We Live On A Boat

The last 3 or 4 nights have been very cold which have made for interresting mornings. The peace of our sleep has been punctured by the sound of fellow live aboards pounding ice off their hulls, docks and lines. You can’t tell what direction the pounding is coming from either as it seems to come from all around. The sound travels very well through the ice and you could swear someone was pounding on your own hull with a hammer. It’s a new experience for me … I love the sound of pounding ice in the morning.

Last night was a rough one. The wind was up – gusting over 50 kph and it was COLD. When I got up this morning it was -16 C so I am sure during the night it was even colder. So, because of the wind there was a lot of jerking and banging which woke us up several times throughout the night. What was worse however, was the ice growing in around the boat. The bubbler keeps the boat clear of ice right up to about the middle of the v-berth. From there to the bow, the ice has begun to close in from the bay. So there is all kind of scraping, cracking and groaning from the ice rubbing against the hull. Of course, in the night, your imagination can play tricks on you, so several times I imagined that we were sinking. Man, nothing like the daylight to drive away the boogieman. This morning I can see that there really is only a tiny little patch of ice touching the boat right at the tip of the bow – nothing to worry about. So hopefully tonight when I am all tucked in, I can ignore the sound of good man winter clutching the boat.

For all you wandering Stumblers that have been visiting, here is what living on a boat in winter in Canada looks like.

Last night when I went to bed it was -15 deg celsius and this morning it is -16. The area around our boat is open water still but the rest of the marina bay is frozen. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of having open water right next to your hull is that it draws the geese and ducks. I’m not sure what was going on last night but there was an awful lot of splashing and quacking going on. Maybe that is what they have to do to keep warm – I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve go to go warm up my truck so I can head off to work. Welcome to winter.

One of the main problems living aboard in the winter in a cold climate is condensation. There are different ways of battling it – some insulate the walls, others use a dehumidifier. I have chosen to go a slightly different route.

Condensation occurs when at least two conditions are present. One, a temperature differential between a surface and ambient air. And two, the presence of moisture in the air. We combat the difference in temps by wrapping boats in plastic which helps keep the outer surfaces from getting so cold. However, this wrap also tends to increase the relative humidity of the air inside the wrap. This increase in air moisture creates greater condensation when condensating does take place. What I have done to combat this is add a power vent to the wrap cover which constantly brings in cold dry air from the outside. This dry outside air basically scrubs the moisture out of the air inside the wrap and boat. I added two covered vents in the wrap at the bow of the boat and installed a power bathroom vent at the upper stern of the boat wrap. This system draws the air in at the bow and blows it out the vent at the stern.

One draw back of this venting system is that it brings cold air into the wrap. Sometimes when the air is really cold, I put a heater up at the front vents to heat the air as it enters the boat so that it does not cool the surface of the boat so much.

While I do not have any numbers to back this up, I believe this has made a major difference preventing moisture and condensation buildup inside the boat. Maybe others have done this as well, and can comment on the their success or failures.

I finally got around to winterizing my engine today. Here is how I winterize my Atomic 4 gasoline engine.

NOTE: Not all Atomic 4 engines are the same. This is how mine looks and how I winterize it – yours might be different. Click on the pictures to see the labeling.

1. Drain the engine by removing 2 drain plugs from the engine block, 1 plug from the exhaust manifold and 1 from the muffler. One engine block drain plug is located at the front of the engine beside where the starter attaches to the block. The other engine block drain plug is located behind the starter below the alternator. The drain plug on the exhaust manifold is located at the rear back of the manifold on the right hand side of the engine. The muffler drain plug is at the bottom of the muffler stack. Make sure the water flows freely from all of drain plugs. If not, fish around inside the holes with a wire to clear out any crud.

2. Replace all the drain plugs once all the water has drained out of the engine.

3. Close off your raw water intake and switch over to your ‘T’ intake which you will put in your bucket of antifreeze. If you do not have a ‘T’ fitting installed, I have read of some people who pour the antifreeze into the raw water strainer instead.

