http://aboardmadrigal.blogspot.com

please note

2009-06-02T20:26:00.002-04:00

Please note that we have moved to:

http://aboardmadrigal.blogspot.com permanently, and I found a way to import all posts from this one too, so you can even search our old posts from here, too!

Madrigal

2009-04-21T10:36:00.003-04:00

Madrigal
Originally uploaded by jennycaron

This is a test.

Madrigal

2009-04-21T10:36:00.001-04:00

Madrigal
Originally uploaded by jennycaron

This is a test.

of ice and hats

2009-01-17T09:56:00.003-05:00

I'll put this post here because it is easier to do for now, but blogger is giving me difficulties with email addresses being associated with multiple accounts and whatnot. So from here on out ALL POSTS WILL BE AT http://aboardmadrigal.blogspot.com/. Sorry for the runaround, but we want to have the right site for the right boat! :D

Now, aside from that, the marina has a small steel tender that they had to use as an icebreaker yesterday. We are getting frozen in pretty good here. About 2 inches yesterday. I think more today, I had to go chip it away from the hull earlier. It is really pretty awesome! hah, we like it, but we're weird.

Willie stole my hat to keep warm!

More later! -- at the new site http://aboardmadrigal.blogspot.com !

-Justin

fyi

2009-01-13T00:00:00.003-05:00

http://aboardmadrigal.blogspot.com/ is finally up and running!

We will try to make the move slowly and will still update this website for a good long while, but update your bookmarks cuz we are finally committing.

Oh, and this also means that we have pretty well decided, after all that huge process, that we are going to keep the name Madrigal. It has grown on us, and we no longer see any need to change it. :)

Justin and Jenny.

galley work

2009-01-11T23:24:00.006-05:00

So we have been making some arrangements in our galley lately. We got tired of not being able to bake, so we got a convection microwave. Only works at shore, but we are tied up most of the time anyhow. Love it so far.

The boat came with an electric stovetop installed, but not cooking at all out at anchor sucks. The boat also came with an Origo 3000 alcohol stove, but it wasn't installed. Well, I spent today moving the electric stove and hanging the Origo on a new set of gimbals so that we have both options readily available. It is also nice cuz our marina charges electric in the winter, so we can use the alcohol then, but electric is free in the summer, so we'll use the electric then. Plus we can cook at sea now! yay!

Still some work to be done. Have to varnish and trim a few things but after that we'd like to resurface all the counter and tabletops with new formica. Time will tell.

Of seals, ice, and weirdos

2009-01-08T08:54:00.002-05:00

Jenny finally saw a seal. When we were going to move aboard we'd heard stories of seals frequenting Constitution Marina. Jenny was pretty excited, but sadly, she had yet to see one. I saw a couple last year, but always when she was away. Jenny had time to go to the boat, get the camera, and get back to G dock for pictures. The seal was lounging, and in no hurry.

And then there is us...

It has been rather icy and ugly out here lately. Just wanted to put up some pictures of the marina.

That's all for now...

convection

2009-01-01T17:53:00.003-05:00

Using some xmas present money we bought a microwave/convection oven! Being home over the holidays reminded us just how many conveniences we have given up over the couple years we've been aboard. In trying to make the boat more comfortable and homelike we decided that adding a convection/micro would do a good deal to make life a bit easier. That and I have an insatiable love of frozen pizzas that I have been unable to satiate in the last year. We put it below the stovetop, where the cruddy old norcold had been located. We are going to sell the norcold and eventually put a refridgeration kit in the icebox. In the meantime, we have an igloo minifridge sitting in the quarter berth and that works just fine.

We are doing a bit of a galley overhaul. I finally installed hot water a couple weeks ago. The electric range has temporarily been pulled out and replaced with the alcohol origo stovetop. The electric one will get re-installed behind the origo, which we will gimbal. That will give us 4 burners on top with electric option at shore and gimbaled alcohol option at sea! Soon I'll re-formica everything and finish out the area around the new oven and our galley will finally be the way we like it!

Happy New Year
-Justin

Happy Holidays 08

2008-12-30T09:46:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since we posted. My computer had crashed and I don't like using Jenny's indexing computer for stuff like this blog. Finally, my computer has been fixed and is back in action. Perhaps some pictures and stuff will follow soon.

We had a good holiday, though too much driving. Drove to Upper Michigan from Boston- a total of 45 hours round trip with a dog in a station wagon. Ugh. No more driving for a while. It was fun though and we got to see our families.

More later!
-Justin

sewing machine

2008-12-02T10:05:00.002-05:00

Thought I'd post a couple of pictures of the new sewing machine, even though it's not yet Christmas, therefore I'm not supposed to look at it (according to my mom!)

Anyway, I'm going to make this post short because I have a lot of things to be doing this morning before work, but I wanted to at least post a couple of pictures.

sailors, waifs, and strays part two.

2008-11-30T19:52:00.004-05:00

You may or may not remember this post in which we all had Thanksgiving in Marblehead at our friend Nicolas house.

Once again, we all convened on Nicola's home for a feast. Sadly, Nicola herself got called away at the last minute and had to fly home to Scotland for a family medical emergency. As is the standard for Nicola, she was so kind that she insisted we all still have dinner at her place, even if she couldn't be there. So Jenny and I and our friend Jim were placed in charge and it was a great time with a great dinner. Things are definitely more organized with Nicola around and we nearly had some cooking disasters, complete with smoke and blood! But it was tasty in the end and all were happy.

There are quite a few pictures from the day, but they are still on Jenny's camera. For now, the only pic I took with my phone was of the placard on the front of Nicola's house. All the old houses in Marblehead are labeled this way and it is fun to see how the town had been built by its inhabitants in centuries past.

Also, of note is that Jenny received an early xmas present today from her parents. (It had to be early because we bought it locally off of craigslist.) Jenny finally got a real sewing machine. And an awesome one at that. It is an older model, but it is an industrial strength machine from a local sewing factory that went out of business. It is a White 782 Zigzag Machine. It is plenty strong enough to do all of our future sunbrella, canvas, and sail needs. Now we just have to learn how to use it and how these nautical things are properly put together. Pictures of the machine are forthcoming. We are darn happy about it though. Jenny has a good bit of sewing skill already, but lacked a machine. We've had so many things which needed to be fixed, trimmed, fabricated, or otherwise sewn on this boat and have had no affordable way to do it except sending them cross country to Jenny's mom and back again.

Norombega

2008-11-15T17:45:00.004-05:00

A previous post, which asked for boat name ideas, generated more response than we've ever gotten for anything on this site. Lots of suggestions, emails, and comments. Thanks!

We might have come up with a name to give our boat in the spring: NOROMBEGA.

So, it may not be the most radio friendly name we can come up with, it is surely simpler than Popol Vuh or Aguirre. At least Norombega can't be mispronounced in too drastic of a way.

Norombega is or was a mythical city somewhere in Northeastern United States. It is believed that it is somewhere in Maine. There are scarce records in early explorer accounts about, of course, a lost city of gold and wealth that was somewhere coastal or just up a river here in New England. That in itself is a cool enough reason for an archaeology student to pick it as a name.

To make it even better though, the entymology of the word is that it was roughly an Algonquin word which meant something like, "calm place in rough waters". Perfect!

birthday

2008-11-13T17:55:00.004-05:00

So, my (Justin) birthday was at the end of October and I'd been holding on to some birthday money from my parents and was unsure of what to spend it on. I'm too money-cautious for these kinds of decisions!

Well, I decided to go half practical and half less-practical but darn cool and still pretty useful.

The practical half was a sunbeam mattress pad heater. Holy amazing to be so warm and cozy. Dual controls so Jenny and I can set our own halves. It's awesome and highly recommended for any Northern latitude liveaboard.

The more fun half is that we finally got a nice brass Weems and Plath hygrometer, thermometer, barometer as seen here:

I think these things are awesome. They are really old school looking and all the fancy pretty yachts out here have them. We just could never justify purchasing one with all the rest of our boats needs. So, what better to spend birthday money on? I love it. We just need to get the matching clock for it now so they can hang side by side. That'll have to be another present for another holiday.

Speaking of boat needs, our freshwater pump is leaking before the intake, just after the in-line filter. This is sorrowful because we just filled our water tanks and now I have to waste my time by emptying them, taking the lines apart, drying the lines out, re-taping the threads and hose barbs and put it all back together again. Of course it is in a hard to reach place and it is no fun because it doesn't really make any improvement, it just fixes something that should be working fine. Oh well. So it goes. It wouldn't matter so much if it were just leaking into the bilge, but it is running down the board it is mounted on, pooling on our teak woodwork, and coming out of the settee just above the floorboards. Hence it makes a puddle under our dining table that is no fun to have your feet in. This will have to be fixed soon.

I need to shrink wrap, plumb, and finish the darned headliner!

Midterms first though....

home and on the mend

2008-11-10T18:44:00.003-05:00

Jenny here!

