I have finally decided to name a type of customer service that unfortunately seems prevalent in the marine industry. I've found that naming things like this usually makes them easier to deal with and accept–the giant spider named Anthony that once lived in my bedroom or the scary and educational plastic skeleton named Steve I keep in the supply closet at work.

   I'm naming it Alpha Dog Customer Service. I'm sure you've dealt with it. It goes like this. 

   I've started a boat project. I'm new at this. I'm not particularly handy, I'm into sailing and I own a boat to go boating. I have a full-time job and a part-time one. It's not that I don't respect handiness or people that are handy, I'm from the sticks of Missouri after all, it's that a person only has so many hours in the day. I don't really enjoy boat projects that much, but hey, I'm not rich so D.I.Y. comes with the territory. Moral of the story? When I'm doing a project I want it done well, and as quickly and cheaply as possible.

  I'm lucky enough to have friends that know what they're talking about. They sometimes agree to help me with my projects (awesome!). Kevin says, "Can you head down to Mallard Hardware Store (real store name protected) and pick up a flap wheel drill bit?" Sure Kev, no problemo. 

   Laughter. Like, they're almost crying behind the desk at the hardware store kinda laughter. Why? Because I don't know what grit size of flap wheel I need. "We've got hundreds of grit sizes!" they say as they roll around on the floor chuckling. Chuckling is part of the Alpha Dog Customer Service technique. It's usually preceded or followed by stern looks, sassiness, or my favorite, the occasional silent treatment. 

   Luckily I sent a quick text to Kev and resolved the situation. Imagine the look on my face later when I found out that although flap wheel grit sizes go up to 600 or so, there's not actually "hundreds of sizes". The numbers jump like sandpaper - 280, 320, 360, etc. Which makes there just over 20 sizes. Bleh.

  I hate to pick on only hardware stores because some marine store customer service reps practice Alpha Dog Customer Service to near perfection. Last summer, however, they didn't see me coming. I had a secret weapon this time–my stepdad Jon.

   Jon's from Missouri. He's built houses, rebuilt trucks, driven semis. This guy is handy. The boat project this time involved my Force 10 stove. We had what we thought was a malfunctioning boat stove part. Jon was excited to go to the store and help me get to the bottom of this.

   We walked in, side-by-side. Jon had the part in a ziplock bag. The customer service rep greeted us as we approached the counter. Jon didn't say a word. I didn't either–I was scared (why isn't Jon talking?). It was just like car shopping back when I was 15. I went with my Dad and Grandpa. They played hardball. I remember thinking, why are they being so mean to the car salesman?

   Jon set the part on the counter. He remained silent. After 45 seconds or so (which felt like an hour) the rep, with a little sweat building on his brow, broke the Alpha Dog chicken contest and asked, "I'm not so sure what this is, I think Steve upstairs will know, let me get him for you". Jon grinned and said, "Thank you". I gave Jon an imaginary high-five knowing that if I had gone in there to ask about the part I would have definitely talked too much, said the wrong things, and received a little something now known as...Alpha Dog Customer Service. Bleh.

   ~Paul & Jon   ETC

   An online boating forum is a place to get answers, to ask questions, to meet fellow sailors, and sometimes just a place to entertain yourself. Armchair sailors alone have circumnavigated the online forums hundreds of times providing excellent gripes, compliments, feedback, and lessons on how things should be done. 
   When you get into a pickle and there's no real people on the dock you can track down for help, an online boating forum is where you go. With the spread of smartphones it's almost too easy to thumb your problem into cyberspace and wait for an answer (you can wait while playing Angry Birds!). 
   If you're lucky, someone has already asked your boaty question - had your problem - and the answer is already there (after scrolling through 65 comments that are not the answer). There may even be a forum with posts and comments that cater to your exact problem on your exact boat. But will there be answers?
   Take my problem aboard S/V Kingsley. Captain wifey & I are new to a lot of boating & engine stuff (we get eaten alive on the forums!). We've read books and been to seminars, but when it came down to changing my impeller on my Yanmar diesel, I turned to the best boating forum...brace yourself…here it comes…

   I turned to Youtube. That's right. It seems that these days it's the place to be to learn how to do almost anything (there's also quite a few good cat videos on there as well). Want to virtually hike through the Grand Canyon...Youtube. Fix the CPU on your Playstation video game console (that one had me heat-gunning the guts of my system…it was awesome)...Youtube. Switch the impeller on my sailboat's Yanmar diesel engine…yep…Youtube. 
   I searched, scrolled, read a few comments, I watched, I learned, I conquered. The actual video is kinda boring so I leave you not with that, but with a great engine rebuild clip (a car engine, but still). Below that is a picture gallery of my much wimpier, but still important project - the impeller change. 

