, but being so small, it can really just help maintain the current temperature, not raise the temperature to any noticeable amount. It did however draw much less that than the 50 watts once it was heated, so it’s a good solution if you are able to retain the heat inside.

TLDR: Get extra electricity for a dehumidifier, or keep it warm inside the boat with insulation and fans pushing air around.

6. What Dinghy Do I Get And Do I Row?

Choosing a dinghy and an engine is another personal choice that I think is dependant on what you want to use it for. I’ve found it’s better to get a dinghy that fits your exact use case, and not try to get one dinghy that will fit all use cases. If you do want a dinghy for everything, get an expensive RIB and a 15 horse power engine and be done. The upsides to this solution are that you won’t hurt your boat on the mooring, you can get through most conditions, and it’s light enough to move around and lift on and off the boat. The downsides are that it’s a ton of money, it’s still incredibly heavy, you have to store it on the deck which really is a concern in heavy wind. You also have to worry about it getting stolen or punctured. Most people in our harbor have RIB’s. They are often having issues with them, and can’t carry as much or power through as difficult conditions as we can with our hard dinghy. Also when really bad storms come, their dinghys take off into the air and are clear stressors.

Our solution over time has been to have two dinghies. One hard dinghy that’s a dory and about 10 feet long, and one 7 1/2 foot inflatable that came with the boat. For the length, I think about 9 feet would be the sweet spot of being able to carry things, but still maneuver in tight spaces. We started with just the inflatable, but every time we went out in choppy weather (most days in the winter), we would get soaked and have a scary ride. We suffered through it for like 8 months, and then snapped and bought a rigid dinghy when it was still bad conditions in April. The inflatable is great to take out when sailing, and whenever there are storms as it can be stowed. For the other 90% of the time, the hard dinghy can carry basically everything and moves faster than an inflatable. The downside of the rigid dinghy, is it really wacks against the boat when there are a lot of waves, so you need to spend some time thinking of fender solutions that will protect your boat and the dinghy. I have 4 lines connected to control where it sits in storms. It’s also incredibly heavy, which is a pain when scraping the bottom or the few times we need to carry it somewhere.

I’m still chasing an ideal dinghy, and have thought often about building a cold molded nested dinghy at around 9 feet. They sell kits for sailing dinghies which are meant to be rowed like the excellent PT 11, but they are very expensive, and you still have to do all the building. Also, I’m now far less convinced on rowing after having rowed back and forth for 6 months. Rowing is romantic, but it’s much harder to maneuver in tight spaces, and if you have to go any significant distance, it’s a painful chore.

On the subject of propulsion, you can either get electric or gas. I have seen my neighbors fighting so much with their gas engines, and I have fought so much with my diesel engine, that I doubt I will get a gas outboard unless I need to plane. The pros of a gas outboard are undeniable though. At the expense of weight and heft, you can go much faster for a far greater range. Also, if you need to rescue your main boat, you can tie alongside and push the boat if the inboard motor dies. However to do this in the currents and such that we face, you would need at least 15 horse power. I’ve read people pushing boats with as little as 5 horse power and believe it in flat conditions, but I’ve also seen people try to push with 10 horse power in our harbor and lose ground.

The second option is an electric outboard. This option is a mixed bag and works very well for some use cases. Your range will be poor, and no mater what their marketing, you will most likely not get great speeds on the “3 horse power” engines. In return it will be lighter (thought not when the battery is included) and it will be maintenance free in comparison. For most people just going back and forth from a mooring I think this is the best option, but if you have to make power on the boat for this, you better have a lot of solar.

For us we’ve chosen a third option which gets us laughed at and has it’s own compromises — a trolling motor. There are downsides which I will address, but I first want to talk about one of the largest fears people always mention. “It’s too dangerous to be so under powered when the waves are bad!” And I get that, we move much slower than the electric and gas engine people. However, what’s not well understood is that we actually have more “thrust” than even a 1.5 horse power engine at our 85 lbs of thrust or whatever my trolling motor is. We are able to push against a current, and 20 knots of wind and chop and still make good progress. It’s slow progress all the time to be sure, but I’ve “raced” against some of my gas powered friends with 4 horse power RIB’s, and come out ahead with our little trolling motor when conditions are difficult.