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am now back home after six days in the hospital. I'm so glad to be back home, and am feeling so much better now. Thank you all for your concerns.

It turns out I have viral meningitis which just needed to run its course. I definitely needed the be at the hospital, as I was constantly on an IV drip to keep me hydrated, and they had to make sure it wasn't bacterial meningitis which would have been a whole other story...

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know I'm on the mend and feeling a world better now. I decided to even take a picture since the last one wasn't entirely flattering :)

Gaia

2008-11-08T12:29:00.003-05:00

Our friend Mike had moved aboard a 35 foot Oday a year before we moved aboard. When we moved in he was one of the first people we met and we sailed with him that week. It was our first time ever on a sailboat. Since then, Mike met Alyssa and got engaged. He upgraded to a Pearson 424 (pictured below) and a few weeks ago they quit their jobs and went cruising. He states their destination as, "South."

They have began a cruising blog at:

http://lifeongaia.org/

I will add it to our links so it can always be found at the right of our page.

-Justin

Ups and Downs.

2008-11-08T12:20:00.003-05:00

Jenny is still in the hospital. She has some form of Viral Meningitis. She feels better for a couple hours, then feels worse again. There is some good news though, her temperature has been gone since last night. With just the headache and some weakness from not eating being all that is keeping her down, the hospital is debating on letting her go home. Essentially, whenever she feels up to leaving, she can go, with a pocket full of prescriptions. But for now, we know she can't go just yet. Perhaps this evening she will feel strong enough. If not, then tomorrow hopefully.

Thanks for all the concern and emails.

MGH

2008-11-05T22:00:00.004-05:00

We usually keep the blog restricted to boating matters only but in this case the circumstances are a little outstanding and I just wanted to post a picture.

Jenny is in the hospital and has been for 2 days now. She checked in tothe ER at Mt. Auburn Hospital 14 days ago for very bad flu like symptoms but was sent home with some meds. It seemed to work and she got better for a couple days (one of those days was Halloween when she was dressed as the pirate posted below). Then on this past Sunday night/ Monday morning her head started hurting extremely bad and she became sensitive to light and sound. Seems kinda migraine-ish, except that she had a fever of 102 which isn't normally migraine related. Tuesday morning it got so bad that I took her into Mass General Hospital. Her temp got to 104.5 during the day in the ER. They checked her into a real room and have been pumping various fluids and antibiotics into her. They did a spinal tap which is the only thing that has proved useful so far, as it turned up to show a virus in her spinal fluid. Other than that, she has seen umteen doctors and even some infectious disease specialists. As yet, they can't tell what it is and it won't go away. She is feeling a bit better at least because the headache has resided to a dull throb and her temp is staying down below 100 and sometimes even down to the normal 98.6 range. So she seems to be on the mend, but it is slow and the disease is persistant and confounding. MGH seems to be treating her well though, and we are happy she went there. Hopefully she will be home soon. Willie misses her, and it is tough on a dog being alone all day.

framingham

2008-11-03T11:09:00.003-05:00

The picture came out kind of fuzzy, but it should get the point across. I built the shrink wrap frame the other day. All built of wood, cost about 30 dollars total. The door is awesome-- it was about to be pitched in the dumpster by somebody and I took it before he could throw it. It is a solid wood door off of a house or apartment. Has 3 glass windows in it. I put a new stainless doorknob on it and built a frame around it out of 2x4's and it is good to go. I'll be happy to have a real door this year. Should be all wrapped up in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, the heater is still happily burning away on its first tank of propane!

I wish I could watch hockey right now, but I can't

2008-11-01T21:57:00.003-04:00

The dinghy, Olly (the one on top), has been placed on its winter rack. We'll pry pull it down again to help shrink wrap in a few weeks, but the motor is retired and the dinghy is now generally going to be out of the water. We took a last ride out into the harbor. It was fun, but a wee bit sad :(

In the meantime, Jenny is now a pirate:

Names

2008-10-27T10:02:00.004-04:00

We would like to re-name Madrigal at some point. When we got the Fitzcarraldo, there was no doubt that we wanted to name it as such. However, with Madrigal, we are having a bit more trouble deciding what to call her. Here is our list of choices so far:

Ultima Thule (a bizarre medieval term used for many purposes throughout history but always in reference to obscure lost worlds. In our case we would be using the meaning for roughly that of anywhere beyond the known charts or boundaries of the world. Trouble is that it is a bit hard to pronounce, let alone to understand it over a VHF radio)

Aguirre (Another reference to a Klaus Kinski character in another Werner Herzog movie, much like Fitzcarraldo was. Trouble with this one is that Aguirre was an awesome character, but he was a bit insane in kind of a bad way for a boat to be named after. Lots of murder and death on a raft are associated with him. Also not a VHF friendly name)

Goldsworthy (In honor of the excellent artists Andy Goldsworthy, who makes spectacular shapes out of natural materials and then lets his art fall apart as nature reclaims it. Neat concept, neat guy, ok name.)

Leif (Our boat is an Ericson yacht. It would just be amusing to have a Leif Ericson as our home. Trouble is that he was kind of a lame viking. He was a christian convert and spread joy and happiness. That's not very viking....)

Popol Vuh (The ancient Mayan religious text which was supposed to provide access to strange other worlds. Not VHF friendly at all and a little odd at best. Also, an excellent krautrock band which we have music from in our player there at the right.)

Echoes (Amazing Pink Floyd song, also listed at right. Kind of a popular bit though and might not be obscure enough for my weird tastes. I like it though.)

We like things a bit obscure and ethereal or spacey or bizarre or whatever you want to call it. We don't like the bad pun boat names that are found all too often. We're picky.

Cast a vote or make a suggestion. We could use some new ideas.

Also, here is a neat picture I took last night of Jenny by the fire. I made a new plexiglas companionway board so that we can still have natural light inside in the winter.

At the Heart of Winter

2008-10-25T10:19:00.008-04:00

Winter is here. We moved into our new slip this week. The dockmaster and assistant, Sebastian and Howie, came by the other day with the marina tender and hauled Willie and I into our new slip on A dock.

It is an awesome slip. We are right at the bottom of the gangway. A bit high traffic, but once the shrink wrap is on it won't matter. The advantage is for walking the dog. We can have him up to the grassy area in under 30 seconds. Love it. Plus it gets good sunlight-- not too many building shadows. That is crucial for winter.

Now for the good part of this post. I uploaded all the pics of the heater install.

This is an old picture of our main cabin looking forward. You can see the little cubby at the bottom right of the picture. Even when the cabin was finished and new there was never anything to cover this hole. It is just a storage cubby and a place to put your feet if you try to lay on the starboard settee. It is just too short of a space to use as a real berth, and it was kind of ugly as a cubby.

So, I took some liberties with it in order to install our Dickinson Propane heater. Here I have removed the trim and am getting ready to box it in.

This is the first piece of teak that had to be cut, and the most vital one. It is half inch thick and more than sufficient to hold the weight of the heater. You can see here how it expands the cubby by adding in the triangular area. Yay for more storage!

I posted this pic before, but this time it is a bit more in context. You can see how I finished out the triangle cubby. (I don't really like the word "cubby" so I don't know why I keep using it!) Anyhow, the lid lifts off and now there is a giant cavern behind there, inclusive of the old storage cube. :) The cushions are cut down to size, and we have to send the covers out to Jenny's mom who will sew them to fit the new cushion sizes. She's great like that.

Then there was a portion of the project which has no pictures. They wouldn't be fun anyway. I had to run propane hose under all the settees and cabinets and through the bilge and out back to the stern where the propane tanks will one day be mounted. For now they are just sitting on the helmsan's seat.

And now, for this weekend's headache project. Installing the thru-deck fitting for the flue. To be sure we are free of leaks and to avoid rot I bored out all the screw holes to an over-large size and filled them with epoxy. This way the screws are now screwed right into epoxy and even if the screw holes leak the water won't get to anything damage-able. It was during this process that we discovered we have foam core decks-- always thought they were balsa wood core. That's nice, I like the foam idea better. Warmer and less prone to rot.

Here is the flue installed from below:

Here is the entire flue pipe. It had to curve forward and towards the center in order to avoid the indoor handrail, the outdoor handrail, and the opening port all at once.

And here is where it comes out above deck. It is a double walled flue. It pulls air in the lower mushroom and exhausts out the upper mushroom. That is also what makes the propane system self contained. It pulls air and exhausts through the same double walled flue pipe.

One last thing before, we see the finished product. There seem to be a lot of safety police among our friends and family, so I wanted to show just how far the cushion really is from the heater. The instruction manual requires 2 inches, and we are 4 inches out, plus it is at the bottom where it never gets too terribly hot. :)

Tada! Victory and fire!

This is the flame on "low" setting:

And here it is at night on high, all cozy and snuggly looking:

Hooray for nice clean warm and simple heat. I'm happy it is done, but wow, that was a lot of work and a lot of money by the time all the little extras were purchased. Should be well worth it though.