   Have you got a forum/blog/site that beats Youtube for answers to your boat project questions? Let us know in the comment section (how ironic it would be if we all got fighting in the comments just like on the boat forums!). Alternatives count too, like Small Boat Projects - lots of great ideas with tons of pictures…Let us know!
   ~Paul & Amber     ETC

   Now, hate is a strong word. I really wouldn't say we hate anything about living aboard, but dislike isn't really the opposite of love (our last post). So, get on board the hate train, she's leaving the station! Surely there are things you dislike about the live aboard life, if we didn't list them, leave them as comments below. Let's get negative.

Before we moved aboard we rented a nice little house. It had a washer and dryer. We never took them for granted. The ability to do your own laundry whenever you want should never be taken for granted. Now we haul the dirty clothes from the boat all the to the laundry room...only to find it full of folks.  

Captain wifey loves to cook. She even loves our small, two-burner-with-oven Force 10 stove. The only problem is, she needs more counter space to make the magic happen!

Another captain wifey issue: no tub. Hey wait, the giant yachts we check out at the boat show don't have tubs either. Hmmm, I wonder how much a custom tub would cost {see #6 below}.

Besides crankies giving me a heart attack every time I mosey down the dock, all of the other birds tend to poo on everything when I'm not looking. I know Shilshole/Seattle aren't too bad compared to other marinas around the world - I've read some interesting stories from Australia - but nothing is worse than getting home to find that the welcoming committee (the 3 seagulls that are always yelling at me when I get home after work), has applied a new coat of bird-paint to my top deck {Insert swab the poop deck joke here}.

One of our friends actually warned us about this one. She grew up aboard and started to notice that when you'd tell people you were going somewhere on a 3-day weekend, let's say San Francisco, they would ask, "Are you gonna sail there?"
   Hey everyone, Amber and I are going to the San Juans for one night only {A.Y.G.S.T.?} We're off to Napa for Veterans Day weekend {A.Y.G.S.T.?}. Visiting Maine for the first time…from Seattle...{A.Y.G.S.T.?}. Silly landlubbers!

Did you notice how a propane tank at a boat store costs double a propane tank at a hardware store? Or how replacing those foam saloon cushions & fabric will run you around $3,000? OK, this one I actually hate - I thought yachting would be cheap (kidding:).

Besides the Wii Fit being out of the question, yoga kind of is too. I've read great posts of people exercising aboard, usually in warm climates out on deck, but then my winter reality on a 32 foot sailboat in Seattle sets in. Downward-facing-dog is tricky with the wife spreading her cooking all over the living-room {see #2}.

Flip goes the breaker! It's not a huge deal, but 30 amps of power at a time is all we've got. Any live aboard knows, things that heat up stuff use a lot of power. Hairdryers, toasters, & electric heaters need to pretty much be used one at a time…oh well, toast can wait.

Wow - look at all of these online boat forums! Let see, the power on our boat just went off for no noticeable reason (noticeable to me anyway - we're kinda new at this). It's 26 degrees outside so I really need to figure out what is wrong. Let's download that forum app. Click on the problem, oh sweet, there are like 235 posts about this very problem…and none of them…I repeat...none of them have a solution to the problem. We need solutions!
P.S. - It was a dirty/faulty ground connection (one of the green ground wires located around the boat got a little dirty and need cleaning)

Here we are at number 10. You thought it was gonna be the head, didn't you? Well, we can live with our head. The thing that keeps you honest and makes you own less and less stuff every year (which is actually a good thing sometimes), is condensation. In the winter the boat is hot on the inside and cold on the outside. We're inside breathing, cooking, and sometimes showering. It gets a little humid. A dehumidifier helps a lot. Those little black damp-raid things with the white dip-in-dots do too. But man, if you leave a bunch of stuff pretty much anywhere aboard over the winter and don't check it every month or two…get ready…for mold:(

