Category Archives: Boat Living

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.

#LoveWins

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What the world needs now
Is Love, sweet Love.
It’s the only thing
that there’s just too little of…

By Burt Bacharach

On Saturday I joined  200,000 other people of all genders, ages, races, and religions at the Women’s March in Seattle. Actually, the word ‘march’ is a bit of a misnomer. It was more like a shuffle due to the enormous crowds; 4 times more people than expected.  Like many, I’ve been pretty worried and sad lately about our nation and how we’re going to move forward from the most divisive presidential campaign and political time in my history on earth. Everyone I know is stressed out and worried, some more than others. Darkness and  fear pervade conversations. Heads shake in disbelief and dismay. My Facebook news feed is one depressing article after another. Going to the national news, and even the international news, isn’t much better.

.

In spite of the many reasons we were marching, the energy of the Seattle Women’s March was uplifting and positive, sometimes even joyous.  I believe it says a lot that of all the many Women’s March protests all over the world, all were peaceful. That’s about 3,000,000 people all coming together, living in the world in peace. If that momentum continues, our country is going to be fine. Seeing all these hundreds of thousands of people who, like me, believe in our country and what it stands for filled me with hope.

So I came home uplifted, filled with love for my fellow human and wondering how I can possibly keep this groove going when the firehose force of troubling news just keeps coming each and every day.  I know a little something about mental health, and let me tell you it’s unhealthy to be focused constantly on the turmoil in our country. We need a little levity. We need a little fun to get our minds off these heavy things. I don’t know about you, but my mental outlook depends on it. When you are laughing and joyous, fear disappears. And that is a very good thing.

A little shabby but still holding up.

Little did I know that one solution to my ennui actually started way back in 1974. That was the year our family went camping by the Bear River up in Maine. I was in the middle of my teen years.  My sisters and I were a creative bunch, always up to making something or other. On that trip, we sat around the picnic table and painted rocks. We painted rocks before painting rocks was cool.  Here’s a rock I painted way back then, worn by time, but still fun in a funky, latter-day hippie kind of way. My sister, Amy, keeps it safe in her garden. Next to my gnomes. (Let’s not go there.)

Recently Amy posted photos of rocks she and her son found at a park in Port Orchard. Apparently there are organized groups of people who paint rocks and then hide them for people to stumble upon when they are out and about living their lives. WHATTT??? What is this fabulous thing of painting rocks and leaving them in strategic places to bring other people joy?  I have lived too sheltered a life and need to get out more!  I had no idea such a thing existed. In fact, I have held off painting because, I mean, what will I do with all of the things I make? My friends can only accommodate so many of my amateur artistic endeavors. I’ve been downsizing so hard I left my creative me behind. And that is terrible for my mental well being. It seems like a small thing, but in fact, it’s HUGE.

I painted this sleeping goddess while at an anchorage in Barkley Sound. She lives in the aft head on Galapagos.

Anyway,  you know how it is when a great idea comes zinging into your heart, lands on fertile soil,  and starts exploding all over your cells! You know that feeling! Things just become set in motion. When I learned of this rock hiding that was happening without including me, I suddenly  NEEDED to start painting rocks. I was in the flow again. It’s been well beyond a year since I’ve felt in the flow. Yesterday I went to my sister’s house and painted rocks all day!

Man, I do love a good day of painting. It felt fantastic to get my paints and brushes and pens out and start using them again. You remember how good it used to feel to get the big box of crayons? Remember that one that had the sharpener on the back and had 64 fresh, bright colors just waiting to play with you? I can still feel the tension when it came time to buy the box of crayons for school each year. Standing in the store, perusing the offerings. Will I get the big set? Am I worthy enough? Will they spring for the 64 crayon box? The one with silver, gold, bronze, and copper included?  Will it be mine? Oh sure, the  16 piece box is barely adequate, the 32 crayon box is better than nothing,  but….ARRRGGH! PLEASE GET ME THE BIG SET OF 64 CRAYONS WITH THE BUILT-IN SHARPENER AND DON’T MAKE ME SHARE IT WITH A SINGLE OTHER SOUL AND YES I WILL USE EVERY SINGLE COLOR!!! And then that smell of fresh crayons? They actually SMELL like color.

That’s how I feel about my paints. They are just yummy as heck. I could look at them and play with them all day long and never read any shitty news again. I want ALLLLL the colors.

I’m loving this octopus. I hope someone else will, too.

My cunning plan is to dive headfirst into this new creative flow by painting rocks with fun designs, then I’m going to offer them up to the gods by putting them out in the world, hoping to bring a small amount of excitement and happiness to some child or some grownup who comes upon one by accident somewhere; just a little serendipity to bring a little light into a dark time. I know my own heart feels lighter just thinking about it. It’s not a big thing. But we all know that when you cannot control the bigger things, small things matter.

Who is this little creature who emerged from the brush? She loves her handbag.

I’m tagging my painted rocks on the back with our official boat stamp and a note to find our Facebook page. I hope people who find them will love them and will post to our  page that they’ve found a home, or that they have been re-hidden for someone else to find. Mike wants me to paint a lot of rocks. We are excited to hide rocks from S/V Galapagos all the way down the Pacific Coast and across the world to wherever we sail. Kind of makes me giddy to think of the fun of it. We hope to make friends with people who find them and we hope that finding a specially painted rock will brighten someone’s day and give them, even for a moment, a sense of the wonder of the world; a sense that the world is still a pretty awesome place most of the time. #LoveWins.