Sarcasm and Poseidon

2008-10-19T21:07:00.007-04:00

It looks like the high temp here today was 46 degrees. So what better to do? We went sailing!

Our friend Wayne, who lives aboard a really sweet German 1950's steel hull sailboat, decided to come along with, so we dropped Willie off with some neighbors and shoved off for a couple hours. It was blowing about 20 kts and gusting up at 30 or so. FUN. Cold yes, but fun.

The best part was that while we were heeled with the rails just about in the water Wayne went forward to mess with the reefing lines. He was standing on the toe rail and messing about with the winches which were then above his head. He looks down at his feet, looks back at me behind the helm and jokingly yells, "Don't get my feet wet!" It was almost instantaneous that as he looked back toward the winches a huge wave crashed over the bow and completely drenched him from head to toe. Haha, it was great. Sarcasm and Poseidon do not get along.

On a less fun note, Wayne also managed to drop a winch handle into the water. Haha, he really is a good sailor-- not meaning to bash him, but it was a funny excursion.

Bottom line is: we got one more sail in. That will almost certainly be the last of the year.

as if...

2008-10-16T18:11:00.004-04:00

As if you all needed more pictures of Willie.

We went out sailing this past Sunday. It was a beautiful day with a light breeze and it was very relaxing just to go out and about he harbor and come back in. We only took this one pic or I'd put something more exciting up. Anyhow, they are beginning to move boats into the inner docks for the winter and it will be shrink wrap season soon so that might have been our last sail of the year :(

Perhaps we'll get one more chance this weekend!

Ludwig

2008-10-15T09:16:00.003-04:00

Well, it's that time again. Time for heat. Many of you will remember our posts about heat last fall. Unfortunately, the downside of having a shiny new sailboat is that we are once again on a boat that has no heat. So, we've had to purchase a new system. This time, we've opted for dickinson's propane system. It is a bulk mounted system with a double walled self venting flexible flue. It has a nice little window so that we have a cozy flame and it has a built in fan to push the heat around. Nice.

The trouble is that we have no good bulkhead to mount it on. Our solution was to shorten the starboard couch/berth. It was really too short to sleep on anyway and even Jenny had trouble trying to do so. So, we cut the cushions down to size and then I built a teak storage area on a 45 degree angle. The heater can mount on that and it will be nice and low for optimum heat. There is a good spot above it for the chimney to run through. Now we are just waiting for the actual heater to arrive. The propane tanks will be mounted safely and out of the way on the stern rail.

The cushions are going to be cut a bit shorter still. We are just waiting for the heater to show up so we can be sure of just how far away we feel comfortable with cutting them.

Also, there is a new member in the family. Our friends Mike and Alyssa are sailing south toward the bahamas or anywhere else they feel like going. Mike had a motorcycle and needed to get rid of it. I've always wanted one, so Jenny and he worked out a deal and she bought it for me for my birthday. yay!

Rat Bike Extraordinaire!

I'm thinking of naming the bike Ludwig. After Ludwig von Mises.

telephono?

2008-09-27T22:49:00.006-04:00

So, I've had a fair number of pictures sitting around on my phone. Often times, I just end up deleting them. This time, I figured I'd send them along and post them here for you all to see. Some are more worthwhile than others, but all are at least moderately fun.

This is Jenny at the helm on our trip back from Salem. It was blowing about 20kts with gusts to 30 or so. That is about the biggest wind we've been in so it was a little creepy for us, but all was fine and we had a really good time actually. Sadly, her eyes seem to be closed but we couldn't tell that til the picture was uploaded.

Jenny's parents were here for a bit and her dad decided to row her mom out into the harbor via the dinghy. While leaving on my way to work I spotted them under this bridge and snapped a quick pic. Can't see much but a white spot, but I like the picture anyhow.

Before the parade of lights started we discovered that Peter (the guy who's boat we were on) had a sombrero sitting around. Jenny modeled it for a photo.

This was just the other morning. I was walking Willie up on shore and it jumped out at me just how noticeable our bright yellow boat is. Can you find it?

On that same morning the fog laying across the city was just super thick so I snapped a picture of that. It always looks cool that way. I love fog.

Jenny got a hat to keep the sun off of her punkin little head while sailing. I got some sun glasses to keep the glare out of my eyes while sailing. We soon determined that Jenny should not wear both at the same time, and this picture is testament to that decision. :D

For those readers who aren't sailors, there is a way to sail called "wing and wing". This is when you are running directly with a light wind. This is exactly what we were doing on our way up to Salem a few weeks ago and it was the first time we had ever successfully done this maneuver. It is not the most efficient way to sail because the fact that you are moving with the wind takes away from the apparent wind, but it was exactly the direction we needed to go and it is darn fun to do. The picture shows the basic idea: foresail out to port and mainsail out to starboard (or vice verse) with the wind filling both.

that's all!

-Justin

Swimwear

2008-09-26T17:48:00.003-04:00

Willie outgrew his old lifevest and he also chewed one of the buckles off. It was his loss because now he has to wear this. It isn't exactly a completely heterosexual fashion, but it was on sale as an end of season deal, so he's stuck with it. And lets face it. He's adorable.

Parade of Lights

2008-09-21T15:08:00.002-04:00

A couple of our friends, Jeff and Kristi from aboard "as you wish" put on the first annual Boston Parade of lights a couple weeks ago. We went out in our friend Peter's Carver 36 "new beginning".

Here is a collection of pictures that somebody put together.

Hanna? Was that you?

2008-09-07T08:38:00.004-04:00

Hanna was a flop. Our neighbor clocked the highest winds at 27mph. Don't believe the weather channel. They are just shilling for ratings. It was a little windy, a little rainy and everyone here was way way over-prepared. Better that than the opposite.

In the meantime, we've had 3 straight weeks of family visitors. We went to the islands a couple times and took a trip to Salem. It was our first trip beyond the islands in Madrigal and it went splendidly. We'll have some pics and whatnot of the last 3 weeks soon.

Cheers to everyone and good luck with Ike. I have a feeling you all may not get as lucky as we did with Hanna.

pup

2008-08-14T08:51:00.001-04:00

peddocks cure

2008-08-11T08:55:00.002-04:00

Peddocks island has been pretty instrumental in our life aboard. It is a really nifty island with a really nifty cove and generally when we go out to moor or anchor for a night we do so there. Jenny uploaded a couple quick videos of some stuff there. No editing or anything so they are just some quick jerky videos with poor sound, but they are still kinda fun.

This first one is a video of us walking down what was apparently the old "main drag" so to speak of the turn of the century town which was once located on the island. After all the houses were built the government stepped in and claimed the island as a state park and all the houses became abandoned (thanks uncle sam). Anyhow, it makes for a really cool ghost town. There is also an abandoned WWII prison camp there. We took some vid of the prison, but it isn't uploaded yet. We'll get to that eventually.

This second video is just of me putting Willie in the water for the first time ever (aside from falling in at the marina). He looks pretty funny swimming.

-Justin

Floating Junk

2008-08-10T22:08:00.002-04:00

This is pretty amazing:

http://www.junkraft.blogspot.com/

Old & New

2008-08-06T20:49:00.004-04:00

I had intended on posting old vs. new pictures quite some time ago, but just never got around to it.

Now that the headliner is up and we feel as if we're on a new boat, I've taken the time to get some pictures together to show you what we're talking about.

Without further ado, here are the pictures. They seem to speak for themselves.

I had intended to post more pictures, but once again our internet isn't working correctly, so I'm going to play it safe and quit here. I think you get a fairly good idea of the improvements we've been making!

progress report (remember those from school? yuck)

2008-08-03T09:55:00.002-04:00

Things have been going quite well with fixing up our Madrigal. Jenny has taken quite a few pictures and videos, but the internet has been pretty sketchy lately, so we'll get those up but not just yet.

The headliner is finally in the main cabin! That is by far the most exciting thing. For those who remember the pictures of Madrigal from when we purchased her, we've been living under bare fiberglass decks for a while now. But we are all finished out in the main salon and it's a wonderful thing. It finally feels like we are living in a real boat and not inside of a project boat.

We have working Navigation lights! Now we don't have to rush home with motors blazing to try to beat sunset.

Our real battery charger has been installed and wired properly. No more crappy loud home depot battery charger with alligator clamps!

Our friend Arvind helped re-rig our foresail and it works much better.

blah blah, etc etc. Bottom line is that we've been busy and maddy is looking nicer by the day and become more comfortable to live in.

Pictures soon!

-Justin

Peddock's Island

2008-07-17T09:14:00.001-04:00

a view from afar

2008-07-11T09:05:00.004-04:00

Now here is a fun post. When my Father and Grandfather were here a few weeks back we were out sailing in the harbor when our friends Jeff and Kristi spotted us on their way out of the harbor. They live on a big ol Irwin and were motoring out to the outer harbor so they could sail free of the islands and harbor traffic, but they had so much fun they spent two days out there before coming back home haha. In the meantime they snapped some photos as they were passing us.

