Sailing
Staysail sheet winch options
We managed to get two old Lewmar 30 self-tailing winches from ebay to use for our staysail. Four options for where we might position them. At present we favour the first option (very close to the primary winch).
Dave Warnock
Environmental
More worrying destruction
From the BBC today BBC News - Coral bleaching: Fourth global mass stress episode underway - US scientists It's increasingly obvious that by the time we get to the tropics there isn't going to be much coral life left to see.
Safety
Sailing UMA scary delamination. Are we ok?
This video from the lovely Sailing UMA is scary. It does end on a cliffhanger. We see that the test model they built failed catastrophically. They built a small section of GRP intended to replicate the original hull. They added a foam core rib, covered it with GRP and then
Environmental
Composting and our forecabin layout
In Our Compost Toilet deadline we said we that our current plan is to create a place for composting the septage (the dry solids from our Nature's Head compost toilet). To achieve the temperatures to rapidly kill all pathogens three things are needed: * Insulation (in a large outdoor
Progress
Improved insulation for our galley
A couple of weeks ago we wrote Insulating the galley, today we have improved the way we are holding the insulation in place. The vertical battens we tried last time didn't work well. The bend was too sharp. So now we have 120mm wide strips of 3.6mm
Progress
Parts preparation
Rather than go to the boat last night we have been preparing some parts at home (and working out a bit better what we need at home and what at the boat). First task was ripping a 40mm square batten diagonally in half to create two triangular sections. This is
Environmental
Raspberry Pi Pico for boat projects
So our Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller kit arrived today. We have been through a first video tutorial which has got us to connect it to my laptop, download MicroPython and Thonny. Then when wrote a little program to make the LED flash. The kit comes with over 450 items
Uncategorized
Sustainable Sailing Book update
I've just updated our Sustainable Sailing Book following the blog post Our Compost Toilet deadline with the lessons learned from reading The Humanure Handbook.
YouTube
GoPro woes
A month ago our GoPro Hero 10 failed. It wouldn't turn on. After a long session on "chat" they agreed it needed replacing with a £115 charge. Since then it took nearly a month to get their finance team to phone me (they tried twice when
Progress
Insulating the galley.
We have started to fit the insulation in the galley. 5mm self-adhesive foam with foil backing against the hull and deckhead. Will be covered by 40mm of xps foam board. The hope is that the 5mm stops condensation in any gaps between the xps board (which isn't very
Environmental
Our Compost Toilet deadline
We have been using our Nature's Head Compost toilets for 4.5 years and been very happy with them. However, we are going to have to change things within the next few months. At the moment we empty the urine bottles in the boatyard toilets (that's
Uncategorized
Easter gifts
Easter is coming soon. Jane is selling cute things to put treats in, especially suitable for little ones. There are chicks and bunnies. Hope you like them. Chick bags Bunny bags