So the pros and cons of the trolling motor are first that it’s super cheap, incredibly light weight, and in general I don’t have to worry about it getting stolen. I also don’t need to buy proprietary batteries that many electric outboard force on you. Another strange positive which people make fun of us for, is that the dinghy allows for easier standing in our flat dory when going back and forth. This seems strange, but a dinghy will always be wet and have condensation all over the seats in the morning and often at night. By having the throttle at standing height, we never have to sit down and get wet like so many of our neighbors. Our neighbors have even taken to trying the “standing thing” due to this issue. Having said all that, a simple milk carton or anything else with lots of holes in it solves the issue of getting wet so that it’s mostly moot.

For the negatives and considerations of a dinghy are first off, it’s kind of slow. Honestly not that slow, but it would be nice to really go fast every once in awhile. The build quality on the cheap ones is also crap, so you’ll need to eventually buy a metal bracket for example, and think of ways to protect the cord. And the final largest frustration has to be charing. I have a 50 Amp Hour 24v battery which can get us about a week going back and forth from our mooring multiple times per day. That’s a lot of battery to pull from solar each day week, and for cruising dinghy I wouldn’t think it’s feasible for us. I’d argue that you wouldn’t need to use your dinghy nearly that much while cruising without access to a slip, but if you are cruising around islands, I would absolutely not rely on this solution and get a rib and a 15 horse power engine.

As a last note on our charging of the dinghy battery, we currently use a DC to DC charger that’s hooked up to our car. Once a week we go on a long car trip (so many hikes 40 minutes away), and by the time we are back the battery is all charged up and ready for another week. This has actually been a great trick in general for the winter and running out of electricity, but I’ll discuss that more when talking about the electric system.

7. My Inboard Engine is Very Unreliable

As mentioned else where, the very first time we ever tried to use the boat after getting it up from Long Beach, we went out and blew the head gasket with only 150 hours on the engine and fresh oil, anodes, and impeller. It was a horrible experience where we drifting into rocks, didn’t even know how to drop the anchor in an emergency, and had to call the harbor department to swoop in at the last moment and save us in the strong current. This experience deeply scarred me, and taught me that I couldn’t learn to sail by slowly going out and motoring and playing with sails. I had to figure it all out at once. This started a long journey of thinking about repowering to electric (something I already considered when buying the boat) before eventually biting the bullet and rebuilding the top half of the engine.

Since rebuilding the top half, the engine has performed fine. But my paranoia has not lessened, and I frequently take detours to clean out the fuel tank (large task), replace a bunch of filters, make sure I can start the engine if the batteries die — that kind of thing. Eventually I’d like to write a lot on caring for engines, but for now I’ll say that they take a few months of reading to really understand if you are soft handed computer worker like me. Once you get them however, you can trouble shoot pretty reliably when they die. They do however, sometimes just die for unexplainable reasons that you have to debug while floating into a leeshore with the waves making you sick. Experts will say they are easy because they’ve been working with them for 20 years, but I see it as a million explosions that are corroding and can go wrong.

On the other side, electric engines have been very hip for a few years, and when researching I was mostly in the electric camp. The logic is to just use the electric engine to get in and out of the harbor, and for emergencies to save yourself. Never sail to a schedule, and do sailing like it’s supposed to be done and it won’t be an issue. And honestly, I still half buy that logic. However, often it’s helpful to dodge bad weather when costal cruising, and you need range for that. I’ve always planned on having enough range to get around point conception, but I now lean toward having at least 50 nautical miles which takes a lot of batteries.