Thanks Jeff and Kristi! Also, their liveaboard blog can be found at the right side of the page titled "As You Wish" (their boat's name).

a poor neglected blog this is...

2008-07-07T21:27:00.004-04:00

Hehe, well, I guess I know some people who are much worse about updating regularly. I've been in northern New Hampshire for a couple weeks at an archaeology field school. That was awesome, but doesn't have much to do with boating/sailing.

In the meantime though, Jenny watched over Madrigal and over Willie. All three of them survived with flying colors.

The Fitz, on the other hand, I took across town to have hauled out on my last day before I went up north. Our friend Joanne helped with that since Jenny had to be at work that day. It is now dry docked at continental marine.

Here are some rather sad pictures for us, the end of the fitz as we knew it:

Those couple pics in the middle with the cityscape off the stern are by far the saddest.

Anyhow, I have happier things to post, but I'll pass on that for now. Jenny got a new video camera called a "flip". It takes an hour of digital video, pretty decent quality, and is only the size of a standard digital camera. It uploads very easily and is entirely USB based. So hopefully that will bring some fun video to our blog soon.

Cheers!
-Justin

a grand visit

2008-06-17T23:25:00.004-04:00

Well, lots and lots and lots of things have been happening. First and most important is that my grandfather finally was able to come out here for a visit from Michigan. He'd never been on a plane before and though he hasn't seen the ocean since he was a kid in the 1940's he's always been very fond of all things oceanic and nautical. He spent lots of time on the great lakes in his boating heyday and I grew up fishing with him on little inland lakes. Him finally making it out here and getting a turn at the helm of a real ocean-going sailboat is a landmark occasion.

Other news is all pretty large as well.

1. We've fully moved aboard Madrigal!
2. The Fitz is being hauled out and drydocked this Friday at 3:00
3. There is a couple who is highly interested in purchasing the Fitz to live aboard in Boston harbor: a good way to see the boat go. It was good to us and we'll miss it.
4. Excluding the head and the trim which will hold up the headliner when we get it installed, all the interior woodwork on Madrigal has now been refinished.
5. We did our first overnighter sailing trip to Peddocks Island with a group of about 6 other boats from our marina. Tons of fun, but it was kinda rainy and we forgot to take pictures. oops. All went off pretty flawlessly though.

-Justin

tip top

2008-06-04T00:28:00.005-04:00

It's late at night, so I'll be short with the words.

I went up the mast for the first time and placed a windvane on top to help us amateur sailors. Afterwards we cooked some flounder that a fellow liveaboard caught. Tasty.

Unfinished Business

2008-05-27T10:52:00.003-04:00

Both Justin and I had 5 days off together, so we spent nearly all of that time working on Madrigal. We've gotten quite far in the sanding/refinishing of the main cabin...we're quite happy thus far.

Anyway, I took some pictures of it before we put the 3 coats of varnish on, so I figured I'd post those for now. I haven't taken any pictures of it since it's been varnished, but I'm sure in the next couple of days those will be up here too.

More soon!

-Jenny

vikingligr veldi

2008-05-20T20:36:00.002-04:00

Those who know me, know that I listen to lots of so-called "viking metal" (hence the Isengard song on our playlist at right). Thus, the Ericson yachts logo on our new boat is only all too fitting for me to liveaboard :)

I love it.

-Justin

Dinghy Attack!

2008-05-18T15:15:00.003-04:00

Justin took this pic of me as we were coming back from Southie yesterday. Notice the intense concentration going on here, even though there were no boats to be seen around us, aside from the dinghy we were towing...

-Jenny

a slight change of plans, for the better...

2008-05-18T13:12:00.002-04:00

We've been two-boat owners for about a month now, but until now, this hasn't been quite so apparent. Madrigal was across town, where we couldn't see it, work on it, improve it.

We made the decision to have both boats at the marina for the month (which, for the record, is May 17th - June 16th...the 31 days we paid for).

Yesterday morning, we picked up the dinghy and Madrigal, and brought everything back here. We were able to park Madrigal directly next to the Fitzcarraldo, so we are able to go back and forth between the two boats very easily and readily, and have been doing so for about 24 hours now, since we brought her back.

Already we've made great improvements since we've had her here, and it looks as though it is going to be a very productive month.

I've been taking pictures along the way, so we will soon have a post with some new pictures. I have to admit, we've got Madrigal torn up inside because we're sanding down all the wood to refinish it, so it isn't looking to pretty, but the end result should be well worth it.

Anyway, back to sanding!

-Jenny

education

2008-05-12T14:26:00.003-04:00

Only 3 more days of school left...

I feel like I'm wading neck deep in homework so I keep singing Dory's song from the Nemo cartoon.

"Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming..."

It's getting me through- slowly.

-Justin (the fish) Halteman

delays and excuses

2008-05-06T08:46:00.003-04:00

I know we haven't updated for a while, but I just want to assure you that this blog isn't ending at all. The same delay in updates happened around this time last year because I'm finishing up all of my final papers plus trying to get the boat ready for summer (two boats this time). So, things are a tad hectic lately.

Madrigal is officially out on a mooring and we are just waiting for the Fitz to sell, though we admittedly haven't tried very hard. I'm trying to wait the 2 more weeks til I'm done with school so that I can get Fitzy all cleaned up and shiny to try to sell. So the real effort will begin then.

Summer visitors and trips are already beginning to take form. I'm scheduled (and maybe Jenny depending on her work) to make a sail trip up to Acadia Maine on my friend Mike's Pearson 42 on memorial weekend. That's a 36 hour sail from here, so that will be a great learning experience for our meager sailing skills.

The next weekend we have a Michigan friend visiting and then my grandfather might hopefully finally get here the next weekend. I really hope my grandfather can get out here. He's always loved the ocean and boats, but has never really been to the ocean haha. So he's been chomping at the bit to get here. We'll see.

More updates as summer proceeds! Pictures and fun stuff hopefully soon.

-Justin

Madrigal

2008-04-18T21:30:00.005-04:00

"The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry....."

So it is with the best laid plans of Justin and Jenny-- but in a good way. Remember that post a few weeks ago about the world class motorsailer we'd love to get after we live on the Fitz for a couple years. Scratch that.

Well, don't scratch it entirely, we'd still love to get that boat and sail the world and we are still pursuing Jigsaw Indexing with that in mind; however, we've happened ourselves into a new situation altogether:

We bought a new boat!

Well, new to us.

It is an Ericson 35 mkII from 1978. We got such a deal we couldn't pass it up. Somebody in our marina got tired of owning two boats and direly needed to get rid of it. We happily took up the slack and are now sailboat owners. The exterior is beautifully reworked/glassed painted etc. The working parts are great (new plumbing, electric, engine not rebuilt but gone over with a fine tooth comb updated and rewired. Thruhulls replaced. Anyway all the good hard stuff has been done. The interior needs woodwork to be finished and a headliner put in. Floors could use a good refinish. But thats all cosmetics, and we can handle it. I'd post more pics but the internet is being horrendous. Hopefully soon.

The Fitz is for sale. We will miss that boat dearly and parting will be terribly sad, but we need sails to feel a bit more free. It was a wonderful year aboard the Fitzcarraldo.

A surprising number of people actually frequent this site, so thefitzcarraldo.blogspot.com will remain as is, we will just update according to our new boat "madrigal". Madrigal is the name that comes with this boat and it is a good enough name to not warrant all the hullabaloo it takes to change a name.

Despite this extraordinary news, we will still be living on the Fitz for some time. We have a free mooring that we can leave Madrigal on and shall be doing so while we try to sell the Fitz. This will give us some good time to work on Madrigal while not living aboard. Easier that way.

Anyhow, if you have 10,000 dollars or so and would like a lovely powerboat that needs a bit of electrical updating please let us know! We need to get back down to one boat ASAP. :)

rock on.

-Justin

Another post that starts with a toilet picture.

2008-03-28T20:16:00.005-04:00

But the good thing about this toilet picture is that it is the final installed version of our new Airhead! Woo hoo!
Ok. No more toilets.

On to Jenny's new hammock: Jenny's turn to type:
ohmygoodness I have been waiting for this for soooooooooo long!!! I love it. Boston Organics loves my food hammock.

In the meantime, we bought a sheet of formica, meant to cover the table. Justin and I spent our sweet little time making sure we cut the formica out nice and perfectly. We had to make a line in it then break the formica on the line. The cut went really well, but as soon as we went to break it, everything went horrendously. The corners broke off and everything self destructed. Luckily, we were not only able to salvage the piece to re-cover the fridge, but Justin was able to save what pieces were leftover to cover the table.

This is the only picture we have of the table (corner), finished. Pretty!

Justin speaking again: My sister came to visit! Can you tell she's my sis? Just a bit.