 

A hobbit home? A gnome door?

 

 

Clothes Make the Woman?

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My first dream of the New Year is a textbook study in letting go of the old self and trying to find the new one. I won’t give you all the gory details, but it involved having no clothes on, bleeding profusely out of my ‘whatever’ after having something surgically removed from my body, and frantically trying to find a place called ‘ Fusion Target’ to buy some clothes so I wouldn’t show up at my post-surgical doctor’s appointment completely naked. Oh, wait, I was wearing a Target bag. But it wasn’t covering much. In these kinds of dreams everything goes wrong and there is a great deal of frustration. In my dream I was also trying to get around on some kind of small sled-like thing that reminds me very much of the cafeteria trays we used to go sledding on in college.  Oh, how Carl Jung would have loved to get hold of all those archetypes! Fabulous. I could hardly wait to wake up.

Stunning vases at the museum of glass in Tacoma, right down the street.

This dream came after a pretty wonderful day of ‘fusion’ living that went better than expected. (See what I did there?) We’ve moved out of our house, but we had been helping the kids get settled and prepare for a New Year’s Eve party at their new digs. We have been marveling at the creative way they have used the space. The garage is now an extra living space, complete with a sofa that won’t fit in the house, lights, a table for ping pong (Ok, beer pong. Have it your way.), and a heater. It’s actually pretty awesome. We stopped by in the middle of the day to give our dog some love and say ‘Happy New Year, Enjoy Your Party’.  Then we went back to the marina because we had our own plans for celebrating.

Now that we live within walking distance of downtown Tacoma, we’re committed to getting out and about and enjoying what this little city has to offer. It’s part of our ‘live like a cruiser’ identity shift. In this case, in spite of my dream of no clothes,  the clothing needs are simple: it’s bloody cold so layers of wool and down are the best options. I’ll remember that in my next ‘identity loss’ dream. Being naked in dreams is right up there with being chased by invisible monsters when it comes to dream discomfort. I’d say, ‘no, thanks’ to all that, but we all have to be reborn sometime. And that generally requires a change of clothing.

Blue footed boobies! Like they have on the Galapagos Islands! Like we have on our boat logo!

Every year Tacoma puts on a big New Year’s celebration called ‘First Night‘.  It’s ‘family friendly’, meaning all the acts are appropriate for children and middle aged people who just want to be entertained. There is music, performance art, fire juggling, food, the world’s longest game of musical chairs ‘in Tacoma’, and demonstrations of one kind and another. The Museum of Glass is open for free during the day.

In all the years we’ve lived here, we’ve never attended because things like having to drive in and find parking and be in enormous crowds of people seem to get in our way. We gave up big events in Seattle years ago because the irritation/fun quotient became way out of whack. I mean, we still go to the Boat Show in Seattle, but that’s almost mandatory. I’m not saying we actually enjoy it.  Living in the marina, all these good things are within walking distance, even in the cold of winter. We’re practicing being cruisers and saying ‘yes’ to new experiences. So we went. And it was fabulous.

This octopus, from the In the Deep exhibit.

If you haven’t visited Tacoma’s Museum of Glass, you don’t know what you are missing. Right now there is an exhibit called ‘Into the Deep’ where artists have created sea creatures from glass. But the star of this museum is the hot shop, especially when it’s snowing outside. The museum staff artists spend all day every day making beautiful glass art and supporting the work of visiting glass artists from around the world. Watching the artists at work is mesmerizing fun.

After dinner on the boat, we walked up to the theater district in Tacoma to enjoy the festivities. Tacoma has kind of a gritty, dystopian steam-punky vibe that is great fun. The energy of the crowd of about 20,000 people was just right. There were enough people to make the whole thing feel festive, but not so many that it was terrifying/irritating. We strolled from venue to venue, taking in music and art, deciding not to stand in line for over an hour for a donut from the Lakewood House of Donuts, wondering why the protestor for Jesus was advertising hate and fear rather than love, and generally mingling with the natives and having a grand time.

2016 Effigy Basket. Insert hopes and dreams for 2017 here.

This year, for the first time in many, we stayed up to kick the previous year to the curb with relief and welcome in the new baby year. Tacoma artists had built an effigy of 2016 in the form of a basket made of strong paper and sticks. We added our hopes and dreams for 2017 to the basket; written on small cards and placed carefully inside with hundreds of others. In the Chinese Zodiac, 2017 is the year of the Rooster. I’ll let you make what you will of that. But roosters…strutting, crowing, fighting, puffing themselves up to look large…go ahead and run with it. We’re going to Mexico.

During the countdown to midnight, the basket was set fire and all those hundreds of hopes and dreams for the future soared into the night sky straight into the arms of the gods. May they be listening. May they be pleased with us.

Can you guess what we wrote on our cards? I’ll bet you can. And I’ll bet you can also imagine what kinds of clothes I might find in my future dream when this new identity is solidified. Clue: there will be fewer layers.

I’ll leave you with some of my favorite YouTube videos from Tacoma’s First Night 2016. I’m a little partial to the Seattle Rock Orchestra.

And come visit the museum during this cold winter. You can get warmed up in the hot shop, then come by and say hello to us on Galapagos. We’d love to meet you.

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