   We'd like to introduce you to our v-berth. You know, it's the front pointy part of the boat, it usually has a pretty cozy bed (ours does) and when you lay down on a clear night you can see out the hatch to the moon and stars. Problem is, our v-berth had a leak.
   Long-leaky-v-berth-story short - we fixed it. Unfortunately, our previous owner hadn't fixed it, for I don't know, years before we bought the boat so it caused a good amount of damage to the white boards in the picture above. Long-warped-rotting-replace-wood story short - we fixed that too.
  So, this brings us to today's post. The v-berth walls. The vinyl/foam insulation on the walls needed removed and replaced. That seemed easy enough. Well, it wasn't (drama!). We invite you to share in our story and become a part of it! Periodically throughout the story we'll have an anonymous quiz that asks you the reader if you would keep going on the project yourselves or throw in the towel and hire some pros. Put yourself in our shoes for a few minutes. How handy are you? Marine vinyl masters? Or newbies like us trying to save a few bucks and risk it by doing the project ourselves!?!?!

First, we had to remove the old vinyl/insulation from the v-berth walls. A little sweat, pulling, and scraping and we were down to fiberglass (pic above).
   Now, we could of just purchased some new insulation and vinyl, cut and glued, and we'd have been good to go. Where's the drama in that? Who needs the pros, we got this. Time for your first vote!

   We then purchased some tan marine vinyl on sale with a coupon from Jo-Ann Fabrics and also some crazy looking insulation-type neoprene fabric to take the place of the old foam. We saved tons of money, especially with the coupons (P.S. stuff at Jo-Ann's is always on sale at some point - like 50-70% so be patient, hunt some online coupons, and get a great deal). The cutting was no problem. Then we started looking into glues...and adhesives...and more glues...and more adhesives.

After much research and glue price checking (it turns out glue is expensive...depending on the glue) we decided to go with some water-based contact cement (from Lowe's). Was this the best choice? Probably not. Was it somewhat affordable? Yes. Does water-based contact cement cause a few less cancers than normal contact cement? We think so.
   Here's the thing about glue. It really boils down to nasty, cancer causing ingredients. The more of that stuff, the more flammable perhaps, the better it will stick. We aren't gluing something in the garage here. This is our bedroom...in our house (boat) where we live. Whatever we decided to glue we'd be living where we glued it...while it dries. Something I've learned about myself during boat living over the past year was that I love living on the water, I love sailing, I love my boat, but giving myself cancer just to attach some new walls to my v-berth isn't really worth it. 
   Price was a factor as well. Great glue often seemed to come in tiny bottles and we were talking about gluing quite a bit of vinyl. Time to vote!

   Now for some drama. The contact cement didn't stick. After days of drying, it didn't stick. We had 4 pieces (2 walls with 2 pieces of insulation) of giant fabric with glue on them that didn't stick. The money for the glue - wasted. Time spent - wasted. Now, time to call the pros?

   We called the pros. They gave us an estimate. Drum roll please. It would cost us roughly $3,000 +. We hung up with the pros and never called them back. For that kinda cash we could afford to screw up multiple times! Next up - us screwing up multiple times...with glue...again.
   Despite my best friend's hatred for Gorilla Glue, we purchased some (it's at least affordable) and tested it on a small piece of our each of our fabrics. It worked great. We knew that it expanded upon drying, but that didn't seem to bother the situation. Let's do this!
   We added the glue to the fabric pieces in lines - it looked like long strings of spaghetti, winding their way all over the pieces. We set books on top and left it for a day. Well, guess what? The glue expanded. Quite a bit. It stuck great, but when we put the walls up in the v-berth we could see the spaghetti lines all over the place. Grrrrrr!!!

   We took a little break from the drama. We rolled up the warped vinyl and let the project sit for awhile. Then a little lightbulb turned on in my brain. This type of thing is one of the reasons I like the combination of owning a boat and not being rich - you get creative. 
   We trashed the vinyl/insulation. We took the unopened can of the water-based contact cement back to Lowe's to get a little money back. We hit up Jo-Ann's again, but this time it wasn't for more vinyl...it was for fabric.

   We just so happened to hit a 50% outdoor fabric sale...perfect. We bought some Sunbrella-type fabric and ordered some nautical-sailcover-like fasteners online (they're way cheaper here online). Captain wifey does have a sewing machine aboard, and she worked the seams, edges, (I'm just making up sewing words here) & fasteners. I used a little dab of 4200 epoxy to hold the other side of the fasteners on the v-berth walls...and...