Both of us grew up on Calvin and Hobbes as pictured here:

And more recently, as pictured here on my sister's leg. Perhaps she is more of a hardy pirate than I am because I still haven't gotten a tattoo despite my great want of one.... I think I'm inspired though and mine is coming soon... (anchors away!)

While my sis (Angie) was here we also went to a cool bar in Cambridge called "River Gods". They have this sweet-o river goddess thingy made of sticks and brambles hanging from the ceiling.

We went to Marblehead to our friend Nicola's house for Easter. There was a nifty old wood boat being worked on down the street.

More pictures from Easter in Marblehead can be found at Noah's picasa web album.
Check them out...he took some great pictures.

And to wrap things up, just some fun pics of each of us while we were playing cards after the River Gods evening. :)

Thanks for visiting Angie!

-Justin and Jenny

Jigsaw Indexing

2008-03-24T20:51:00.004-04:00

Living aboard a boat is a quirky thing. It is not for everyone, but for some of us it is everything. For those who live this life it seems that different people enjoy the concept of "living aboard" in different ways.

On one end of the spectrum there are people who live in offshore sailboats and try their absolute hardest never to touch foot on dry land. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who live in pontoon style houseboats with no form of locomotion and simply enjoy living on the water and in the marina but otherwise live a fairly normal life.

We have, for the most part, lived somewhere in the middle but closer to the sedentary pontoon version. Our boat is not made for offshore, we have real jobs to attend, and frankly we really like our life of heading to sea whenever we can--usually on the weekends in the summer.

One has to wonder though: what would it be like to sail away for a six month journey?
In this boat, we will never know. Thus, we have already been extensively internet shopping for what may be next in our purchasing crosshairs. Fisher 37's and Westsail 42's both look rather jazzy. As do the Formosa 51's and 47's. I could ramble quite a few sailboat types (and especially pilothouse motorsailors) that I've come to enjoy gawking at, but it won't do me a lick of good until we have a bit more of an extended plan.

I present to you: www.jigsawindexing.com

This is our new baby (sorry Willie, you are no longer an only child). As of this week we are kicking off our new company Jigsaw Indexing. As part of her master's degree Jenny was trained in how to create the surprisingly complex and convoluted thing at the end of a book called an "index". We've been spending the last couple months making some business purchases and getting things set up. We are now ready to index.

How exactly does this get back to living aboard?

Fishers, Westsails, Formosas, and others are very pricey and we need to save our pennies. Jigsaw may help bring in some of those pennies. More importantly these are boats which can live at sea for extended times--even if it is just living on a mooring up the coast a bit in Salem :) We can continue our full time jobs, index as a part time business, and save those pennies til we can afford one of the aforementioned expensive watercraft. Upon purchase, we can move to a mooring (Salem or otherwise) and save a TON of money that we currently pour into paying Constitution Marina for an in-city dock slip. Thus, we can perhaps afford our new payments, and if the option presents itself in a couple years we can take leave of our land based jobs and move on to indexing full time. Then we can have the freedom to move about the seven seas at our free will--pushing us further to the other end of the spectrum I spoke of earlier.

Also, I can continue to pursue archaeology. Here in New England the contract archaeology companies need lots more help in the summers (when the ground is dig-able). In the winters we can sail south (or north or east or west I suppose) and I can put my work back into indexing again for the archaeological off-season.

Will we like that lifestyle and is it possible? I dunno, we weren't sure of our current one until we tried to make it happen. Now, we've made it here and we love it. Lots.

Moral of the story is, if you or anyone you know is publishing non-fiction books, writing them, or otherwise involved with the production thereof please contact us. justin@jigsawindexing.com should do the trick :)

(right now, we're really leaning toward the fisher 37's aftcabin version - here is some guy's site full of pics of them)

:)
Justin

Minor improvements.

2008-03-16T18:40:00.004-04:00

Our first haul out is coming sometime in the next two months. We'll be getting bottom paint, new zincs, new thru-hull fittings, our stuffing boxes re-stuffed, new props, and some trim-tab work all done. It will be dang pricey. In the meantime, we've had to stick with little and inexpensive fixes.

Got a cheap piece of formica from the discount bin at home depot. It is solid black with dot imprint pattern, kinda nice actually. We used it to refinish the dinette table (which was the same ol' junk that was on the counter before the tile job) and we also resurfaced the refrigerator (which was the original 1978 yellow plastic painted over 65 times and all scratched up). So those cheap improvements have done wonders to big ugly areas of our boat.

We bought a fruit and bread hammock today so that we can finally stop stowing it all in our microwave haha. What a pain that was to empty the micro every time you want to use it.

And also, our new Airhead toilet-which was backordred- finally arrived a few weeks ago. So far, it works awesome! We've been using it regular and no problems as yet.

I'll get pics of all this stuff eventually. Too busy lately though.

Of what is and what will be....

2008-02-27T21:38:00.002-05:00

Our intent with the blog has always been to keep it real simple. Easily navigable. Pictures, text, and sorted by date. Nice and plain.

That is still the plan; however, we have added a couple nice things and plan to add one or two more.

Notably, we put up a music player which is now at the bottom of the column on the right. This plays a combination of two types of music which seem to represent the purest essence of living aboard--to us anyhow. Type one- fun, drinking, pirate party, good times songs. Type two- transcendental, relaxing, sometimes other-worldy, relaxation songs... better put, songs to fit the landscape (or lack there0f) on the ocean. You have to click play, or click on a song title to make it work. If you start with the first song the playlist flows pretty smoothly.

Next, Jenny has been adding "labels". (Yes, she really is a librarian at heart). If you click the labels at the bottom of the posts it will take you to all posts that talk of that label.

That, is what is already done.

Sometime soon I hope to add a link in the right which is all about our boat, "The Fitzcarraldo". I've noticed, when trying to show inquiring people, what our boat looks like that it is often hard to find good pics of it without having to search back through all the old months of posts. I hope to remedy this with one tell-all page of stats and pictures.

Anyhow... Just keeping you informed.

-Justin

Chews Wisely.

2008-02-25T12:50:00.005-05:00

Jenny took this picture of Willie and it turned out so neat that we decided to post it (and a few others for the heck of it).

As winter meanders on Willie remains the center of attention here aboard the Fitz. We are rather enjoying his company. So far he is turning out to be a splendid dog. Not too big (yet). He is darn near potty trained now. He "chews wisely" and has yet to chew up anything which is not one of his own toys. All is well.

In the meantime, just felt like posting a few pics of the marina so all of the dirt dwellers can see what life aboard is like :)

our finger pier and wrap door:

Our neighbor's dinghy:

B-dock viewed from the harborwalk path:

Constitution Marina from the harborwalk:
And of course, Jenny with Willie:

and us with Willie:

Also, he is taking to the cold much better now. Doesn't mind being out for walks as long as it isn't frigid out. Still unsure of the snow though. He'd just assume avoid it for now.

that's all for now. Pizza Time!

-Justin

health and rain and other such things

2008-02-17T20:01:00.002-05:00

The dog, Willie, has only been here for 10 days now and he is already growing like a weed. Still doesn't look like he will get *too* big. But just big enough for him to seem like a real dog. If you know what I mean. Seems to be fairly smart--already learning some things. Others are taking a bit. Only chews on his toys, which is great.

In other news, Jenny signed us up for www.bostonorganics.com. They bring us great organic fruits and veggies and drop them off right on our boat. Makes shopping wonderfully easy.

To augment the organic foods we also joined a gym. Holy healthy eh!

Also new to report is that we have a new woodstove. Though I have no pics of it yet. The old one only functioned ok. It had a lot of poor features, some of which seemed dangerous. One of our liveaboard friends still had a stove that he used to use about 5 years ago before he converted to diesel. He let us borrow it to try instead of ours. It is awesome. Old cast iron heavy looking thing. It warms the boat much better and seems safer. We will be striking a deal with him soon which will allow this one to become ours.

thats all for now!
-Justin

Willie

2008-02-10T19:29:00.001-05:00

Well, after approximately two or so years of egging each other on to get a dog, Justin and I decided to wait no longer. We are the proud new parents of a 3 month old pup, Willie.

He seems to be a chihuahua/beagle/terrier mix, so we don't think he'll get enormous (he's 7 lbs. currently...we expect that he'll maybe get to be around 20 lbs. or so).

Anyway, onto pictures!!
I'm also going to attempt some video as well.

counter fits

2008-01-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

For those who might not remember, we purchased some galley counter tiles a few months back. They have since then resided in their box stuffed underneath our futon. This is, of course, valuable boat storage that could be put to far better use. Given my week off of school for the between the semester break I decided to remedy this problem.

Here is the galley before we purchased the boat.

And here it is after we purchased. We removed the rope looking upright and installed some spice racks there in the background. Trouble being the fake counter top linoleum kinda junk was old and peeling.

A few weeks ago we put some nice stained slider doors in the background cupboards. You can see those here as I began to lay tiles a few days ago.

more work.

Today was grouting day, of which there are no photos since Jenny was at work and not here to take pics of me.

and finally... the finished product!

