Author Archives: Michael

Our New Parking Brake

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The list of items and projects to be bought or completed seems to only grow longer as we race to cut the dock lines this summer. Melissa and I seem to be working feverishly on about a dozen projects all while living on the boat and working full time.  So when we do get an item ticked off our list, it is worth celebrating.

Bill and Donna on sv Denali Rose bought a 99 pound Spade anchor for their Nauticat 43. Their New Best Bower Post was timely and inspired yet more googling.  The Spade is a great anchor and at 99 pounds, will surely keep their boat safe in the worst conditions. I had been considering the spade anchor, among others, and had almost made up my mind about buying one when we did our annual trip to the Seattle Boat Show. A new best bower for Galapagos was at the top of our list.

Usually at the boat show you have the opportunity to hear the sales patter from several different manufacturers and this year, we looked at the Mantus, Excel and Rocna anchors. I had done my due diligence research on line and had seen that anchors, like religion, all have their followers. In the end, the consensus seems to be that pretty much any of the new fangled anchors out there are good but there isn’t one particular anchor that is best in every single situation. Melissa’s brain trust group, Women Who Sail, splits about evenly between Rocna and Mantus in terms of anchor love.

For those readers not familiar with the term ‘Boat Buck’, that means $1000.  Both the Rocna and the Spade would cost us about 1 boat buck, more or less, for the size we need for Galapagos. At the boat show we saw another very nice anchor, the Excel.  It was going to cost us, again, a bit more than one boat buck. And anchor is not something where you want to just go with the low bid, but that’s a lot of money. And again, all of the new anchors get good reviews.

So, what did we buy?

The Mantus anchor comes in three parts but in one really heavy box.

The 40 kilo (88 pound) Mantus anchor above was shipped to our marina in less than a week and cost us less than $600 with shipping. That was about half the price of the very nice Excel anchor we saw or a Spade.

Everything laid out and ready to assemble. Small packs of Lanolin are also provided to smear onto the bolts.

The assembly was quite easy with everything provided and a one page set of instructions.  Small Packets of Lanolin are used to coat the bolts prior to assembly.  The use of nuts and bolts to connect the shank and roll bar to the fluke was a concern to me as it has been to many folks considering anchors that can be disassembled.  Given the robustness of the bolts provided and the use of common sense to check them periodically, I think the fact that the anchor can be taken apart and stowed more easily can be an advantage. Using bolts to put an anchor together is a bit counter-intuitive, but the way the load is distributed on the anchor relieves that concern. Losing the bolts is not an issue that has been a problem for any of these kinds of anchors.   Mantus could add some peace of mind to the system by drilling the bolts to accept a pin or seizing wire, like the Spade .

The 30 kilo Bruce being usurped by the new Mantus. The difference in surface area is impressive.

As far as I can tell, any of the new style anchors will be superior to the older CQR or Bruce anchors we now carry.  We have been using a 30 kilo Bruce for the last two years of Salish Sea cruising and it has held well in winds up to 30 knots.  But as we travel further afield, we need to know that we are secure. One of Melissa’s friends in the WWS group describes their Mantus like a parking brake. I like that.  I was tempted to go up another size to the 45 kilo Mantus but worried that handling that much weight by hand if things go pear-shaped would prove difficult. The sale’s person at Mantus did not recommend we go up to the next size.

The anchor fits well but it doesn’t leave much room for a second anchor on the port side roller.

The new anchor fits well onto the starboard roller which is the only side of our windlass with a chain gypsy.  The roll bar can be an issue for some boats but it fit well on Galapagos.  The very wide fluke does cause a problem on the bow though.  I can’t fit a second anchor on the port side roller and I would like to carry the Bruce as a backup.   At this point, I am thinking that I will stow the Bruce below with 30 feet of 3/8 inch chain and two hundred feet of rope rode.

 

There is good clearance for the anchor but no room to stow a second anchor on the bow.

I look forward to taking Galapagos out for a weekend to test our new best bower.  Melissa and I rarely take guest moorage in a marina and we love anchoring out. Knowing that you are well and truly fastened to the bottom during a blow makes for restful nights and more enjoyable time away from the boat.  We’ll keep you posted on how well this new piece of kit performs.

 

LED Lighting Update

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Note: A regular reader has pointed out that the images and links to the Amazon products do not display in his browser.  This could be due to a browser plugin that blocks advertising.  If you have similar issues seeing images you can try to turn the ad blocking function off for this site.  For future posts, I will find another way to provide links to the products we write about.

About a year ago I wrote about using some inexpensive LED strip lights to improve the lighting in our shop and nav station That post, Cheap Boat Tricks (but will they last) featured Some very inexpensive but non waterproof lights like these : [amazon template=thumbnail&asin=B00HSF64JG]

After a year of usage I can report that the lights work okay but their durability is lacking.  In the shop area, I had segments fail after a leak developed nearby.  Since the LED lights are not protected in any way I guess it was inevitable that physical abuse of one sort or another would be their undoing. Having said that the Nav station lights continue to work well and at around eight dollars for five meters of light it is a great value.