The seemingly perfect option is a hybrid electric engine. These work by just being regular diesel engines with a small electric engine bolted on to it. The electric engine can either be used to generator power, add to the output of the diesel engine, or run all on it’s own. The downsides are complexity, and obscene cost at this point. When I reached out for quotes for a 20hp engine hybrid, it was like $15,000 extra over a regular engine. Thats not even covering the difficulty and time in the install — something that’s probably worth hiring an expert to setup. If we ever try to go into the higher latitudes, I see this as a possible investment. But the more sailing I actually do, the more I realize it’s not actually all that fun to go up wind in difficult conditions with strong currents and rain. For the beauty of Alaska I think it would be worth it for a time, but to be gone 6 months to a year in those conditions? Crossing an ocean all downwind, not putting a ton more money and complexity into the system seems like it could be a lot more attractive.

All this to say, for now I just keep the unreliable engine alive and try to understand it’s quirks. An electric engine may still be the way to go, and a hybrid if we are trying to go really hardcore, but requirements still need to be understood right now.

8. Atmospheric Rivers Are Coming and My Mooring Is Weak

When we first got the boat up, I used to wake up in the apartment pushing on the wall, afraid the boat was going to break from the mooring ball and crash. Like all the time. I would drive down whenever the wind picked up at all, and just sit on the boat to be ready to radio someone. And every time I was gone for more than a day, I would be thinking about what could be happening to the boat and drive to the harbor as soon as we were home. Korinne called me paranoid and rightly so after nothing happening for months. We had two pendants and got the mooring serviced every two years, so I should have felt confident in the system but just didn’t.

Before the winter fully started, I bought a wetsuit a dived below. Low and behold, one of our pendants was nearly completely shredded off and holding on by a thread, and the second wasn’t in great shape. This started an absolute panic as storms were coming, and was another reminder that you can’t trust anyone with a boat unless you watch them do it yourself. Thankfully this problem wasn’t actually too difficult to solve. This excellent blog recommended great pendants which we tied together, and lead to a connivent samson post over the bow roller. Leading off the bow roller turned out to be much better than bridle situations I tired. After making the switch, we never hit the mooring ball in the night (big problem before), and it feels much more secure. The downside of course is that anchor can’t be ready to drop as we don’t have a second bow roller, but this has been a worthwhile trade. As to the pendants, the important points are that the pendants must be of different lengths, and that one is basically just there as a backup pendant. Our longer pendant was much too long (20 feet vs 16), but we wrapped it around the mast a few times and lead it back to the same samson post.

In order to actually fix the pendant on, I at first tried to dive but that was nearly impossible. Instead, we tied a rope to the pendant with two rolling hitches, and then use a winch to simply lift the mooring ball completely out of the water. The eye of the pendant was quite large so we had to order a 1 1/4 inch shackle as I couldn’t find one locally. Then in order to actually get it onto the chain, we had to shackle the new shackle to an old one, and wrap wire to stop the key from shifting (just as with all the other shackles on the boat). I found it impossible to get the 6 old shackles off, but when the mooring was next serviced, they had a tool that was like a crow bar that made short work of them.

For the importance of doing this work, two days after our lease was up and we moved on to the boat, we were hit with our first big “Atmospheric River”. The wind was gusting over 80 mph and we were trapped for a few days in a storm of rain and terrified animals. It was actually a pretty pleasant experience as all the wind caused us to “lock in” on one position so it wasn’t uncomfortable. Three boats broke off their moorings during that storm however, and had to be rescued by the harbor department or crash. Moorings in general from my reading and watching our local harbor, are an inexact science and I’d think twice if you’re a heavy boat and using them in a storm.

9. How Do I Handle Water?

This was one of the problems I was very nervous about going into the boat, and turned out to not really be a concern. Well I guess biofilm gets in the water tanks so maybe it’s not all that easy…

First off it’s shocking how little water we use. We drink whatever we like, we use water for cooking and whatever else, and still I’d say we use a bit more than 5 gallons per week? Our boat holds 55 gallons in the tanks, and when we fill up at the dock that’s easily 2 months for us. Often I don’t feel like doing all the work to go dock (taking fenders out, putting on the anchor), and I instead use 3 5 gallon jugs which gets us at least two weeks. When you don’t shower or wash clothes on the boat, and when you change your dish washing habits, you really can get away with using very little water.