We are very very happy with the way it looks. Still can't get it wet for a few days til we let it get good and dried before sealing it. Also, notice the new faucet that I installed. You can't tell much from the previous pictures what the old one looked like, but needless to say, the new one is much...newer.

Happiness ensues though.

:)

-Justin

update:
We almost forgot to post some close-ups, so you could actually see what the tiles/grout looks like. We are impressed.

Fun!

-Jenny

Grass skirts, sombreros, hot tubs, and free beer.

2008-01-26T12:30:00.000-05:00

Sounds like a marina party!

Yes, this is how we entertain ourselves here during the cold months. Our downtown Boston marina may be expensive, but they also make up for the price by throwing big parties with free booze.

On that note I present to you, our neighbor, Jeff:
Hehe, well, we certainly can't single out Jeff as the only culprit for wearing a grass skirt. I think everyone at the party had the skirts on at some point or another.

Arvind was probably the most notorious skirt wearing, sombrero toting culprit of the night. He was having tons of fun. So much fun, that I couldn't seem to get a shot of him from the front, but here he has pulled Joanne into the dance circle:

One of the neat things at our marina is the pool in the winter. They put a big tent over it, sorta like a shrink wrapped pool cover (us winter boaters will shrink wrap just about anything). The neat part though is that they heat the entire pool like a hot tub. It was just about 100 degree water last night and the amount of steam it generates under the tent is astounding. This can be attested to by this pic of Mark re-filling his beer from the keg.

It is really neat to swim in. When you are in the middle of the pool you can't even see the edges. This, of course, was cause for many jokes about needing radar and looking for bouys. :)

Back inside the boathouse Walter was crowned with a sombrero.

I can't very well put lots of silly pictures of everyone else without admitting that I too took part in the reindeer games:
All in all, it was a lot of fun. These marina parties are by far the best way to meet all the fellow liveaboards. All the people pictured above live here, as well as most everyone who was at the party last night. It is a good community to live in.

-Justin

[edit 1/27/08] Our friend Ahmet took many more photos and put them all up here:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y125/LostCaptn/2008/CMPoolParty/

managed a quick pic of the swans.

2008-01-12T00:21:00.000-05:00

This isn't from the night they woke us, but saw them by my friend's boat during the day as well.

Just a quick cellphone pic, but better than nothing.

Very pretty birds.

It is strange that they are wild. Feels like we live in an English garden or something.

title

2008-01-09T00:23:00.000-05:00

I know there have been a lack of posts.

It is the end of my semester and final papers are killing me.

The Ron Paul for president campaign is running strong and taking up most of my spare time.

I tore the old head system out in the meantime and our new one is on backorder (lots of walking to the boathouse in the meantime)

I've also been cutting a good amount of wood into little bitty pieces for our woodstove. In the meantime though I managed to run a handsaw across my left pointer finger and receive 4 stitches as reward. That was awesome! hehe. Seriously. I rarely get stitches. It was an amusing day.

All the snow has melted in our global warming 60 degree mid January days, but hopefully we can have some more awesome snowy pics soon.

Oh, I almost forgot. A couple of absolutely HUGE swans came to visit us the other day while we were trying to get to sleep. Heard some loud animal squaks while laying in bed and upon running outside found a few awesome and gigantic beautiful swans pecking around the sides of our boat. That was neato.

More soon hopefully. :)

cheers.
-Justin

Happy Holidays 07

2007-12-29T00:37:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to say Happy Holidays to any who might read our blog.

We flew home to Michigan. I'm back already because of work and Jenny will be returning tomorrow. Susan, whom we purchased the Fitz from, watch our kitty cat for the week.

It was nice to be away for a bit, but it is nice to be back floating again!

Earlier today I ripped out most of the entire old head system. Despite being dirty work, it was kinda fun. Our airhead is backordered... sadly we are making many trips to the boathouse in the meantime. ah well... so it goes.

-Justin

Old Man Winter

2007-12-15T21:57:00.001-05:00

The first real snow finally fell last week! It was just barely a dusting, but at least it was snow.

Luckily, we had put the shrinkwrap up already and, as promised, here are some shrinkwrap pics. These first two are neato and they are of me with the blowtorch trying to tighten up the wrap the first evening after we had it on the boat.

A few pics of the finished product.

This one is just the smokestack for our little fireplace.

and then the full bologna.

It is a good thing we got the wrap up and tightened well because this past Thursday it snowed like all mad. It was awesome!

It was snowing so much and so fast that the snow landing in the very still marina waters was just turning to ice/slush and it looked pretty neat.

Not just neat, but very very pretty sometimes too.

In the meantime, some big Canadian destroyer came to visit. This was me trying to claim it as my own. They frown on that.

As a side note, our composting head is backordered 10 weeks :( Much to our dismay we will be improvising (and doing lots and lots of walking to the boathouse in the meantime). Ah well.

-Justin

new stuff! compost and tender

2007-12-08T11:09:00.000-05:00

Hooray for new stuff!

My parents (Justin) chipped in some xmas money toward purchasing us a dinghy. As some of you may know, we like to spend time near the islands in the summer, but with no dinghy we can't get ashore. We just sit there a ways out and soak in the view. That is lovely, but we'd love the ability to go ashore. Hence we have pooled in with our parents and purchased a new Watertender 9.4

We haven't taken any photos ourselves yet, so those are all stock pictures. It is sad that it isn't quite dinghy weather out here right now, so the new boat is just floating around in the snow, hehe, but oh well, it will be FUN come spring. A new motor for it is next on the list.

In the meantime, old boats (aka, the Fitzcarraldo) have old parts. Sadly, the head (toilet) is one of them. Old things like to break down. Our current head system is an old VacuFlush system that no longer holds a vacuum seal. A lot of the fittings leak (gross and illegal) and its wiring has gone bad and causes it to draw extra current all the time (dangerous and battery draining). This has been on our list of things to fix ASAP. Well, we finally can't take it anymore. We ordered the toilet we have long been excited about (yeah, you get excited about weird things living on a boat). Anyhow, it is the "airhead" composting toilet system:

Again, these are all pictures from online that I have stolen for posting. Ours is in the mail and will be here in 7-10 days.

(warning, post gets a little gross from here on out) :)

It is an interesting system. Some people seem to absolutely LOVE it and some just hate it. Most heads have a holding tank in the bilge and some form of pump system that flushes everything down and keeps it in a big sewage slop til you can get pumped out. They tend to use chemicals to keep the smell down and water to assist the flushing process.

The airhead, is altogether different. It is supposed to be the "environmentally friendly" alternative toilet. It has two tanks built right into it which separate liquids from solids and then the solids get composted with peat moss via a mixing handle. The liquids you can dump overboard out at sea where it is legal and/or just dump into the real toilet at the boathouse. The solids simply get turned into dirt via the natural composting process. A vent hose with a small fan keeps the smell blowing to the outside of the boat in the meantime.

Supposedly, it is very odorless (it can't be worse than our current system--just ask any friends who have stayed over... our boat definitely has a certain funk to it--to be polite to ourselves). It uses no water and no chemicals. It is going to be way easy to install since I don't have to do any plumbing and very little electrical work.

In the meantime, our old system was installed overtop of an even older system! Yes, we have 2 holding tanks, two vacuum pumps and twice as much hose and junk running around our bilge as we need. It will be so NICE to get rid of all that extraneous junk. The old systems de-install will take far longer than the new system install.

All told, we are incredibly happy about this week's two new acquisitions. They will make living on a boat into a much better, smoother, and less stinky experience.

...and I can't wait to go fishing with the new dinghy--I can finally fish the rocky areas!

interim post

2007-12-02T01:58:00.000-05:00

I'll try to have a real post up soon. Life has been BUSY. My final papers are all beginning and I'm running short of free time. So just to keep you updated, we are completely shrink wrapped (ok, well it needs to be tightened up a bit more, but we're pretty well there). We built a shrink wrap frame for our friend Susan (the woman whom we purchased the Fitz from). We've discovered "Cowboy Brand" hardwood lump charcoal as the best and longest burning fuel for our fire heater. It was 23 outside earlier today with 40 mph wind gusts and it was 72 in the boat with only the fire and some fans going. I'm sure the sun on the shrink wrap helped that, but it is still darn nice.

So really we've been busy with lots of this fun stuff.

Our engines are still not winterized, which is only slightly concerning because as long as we keep a heater in the engine compartment (which we are doing) they should be fine, but I need to get on that one soon.... just in case the power goes out.

-Justin

sailors, waifs and strays

2007-11-24T17:46:00.000-05:00

A fellow marina member, Nicola, was kind enough to invite us to visit her house in Marblehead for her annual "sailors, waifs and strays" Thanksgiving dinner.

Jim, another liveaboard, was also going so we were lucky enough to get a ride from him.