4. Now remove the thermostat from the thermostat housing and tighten the housing back down without the thermostat installed.

5. Pinch off the bypass hose where it comes up to the thermostat housing. This will force all the antifreeze into the engine block before filling the manifold and muffler.

6. Run engine until you have antifreeze coming out the exhaust. Then shut the engine off again.

7. Unpinch the bypass hose. Open up the thermostat housing again and reinstall the thermostat.

8. Restart engine with a can of fogging spray in hand. Once the engine is running again, spray the fogging oil into the engine intake so that the engine stalls from the fogging spray.

9. Remove all the spark plugs and spray fogging oil into the cylinders. You might want to clean off the area around the spark plugs before removing them to prevent chips of rust and paint from falling into the spark plug holes.

10. Turn off the gas supply to the engine and then turn the engine over briefly with the plugs still removed to move the fogging spray into the cylinders. If you have the hand crank for the Atomic 4, you can also just crank the engine over by hand.

11. Reinstall the plugs.

12. Open up your raw water strainer and pour in some antifreeze.

13. Leave your raw water thru hull closed until spring.

14. Top up your gas tank and add gasoline stabilizer.

15. Bobs your uncle, Betty’s your aunt – your done!

In the past I stressed about moving aboard with an eight month old baby. Will there be enough space? Will he learn to walk in such confined quarters? Am I somehow going to stunt his growth? But there was one thing that I did not consider: kids adapt. They don’t understand that living on a boat is a different life. To them – it is just the way life is. They don’t know anything different. My boy does all the things that kids on land do – eat, sleep, play, get into things, poop…

I sometimes hear people talking about how they have to buy bigger house because their family is growing. After all, little Johnny must have his own bedroom. What? Since when do kids ‘have’ to have their own bedroom? Do you think that Suzie will somehow grow up maladjusted because she had to share a bedroom with Sally? Kids get their sense of value, their sense of space and even their sense of ‘what is enough’ from their parents. These are not values that they are born with – they learn them. If you are content with what you have and the amount of space you live in, then they will be also. For the most part kids are just happy being where mom and dad are – no matter where they are.

“Home is Where the Heart (and the boat) is” is the title of an article in Good Old Boat November/December edition.

They are right.

As I sat out in the cockpit this evening thinking about how good life was, I thought about how I had everything I needed and that I was happy to be exactly where I was. Down below my wife was working on getting Christmas cards ready to mail out; out in the cockpit with me was the boy, just glad that dad was home from work. Looking out through the plastic I could see the sun beginning to set, the water rippling and other boats rocking in the slight breeze. I had everything that anyone could desire in a ‘home’ to be happy. The only difference was that my ‘home’ was floating. This evening we had order in Thai food, we rented and watched a DVD movie, messed around on the internet, read a magazine and now I’m getting ready to hit the sack. All this on a boat – really, what is different from living on dirt? If you are thinking about living aboard a boat – just do it! In many ways your life will not change and always remember, “home is where your heart is.”

Here are some more photo’s from our trip to Ireland. Enjoy…

Wow – its hard to believe that it has been 3 months since my last update here. You know what they say – time flies when you’re having fun. We’ve been having some fun!

Since my last post we’ve moved to our winter marina, gone to Manitoba to pick up our new camper trailer, toured the southwest of Ireland and celebrated the boys 2nd birthday (the terrible twos are here.)

I will get some pics up in the next week or so of the above, but for now here is a taste of our Ireland trip…

I finally got around to installing jacklines on the boat. I had purchased the hardware a month ago and had got the actual lines made up last winter. All I had to do was drill some holes and bed the hardware – about 1 hour worth of work that I’ve put off for far too long. As you can see I mounted some real heavy ‘D’ rings to the side of the cabin right in front of the cockpit combing. Then ran the lines to my anchor cleats. With this set up I can reach around to clip on with out leaving the safety of the cockpit. Also they are easily removed when not needed. For now I will leave them on and with give the boy a try on them with a harness. That way I can work on deck and not worry about him going over. See my post Keeping the Boy on the Boat for more info on how we keep our 20 month old safe on board.