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's 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:(

   With the new year approaching it seems like a good time to reflect on living aboard our sailboat here in the Northwest. I'll admit - these 'best of 2012' posts and news articles that litter the web around now drive me a little crazy after awhile. But hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
   Living on a sailboat full time (myself, captain wifey, and Kali cat) definitely comes with pros and cons...here's our top ten favorite things about the lifestyle (our top cons come in our next post)...Do you feel the same way? Are there any we forgot to add? Are some of our pros your cons (I'm thinking wildlife and/or neighbors)? Leave us a comment!   ~Paul & Amber   ETC

You can't beat them. These are the primary mode of transporting stuff to & from your car to your boat home. Doing laundry? Leaving the boat for a few days to housesit for some friends (a.k.a. doing laundry)? Taking groceries to the boat? Dock cart, dock cart, more dock carts. Just don't grab a squeaky one as you pass by all of your neighbors on the way to the end of the dock:) Why don't we have these on land?

Sure, they're a pain 'cause they leak all of the time (in houses too), but you can't beat falling asleep every night under the moon and stars.

That's not our water heater, that's a solar shower. Our water heater is a little non-photogenic 6 gallon metal box under one of our salon (saloon if you prefer) seats. Just flip a breaker and give her a 1/2 hour to warm up and pow - hot water. Combined with our water pressure (no pumps here) means we've got hot showers when you need them. Also, once the water is hot it usually stays hot long after the breaker is turned back off.

Organization. Living aboard a 32 foot boat requires quite a bit of organization. We've found that having containers (many from Ikea) of all sorts keeps everything under control. Shirts in this one. Pants in that one. Tools here, bathroom stuff there. Do you only use/wear something a couple times a year? Get rid of it. Books? Get a Kindle.

The most affordable water views in Seattle? Yep. Do we get tired of Shilshole sunsets? Not yet:)

When we first moved aboard at Shilshole Marina in Ballard we were blown away by all of the animals and sea-life on our doorstep. Birds of all kinds (including crankies lurking on the docks), otters, seals, sea lions, fish, jellyfish like crazy, & more!

Weather is everywhere of course, but living aboard we really feel the weather. We hear the rain & move with the wind and waves. We can tell new weather is on the way when the wind switches directions. Pretty cool.

Do I still make excuses not to go paddle or take the house out for a spin? Sure. Do I kayak & sail way more being this close to the water? Yes!

It's nice to know more of your neighbors. We've never been so friendly with our land neighbors as we are with our marina ones. Maybe it's because we look out for each other and each others' boats. I can't really say but I like it. Now, our Golden Gardens friends aren't always so nice…although they do like to party:) 

It's not about the washing machines. It's really not about the cleanliness. It's because the laundry room is the unofficial place to leave some stuff and find some new treasures. Finished with a book? Drop it off for someone else. Does that t-shirt not fit like it use to? Drop it off. I've uncovered all kinds of great free stuff here - pants, books, line, boat cushions, snowboard boots, dishes, etc. one sailor's trash is another's treasure!