We arrived in Marblehead around 3pm, and took a walk around for about an hour. It is a gorgeous place. We would have walked longer, but smells of Thanksgiving meals were lingering in the air, so we went back to Nicola's and had a wonderful meal.

This is the only picture I got of Nicola, the fantastic host. I think she was making faces with one of the children.

Well, that's all for now!

-Jenny

heat!

2007-11-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

Pellets burn very, very fast. Because of this, we decided to try a recommendation from a marina friend to try coal in our solid fuel stove. After 48 hours (about 30 of these spent in front of the fire, trying new tactics) we seem to have found a happy medium with the pellets and coal burning. The coal was hard to start and burns slow, but it also dies easily and randomly, and the combination seems like quite a brilliant discovery on our part.

In the meantime, we've had a lot of boat projects.

I finally finished our curtains. The back windows are enormous, and covering them for the winter might actually help us keep the heat in. It is a nice change, because previous to this, we didn't have 100% privacy. The curtains I had hung in the back were see through, and now that we're on a more trafficked dock, we are happy to be able to close ourselves in.

We've been staying warm another way....FOOD. The stove gets everything nice and warm in here, and we're all (Justin, Gollum and I) working on getting an extra layer of fat to keep us warm.

We don't fancy the idea of sinking, as that would NOT be a warm experience. Diver Dan is the man to call to change our zincs, which keep our boat rust-free and happy. It was about 45 degrees outside all day, and the water temperature seems to be about 48 degrees. This was right before he jumped in to change the zincs. We could hear his bubbles while he was under, and this was possibly the most amazing sound I've ever heard in my life.

Gollum isn't sure what to think of the cold weather, but she loves Aunt Pat's blanket and keeps wrapping herself up in it.

Ahh, the flames.

We have been taking insane amounts of trips to Home Depot in friends cars lately to purchase this and that. Today, we spent our time and money on a few stove related projects. Here, you can see the new aluminum sheets that we put down on the floor to save our carpeting. We've already dropped a couple of hot pellets and made a few small burn holes, so the sheets should prevent that and keep us a bit safer. You can also see the new cement board/firewall backing which will keep the bulkhead cooler.

I also made the screen that is sitting on the port side of the picture (haha). I noticed the amount of heat we could feel when we had the door of the heater open, but didn't want sparks to fly out. The screen seems to be working great so far. I doubled it up so that it gave the sparks less of a chance to fly out.

This, in essence, is all sources of heat on the boat. You can see the wood/pellet/coal stove, the coals, the pellets, and the space heater.

Sometimes I have to get a bit closer to feel the full effects of the fire. You can see the new damper that we installed in this picture.

Hot, hot heat.

The screen in use.

We currently have no indoor thermometer, so I have no idea what the temperature is, but I can say that we're keeping it much warmer in here than the outdoor temp. We have a few fans running (the built in fan, a fan from my parents, and a space heater fan...without the heat) and the coals/pellets are keeping us nice and toasty!!

-Jenny

flue the coop

2007-11-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Yes. It is finally here.

As the above picture shows, we have a bulkhead in our main salon with a full length mirror on it. This is pretty much right as in the center of the room/boat as one can get, so I hung the heater on some crossbars on brackets to either side of the mirror. I think that tomorrow I am going to get an extra piece of steel to go between the heater and the wood hanging brackets I made. These pics are just of the quick-fix setup I have so that we can test the thing out.

The cat seemed impressed during the install phase

This picture is of me lighting it for the first time. Unfortunately all did not go splendidly well. As it turns out the flue (aka: chimney stack) is way too tall and straight for such a little woodstove. In other words our boat is too tall for it. What it caused was a gigantic roaring fire with massive amounts of suction pulling the flame about 2 feet up into the chimney. There are no pictures of this incident because we were too busy freaking out and trying to put the huge fire out. Haha, silly boaters in their floating tinder box. Well, luckily it seems to be an issue I can fix pretty easily. We just have to go to a woodstove store tomorrow and buy a flue damper so that we can close down the updraft a bit and keep the fire from taking in so much air. I certainly hope that this does the trick. We'll be awfully bummed if it doesn't. If not though, there are a couple tricks I have up my sleeve to make it calm down a bit. Lesson learned: less air flow = slower burning, more manageable fire that can get nice and toasty; more air flow = giant raging mad fire that burns all our pellets away instantly and never gives much real heat.

In the meantime though (it was Sunday so woodstove shops were all closed) we were able to make some little bitty fires in it just to play with it. It would burn up all the wood in a matter of minutes, but still fun to play with while we can't do much else.

In the meantime though, we found this amazing thing called an ecofan. Basically it is a fan that is entirely metal, not electric or anything, but runs off of the heat generated from a woodstove. You set it on your stove and the heat causes the two different metals in the fan to create an electric current and thus powering itself. We've found great reviews on them and will likely be purchasing one to help push our stove heat around the boat. Of course, we have to get the stove working properly first.

So overall, we are happy with the stove, just needing to do some chimney work to get it tweaked a bit better first.

Oh, and just in case you wanted one, here is a picture of our pumpkin from Halloween :)

We'll update more as we get along in the heater proper-install phase, hehe. Also I'll try to get some pics of the shrinkwrap frame etc up. Going to try to shrink it up next weekend or perhaps the one after. Depends when we can borrow a heat gun and some labor help.

-Justin

wood and screws

2007-11-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

The shrink wrap frame is built! photos coming soon. Heater is supposed to arrive tonight!

November kicks in

2007-11-05T22:27:00.000-05:00

So the heater STILL isn't in. It is killing us. I have all the chimney stacks for it just waiting here. Lets just hope they fit properly when it is install time. Electric heat is sufficing in the meantime.

Hurricane Noel came through out at the Cape on Saturday and it was supposed to create a "major nor'easter" here. All it did was drizzle all day. What a disappointment. We were all hoping for some exciting rough weather. Oh well, careful what you wish for I suppose.

Halloween came and went in the meantime. We carved up a little bitty pumpkin. Perhaps one of us will get the picture up here later.

Other than that, not much has been going on.

Lots of rum.... and homework, somehow.

a chill in the air

2007-10-29T16:37:00.000-04:00

woo, got down to 35 deg F last night.... our first taste of chill on the boat. It was kinda nice though. Seems like winter is taking so long to set in that I was happy for some sorta cold weather. Our pellet heater has been delayed for anyone wondering how that is going. The new word is that it will be here tomorrow! I hope so. We are freakin geeked for that thing, haha!

recap of the months previous

2007-10-21T16:28:00.000-04:00

After a wonderful summer on E dock, we moved in toward shore on B dock. It was a very bittersweet moment, but here we are, next to our winter neighbors. It feels good to have a new view of the city, but very sad because this marks the last time we'll take the boat out for the season (probably, anyway).

In light of the move, I wanted to post a review of the season in pictures, beginning with the winter boat show.

Justin carving the sign for the name of the boat. This was when we were still living on land.

We took quite a few trips out to the marina where the boat was docked, not knowing that this same marina is where we would be staying ourselves.

This was one of our first encounters with the lovely pug, Jack.

This is how the boat looked when we bought it....shrink wrapped with a plywood door.

We spent one of the last evenings of April on the boat...it was our first night aboard! That night, we cut holes in the top of the shrink wrap so we could stay up for awhile to see the amazing view of the city. In the morning, we woke up bright and early and took the rest of the shrink wrapping off, so we could start moving our things in.

A week or so later, our boat moved to its new slip - out on the end of E. The cormorants were spending a lot of time on the docks. I imagine the water was cold and they were warming up.

Sometimes, we got bored...

But that was before we started taking the boat out to the islands, Salem, up the river, etc.

And then we got engaged...(well, that night we did...)

Jack and Jess came over for taco night...mmm...tacos.

We went to Spectacle Island with my parents.

Somewhere along the way, the cat learned how to take pictures of herself...

Now, we are on B dock and getting used to having so many neighbors. The great thing is that a bunch of our neighbors have liveaboard dogs. Meet Salty:

The view from our new slip.

Now we just have to hope we can stay warm and dry this winter. Wish us luck!

-Jenny

Winter Prep part 1

2007-10-19T14:49:00.000-04:00

Not a lot has been happening here. My classes seem to be attempting to suck all the fun out of life.

The marina has began hauling out all the little fishing boats and pulling all of us bigger liveaboard types in toward the docks closest to the boathouse. Winter prep is in its beginning stages. It is kinda fun. I think we will both enjoy the winter aboard.

We will be at dock B21, not that many people reading this have a clue where that is, but just so you all know :)

envy

2007-10-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

I often think that we have hashed out a perfect life that puts us on top of the world. We both love living on the Fitzcarraldo. Every once in a while though, I'm reminded of ways to dream of even more adventure and wonder.

A couple from our marina, Dmitri and Natalia, set sail for the Virgin Islands today. I happened to be around when they left and snapped this picture:
They will be back in the spring, but what an awesome 6 months they are about to have. Even they aren't sure where they are actually going. Just going.

-Justin

Slow and steady, that's the way.