In order to wash our dishes, we don’t want to use all the water required, or put dirty water into the bay where the animals are. So instead we use paper towels and a disinfectant used in hospitals called HOCL. We haven’t gotten sick in the last year, so I assume the HOCL is doing it’s job. We buy large jugs on amazon and then dilute it with distilled water and put it in a large spray bottle which goes on everything. It’s not great at degreasing so sometimes we still use soap, but it’s great at killing mold and stopping many scents around the boat. Seems to be safe to even drink in small amounts. We do use a lot of paper towels which I was worried about at first, but after calculating the amount of water that goes into making a paper towel, it’s wasteful, but I still think much less wasteful than how I was doing dishes in an apartment.

You may rightly ask why we aren’t just washing with bio degradable soap and pumping the dirty water overboard? It’s mostly my neurosis and fear of hurting the environment. We try to only pump the smallest amount of water overboard that is clean, and instead grab as much as we can with wet paper towels that go into the trash can that’s right next to the sink. We spit our toothpaste into the trashcan as well, though Korinne used biodegradable tooth powder for a long time before also adopting the trash can method. Does any of this matter for the environment? I would say not at all. I know for a fact that the city has dumped 1000’s of gallons of sewage into the harbor multiple times, and I see how people that work for the city simply throw chain and other trash overboard into the water. Not to mention all the diesel engines (ours included) with all the exhaust. There is a lot of performance and hand wringing over live aboard holding tanks which initially I fully got. But now, it’s a drop in the literal ocean of which the liveaboards are polluting even less.

10. How Do I Handle Sewage?

We use a composting toilet like many of the van lifers, and I’ve found it not that bad. I know many people start with composting and eventually move to a “real toilet”. However sleeping above all your sewage, having to pump it out all the time — it doesn’t seem worth it to me. Not to mention all the space required for a holding tank and what not.

There are some downsides of course. You have to be more personal with your waste and you have to frequently empty the urine jugs. We have two, and we use a bit less than an entire jug in a day, so it’s part of the daily routine to go out and empty it. We empty it in the public toilet and store the empty or full jug in the car in a special crate that’s locked to the floor (it did spill urine all over the car twice). For the solids, we change it maybe once per month or less depending on how often we’ve been using it. If it starts to smell at all, it’s time to change it. It’s a bit of a finicky process and finding a place to empty has been a challenge. I’ve settled on going to the local state park and dumping it in one of those pit in the ground type of toilets since it’s just compost and solids. The garbage bag gets thrown in the trash.

For the actual solid compost, we’ve had horrible luck with peat moss in our high humidity boat. It takes up a ton of space, and it would mold after just a few weeks. Instead we now use 3 pounds (two bricks) of the “Coco Coir” and one cup of water. 1.5 pounds (1 brick) goes into a plastic gallon bag, and then we put in the water and screw holes into the brick. After sitting in the sun for a day, it’s a crumbly dry consistency which then goes into the solids container. For our actual toilet, it came with a “Natures Head”, and we’ve noticed that the fans which vent everything have a tendency to die frequently and stop working. It was much better after switching from the peat moss for some reason, but it’s good to have a few extras ready.

It all sounds like a lot of work and maybe it actually is, but when I think of jobs that are annoying on the boat, it’s lower on the list in both difficulty and annoyance. One thing I will say, make sure not to let flies get in there and lay eggs! Once we had thousands of flies in the boat that I had to spend hours hunting down one by one and cleaning everything. That hasn’t happened since we first brought the boat up however, so I’m going to say it had something to do with a particularly fly infested place off Point Magu.

And as a last semi related anecdote, we sometimes get 100’s of flies sticking to the side of our boat and for the longest time I thought it had to do with the sewage even though I never saw any in there. Turns out flies just like new paint and that’s why they were attracted to our boat over others. Who knew.