…complete! We're pretty happy with our final product and, despite how your votes end up, happy that we finished the project ourselves. We think the heavy outdoor fabric will hold up nicely. Since the fabric walls are not actually attached to the boat, we can easily remove them if we need to or if we got really bored - change the fabric to suit our interior design needs (I don't see that happening anytime soon…er…ever).
   Looking back on the project, we think the Gorilla Glue might have actually worked fine if we would have used a little less and really spread it out. We also decided not to add insulation - we had lived most of the winter without it so it didn't really bother us. I hope you enjoyed our tale, and thanks for voting! Final project (with cat) below.
   ~Paul  & Amber (& Kali below)   ETC

   When we first thought about living aboard a sailboat we thought long and hard about the things we would miss or have to live without. Things like a tub, a big HD TV, running the coffee pot and heater at the same time. Then there was the cooking...and my wife -  the chef.
   Our first cooking opportunities on our sailboat came on our outdoor 'sea-B-Q'. We quickly learned it has two heat settings - really hot and really-really-hot. We eventually bought a new one. It has the same two settings.
   Our Hunter 32 sailboat did come with a pretty standard (for this type of boat) Force 10 propane stove. It is a typical sailboat set-up - propane tank goes outside the boat in one of the lockers, a hose connects from the tank to a regulator and a solenoid switch and then winds through the boat to the stove inside. You flip the stove breaker and the solenoid switch on, hold down the igniter button on the stove, turn the burner knob, and off you go. 
   When we first bought the boat this set-up wasn't working for some reason but we soon figured it out and started cooking.
   We wondered how long a tank would go, a week? A month? More? Could captain wifey cook like she did back on land? Would the stove cook super hot like the sea-B-Q?
   Below are all of the meals, hot water, literally everything we cooked on one of our 1 gallon propane tanks over a few months. It ended up being about 30 recipes. This wasn't just reheating (well, a few of them were), this was real tasty, yummy, cooking. Also, we had a lot of leftovers not shown in the pics below. Click on the images below for descriptions, to enlarge, and to get some cooking hints. Thanksgiving dinner coming soon!
   ~Paul & Amber   ETC

  We don't repost that much here at the club (actually this may be the first time), but this engine video is so great we had to. It comes courtesy of Erick over at www.thequestforwindandwaves.com. This makes little engine jobs seem, well, not that bad after all. Make sure to have your volume up for the music accompaniment! 
   ~Paul   ETC

   With the time change coming this weekend, some sun over the past few days, and the hope that Seattle has seen the worst of her winter, we start (continue?) the S/V Kingsley upgrades in preparation for spring. Since we live aboard we started with one cockpit and a few interior projects.
1. Hang the Bill Murray/Steve Zissou portrait (purchased on Etsy). It doesn't really get any better than Bill Murray in the movie Life Aquatic...does it?
2. Install custom made roasted oak cockpit tables (mentioned before).

   Now, don't worry all of you salty sailors out there...you're right - oak isn't a great wood for the saltwater environment...however, roasted oak is a lot better, it has actually been roasted/baked to get all of the water and sugars out of the wood. It's quite dense and, well, it's way cheaper than teak. Not to mention that I'll probably take them off in the winter (they attach pretty easily).
3. Fabric frames to cover our saloon (middle part of the boat) windows.

   Not my best cutting on the two window frames but I knew captain wifey would hide my edges with pretty fabric...3 boat jobs done, more on the way - All before Spring!

   ~Paul, Amber, Kali (she slept through the whole thing)   ETC

   First of all, while this may appear like a slightly shameless plug for Clear internet or maybe even Apple computer - it's not. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't argue with either of them for throwing us some freebies (I'll take a Macbook Air for starters) but they haven't.
   When we first moved aboard Kingsley last May we were excited to take our existing Clear internet right onto the boat. If you live in a Clear city (like Seattle...and most major US cities) you've got one of the fastest ways to install home internet - just sign-up with Clear and choose a modem, bring it home, open it, plug it in, and bam...internet. No cables, phone & TV bundles, boom - done.
   Now, the speeds aren't as fast as cable internet through Comcast or wherever, but you can blog, stream netflix, watch youtube, and surf the web easily without too much of the dreaded 'buffering'. Our first Clear modem is pictured below (on the right). We plug it into the wall and then into an Apple router (left) (which also plugs into the wall) so wifi can be spread to all of our little gadgets.