However, late last year, a co-worker turned me on to some similar lights but with twice as many LEDs per meter inside a silicone sleeve with an adhesive backing.  At thirty dollars for 5 meters, they are also nearly four times the cost.  Check them out here: [amazon template=thumbnail&asin=B00CMX2KGK]

I had been warned that the adhesive backing on these lights was not sufficient to mount them upside down so I also bought the adhesive foam tape that is quite a bit stronger than the stock tape. In fact it is labled as a 3M product and looks like the same stuff used to mount our portlight covers.  You can check that product out here: [amazon template=thumbnail&asin=B00PKI7IBG]

Using these new lights I replaced the shop lights and also installed them in the galley and salon.  The galley was sorely in need of additional lighting and I was hopeful that the silcone cover and strong adhesive would work well in an area with heat and moisture. After two weeks of use, we have been very impressed with the quality and durability of the lights, but let’s give it another year.  Here are some before and after photos.  I took these without the flash, on a tripod to try and capture the differences more accurately.

The galley with just the Alpenglow fluorescent light

Galley with new LED strip lights

One of the advantages of the new silicone cover is that it helps to diffuse the individual LED lights, providing a more even lighting.   That is an issue at the nav station where at certain angles it looks like lasers are shooting down on the desk.

The salon lights are less utilitarian but still nice. I mounted them as uplights to provide general illumination. We have reading lamps on either side of the settee, so these just add a bit of warmth to the area.

The Lights are mounted behind a fiddle in front of the bookcase.

In addition to the lights and extra tape, I knew I would need some switches for these new locations.  Amazon helpfully (out of the goodness of their hearts, I’m sure) recommended these handy dimmer switches.  I bought two and they have been great. Here is a link to them:

[amazon template=thumbnail&asin=B00TSV2CFI]

I didn’t really think I wanted a dimmer function on these lights, but in the galley and salon this is a nice feature. The switches come with jacks that can be used with the lights but I just cut them off and soldered the wires to my DC system. Also, you will probably want to pick up some extra LED strip connectors.  Soldering a wire directly to those strip lights is pretty hard and these connectors make it easy to create a wire pigtail from the strip light. You can also use these to run multiple sets of lights or run the lights around a difficult corner.

[amazon text=www.amazon.com&template=thumbnail&asin=B0062RBR84]

Those three projects used all but eighteen inches of the lighting I bought but we are already thinking up new places to install these lights.  Eventually, I will probably replace the Nav station lights and I think it might be handy to have a separate strip of red LEDs in that area.  Also the lighting in the aft head, over the mirror needs help. Hopefully all of this effort to replace and install LED lighting will make our batteries happy.  If my batteries are happy, then I’m happy.

(Just Like) Starting Over

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Long time readers will know that sometimes the efforts to bring our cunning plans to fruition can be hard.  It isn’t always Mexican beer and Scrabble games aboard Galapagos.  Especially as our departure date grows ever closer, actions that we once just talked about, we now must do.

This past week I celebrated my twenty year work anniversary at Boeing.  Two days later I told my manager that I would retire at the end of April.

That’s a real diamond folks. A real tiny diamond.

I have been thinking about this day for a long time, maybe three years, and still I was not prepared emotionally to hear those words come out of my mouth.  In fact, I struggled to get the words out and had to excuse myself to go for a little walk. I was overwhelmed and surprised by the intense emotions after having worried about this day for so long. After I got a grip on myself, I returned and we had a longer chat to explain my future plans.  My manager was very kind; disappointed I would be leaving but excited for the cunning plan we have laid out.  I was relieved that she took it so well. It’s hard to tell people you like that you are leaving. There’s always that niggling doubt that you are going to be letting them down in some way. I am grateful that she was so supportive.

Like most people my age, I feel as though I have been working for my entire life. I spent twenty years at Boeing, and the twenty before that working or serving in the military. To say, ‘I no longer have a job.’  really does feel like starting over: Exciting and a little terrifying all at once. If you do the math, you’ll see I’ve been working since I was 16 years old. Practically an entire lifetime.

Melissa and I have been the doing all the responsible grown up things for 35 years now and the plans we have set before ourselves are simply not a part of the typical American narrative. But who said we have to be typical? Where is that written? Youth, it is said, is wasted on the young, but I don’t buy it. Melissa and I have not wasted our youth. We have used it to build a beautiful life for ourselves and our children. And now we get to start over with a new kind of life.  It is a bold move but there is magic in boldness.

When we were young, hip and didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Evanston, Wyoming, 1981.

So we tamp down our fears about what we are giving up and grow excited about what we are taking on.  Living aboard these last few weeks has been lovely, despite the cold weather.  It reminds me our first apartment together in Biloxi, Mississippi. We were newlyweds. I was in tech school for the Air Force. Our apartment was only a little bigger than Galapagos.  It was a time for us to practice being adults and figuring out who we were as a couple.  I think we did okay.

In our first apartment together in Biloxi Mississippi in 1982. Melissa taught me how to sew and I made the Hawaiian shirt I am wearing.

 

The title of today’s post is from a song written by John Lennon.  I  must have a little DJ living in my head that queues up just the right song to capture how I feel.  One day I am sitting at my desk perseverating on the enormity of how our lives are changing and the next thing you know, Lennon is goofing on Elvis while Yoko makes animal noises in the background.  It was a pretty good song from 1980 and the hook just spoke to me. Be warned: this blog is family friendly, but John and Yoko, well, you’ll remember that they were not shy. You might want to close your eyes toward the end of the video.

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