   So, this was one of the easiest moves when we left land for the boat life. Unplug, move to boat, plug in. Here's where the story takes a little turn...
   Amber and I had looked at so many boats when shopping for this one, a lot of them very similar. When we finally settled on Kingsley we discovered that some of the things we thought she had, well, she didn't. We had actually combined in our minds some of the other features from boats we had looked at onto the one we actually bought (surely that's happened to other folks, right?). Needless to say, we combined a lot of really cool features that aren't actually on the boat we own now...huh.
   Luckily for our internet aspirations, Kingsley has batteries, outlets & stuff...problem is...she doesn't have an inverter. That's a handy little device that converts battery/DC current to outlet/AC current - what's needed to plugin our Clear modem and surf while we sail the high seas (of Seattle and the Clear surrounding area). Now, I know what you're thinking - ahh, poor little sailors don't have high speed wireless internet while sailing. Well, may I direct you over to one of our past posts of a 70 foot powerboat with heated floors in the head, err, bathroom (last boat)...
   Well, enter our new Clear upgrade. After a extra challenging time dealing with customer service folks online and in person - don't get me started - we finally picked up a new Clear Voyager mobile modem. 
   The setup now: plug in the tiny modem (pic at the beginning of this post). Want to use it on the go? No problem, unplug it. It has batteries that supposedly last between 6-8 hours. It is the same 4G speed that we were used to with the old modem. You won't need a router like the Apple one I pictured above (there goes my free Macbook Air for the shameless plug) - the Voyager beams a wifi signal to up to 8 devices. Also, I imagine you could easily charge it using one of a few new solar chargers on the market (they carry a few at R.E.I.) since it has a USB charger similar to an iPod. 
   Downsides? It's super small and because of that I'm probably gonna break it soon. Battery is internal so once it goes so does the device (you can always plug it in). Clear suffers from some series corporate/customer service/retail store communication problems ("Yeah, sorry sir, I can't sell this to you here at the store because you're an existing Clear customer"), It only works in Clear cities - ours luckily happens to be one with water everywhere.
   Dear readers, what type of internet do you use on the run or at the dock? Do you block out the net on purpose while cruising? Someone's got to share about their wifi extender antenna thingys!
   ~Paul & Amber

   I don't know who said that catchy phrase, well, actually, I think it is just me saying it. Our Kingsley boat project of last week was heading over to my friends shop and working on new galley sink/trash covers (inside) and some new cockpit tables (outside). The orginals were made from plastic...not even a workable plastic - some composite that is equally hard to clean/paint (a.k.a. it is probably cheap).
   We upgraded the galley covers to bamboo and the cockpit tables (not finished yet) to roasted oak - a wood that has been literally roasted, removing water and sugars making it good for outdoor use (and cheaper than teak). I haven't installed the cockpit tables yet but I am pretty happy with our [almost] finished project.
   Do you have any recent add-wood-to-your-fiberglass boat projects? Did you use teak or something different? What do you use to maintain your indoor wood shine?
   ~Paul   ETC

   Welcome to our new Aboard series! Over the next few months we'll be adding posts to this portion of our site, describing how we do things aboard S/V Kingsley, our sailboat-home here in the Pacific Northwest. We're excited to share some ideas and ways of doing things with our readers and hopefully receive a good deal of feedback and ideas in our comment sections on each post (because we're kinda new at this and you people are smart!).             
   We start today with something we couldn't leave behind when we sold [almost] everything and moved aboard our 32 ft boat - coffee. We are in Seattle after all! 
   Be sure to check back in on our Aboard series as we'll share posts on lots of aboard topics including: cooking, cleaning, entertainment, heating, cats, kayaks, marriage:), the head, storage, books, music, apps, candles, and more!   ~Paul, Amber, & Kali

 

We like to think we have mastered the art of a good cup of Joe on land or sea. On Kingsley, we often use the ol' stand-by - not a plastic, old, plug-in coffee pot mind you (this is Seattle don't forget!) - the french press. We heat up just enough water in the teapot on our Force 10 propane stove, add some ground coffee beans to the press (ground at the store or by our hand-powered grinder), add the water when it is warm enough, wait 3 1/2 to 4 minutes (using a timer), then press...pow!