2007-10-13T18:17:00.000-04:00

I'm glad we have so many small projects going on at once. We really can't afford the large projects (electrics, engine rebuilds, haul out---you know, the important ones). But in the meantime we have enough little projects to keep more than busy. Jenny hadn't worked on the curtains in a few weeks due to all the other stuff going on in life, so it was nice for her to be able to get a few new ones sewn up today.

post

2007-10-10T23:10:00.000-04:00

Lack of posts for about a week. Had a death in my family so we had to fly back to Michigan. Bummer....

In the meantime, the tiles showed up and they look sweet. I can't wait to install them. I'm behind on homework though from our out-of-town time. Could be a while before I/we get to install them.

Still waiting on the pellet heater to arrive. But we bought pellets! (yes, we're that excited). Hopefully soon. It is getting chilly here (and they begin metering electricity in November) so I'll definitely get that installed right away. If anyone knows a cheap website to order 3" stainless pellet vent pipe please let me know, hehe.

-Justin

boat improvements

2007-10-01T22:25:00.001-04:00

After a busy summer of having an insane amount of company (for a couple of months, we had someone visiting every weekend), Justin has gotten the itch to work on boat projects. I am feeling bad because my curtain project has come to a halt, but I hope to get going with it again this week and have them done soon.

When we first moved onto the boat, there were a couple pieces of wallpaper on the sides of the boat. I immediately tore them down, but that's as far as the project got. The wood underneath the paper was gross and flaky. Tonight, when I got home from work, Justin had sanded and restained this piece of wood, and it looks incredibly better.

Before:

After:

Also, we are attempting to get rid of the laminate look with the galley counter, the table, and everything else we can. Justin came up with the brilliant idea of turning the laminated boards (behind the watermelon as seen in the photo below)...

And sanding/staining the other side. They are currently drying, and look amazing. I'll update a photo of them when they're finished.

The other project with getting rid of lamination is that we ordered some tiles for the countertops, which should hopefully be coming in any day. Justin was so excited that we had ordered them, that he immediately ripped the laminate off the top boards in the galley...he spared me the actual countertop, so I'm still able to cook, but he's incredibly excited to get going and fix up the counters. They were his least favorite thing on the boat, I think.

This is what the tiles look like. Technically, it is "caribbean sea green" but they look awfully blue to me. Either way, I like how none of them are really the same color, and I like that they're from recycled materials.
The last thing I wanted to post about was the other large item we have on order...a pellet heater! This thing should keep us warm in the winter. One of our friends was able to get us a great deal on this, and in the end will be saving us a lot of money. A 40 lb bag of wood pellets is $5.00 and we should be able to make a bag last 1-2 weeks. We plan on supplementing our heat with electric heaters, and will only use the pellet heater when we're home, but it should be great.

The other plus side to this heater is that it actually will burn wood, coal, pellets and "other solids", so if there ends up being a low supply of pellets in our area, we'll be able to heat up with other things.

Hopefully, the winter will be nice and cozy and warm.

-Jenny

fixing water

2007-09-26T21:40:00.000-04:00

Fixing the water problem was a simple matter of a new T-joint, some hose, and some clamps... only about $15 total. Another bullet dodged and the Fitz motors on!

In the meantime, Jenny added a "Links" section to the right of the page. Hopefully we'll get a few useful things up there. Suggestions welcome.

btw

2007-09-21T21:38:00.001-04:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorch_Fock_%281958%29

this is pretty neat... about that boat that was here.

hosed again

2007-09-21T21:10:00.000-04:00

Pressurized water system broke this week. A hose cracked right next to a T-coupling. Of course, the hose had a strange end on it so I can't seem to find a replacement and haven't been able to figure out a way to rig it in the meantime. Filling jugs of water constantly is getting a bit old. Especially when doing dishes.... Jenny's parents are here for now, but when they leave I've gotta tear this old system out and start replacing with a few updated and better couplings.... too bad classes just started. I'll be busy for a while. :)

I'll try to keep blogging!
-Justin

I was going to end the blog there, but this reminds me that I would like to post how I intend to make this blog a bit more helpful/friendly to the liveaboard wannabes out there. When we were looking into this lifestyle people were largely helpful and welcoming. It is very easy to get lots of quality info via the internet and a large array of books. But the real learning didn't seem to REALLY start till we moved on. With that in mind, I'd kind of like to "catalog" so to speak all of the various repairs, troubles, and learning experiences that we have while embarking on our life aboard. There have been many already. This water problem is just the first one that I've chosen to share via the blog world. While these problems can be annoying they are only a slight hindrance in the light of how great living aboard has been to us.

Having said that..... once again,
I'll try to keep blogging!
-Justin

Gorch Fock

2007-09-15T12:32:00.000-04:00

Yet another sweet tallship has arrived in our harbor. This one docked right smack in front of the constitution, so it is really right next to us. It is the "Gorch Fock" which appears to be some sort of training schooner from Germany.

How very "Triumph of the Will"

Anyhow, darn cool looking boat. Probably my favorite of the summer. I can't seem to get it and the Constitution to fit in the same pic, but it looks to be a good twice the size of the Constitution.

dark and stormy

2007-09-14T16:37:00.000-04:00

zincs and such

2007-09-13T10:59:00.000-04:00

Haven't really gone out lately.

Need to get the zincs changed. Soon.

Someone gave me the idea of taking the boat up the charles river until the current is real slow (like lily pads growing slow) and anchoring in 3-4 feet of water and just doing it there. I think it is such a good and fun idea. Perhaps that will happen in the next weekend or two. Anyone wanna go with?

-Justin

Arietta

2007-09-09T17:39:00.000-04:00

This charter boat just dropped into the marina. Wait...not only did it "drop in", but it spun around 180 degrees and BACKED into the slip.

Arietta

At 112 feet, our boat could fit end to end in it 3 1/3 times, and the boat is just about 2 times as wide.....that's almost 7 times the amount of boat that we have.

In the meantime, it is a very chilly 63 degrees outside, and I decided to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the oven. I am so excited for the fall weather.

-Jenny

Jason & Katie visit

2007-09-09T15:49:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, we had more visitors! Jason & Katie took a last minute trip out here from Friday - Monday, so we took the boat out from Saturday to Sunday morning and went first to Rainford Island, then motored over to Peddocks, where we stayed the night...apparently, we like Peddocks.

We did the usual - we cooked out, fished and played some card games (and pictionary!)

Some pictures:

Katie tried her hand at fishing. Her bait kept falling off...

Gollum seemed rather pleased with being out on the water. Can't you tell?

Justin bought some fish to catch bigger fish with. Somehow, it just didn't seem to do the trick.

But he caught me! har har har.

Group picture, minus Gollum.

Ah...so relaxing.

-Jenny

parents house

2007-09-08T23:01:00.000-04:00

So, I'm at my parents house back in Michigan for the weekend. While I'm here I've found they have a bunch of fun boat pictures on their computer. I'm just going to put a few up here since their pc is kinda (really) slow.

-Justin

Gloucester Sail

2007-08-26T20:14:00.000-04:00

We were going to go climb Mt. Washington this weekend, but that kinda fell through. Instead, our friends Jack and Jessica asked us to go sailing on their 42' Catalina "Lio Kai" with them up to Gloucester Harbor for Sat and Sun. It would be the 4 of us and their friend Elton, whom we'd never really met. Sure, sounds like a plan.

Here, is Gloucester harbor. We anchored just below Ten Pound Island on this map.

Here is Capt. Jack (not the infamous Sparrow one, but similar in many ways) leading the way out of Boston Harbor.

And here is Jess (I can't remember the Mr. Sparrow's fair maiden's name in the movie...)

Jenny, relaxing in the cockpit while underway.

A large bee type of thing decided to tag along for quite a while. He was welcome till we had to tack and use his seating area for pulling lines around. Then we had to kick him off.

Despite the fact we have pictures of bees we didn't seem to get any real photos of Elton. Sorry Elton. We will have to get some from Jack and Jess... They took a whole ton on their really awesome huge camera.

On the way up, we ran into this HUGE sail race/regatta type of thing. It put us off course a bit as we had to go way out around it. There were tons of cool looking racing boats.

Here is us coming up on them. It was very very hazy out on the way up Saturday. The temp on land was up over 100 F. We were happy to be on the water, but I think it was so hot everywhere that it was just an all around steamer. This pic shows the haze pretty well.
Here, we have made it around the regatta and are continuing on our way.

We got into Gloucester harbor around 6:30 or so pm and had to hail the harbormaster to come out and direct us to a mooring. He was a funny guy who told us we were welcome to get drunk and run around the top decks naked since nobody in Gloucester would care. We declined.

Once we were moored, this party boat that was sort of a tallship came up and moored next to us for a while. Very pretty boat. It actually ran all its sails up to sail away. Very neat looking.

This pic is kinda too far away, but this was our view of downtown Gloucester.

Apparently I was happy to be there.

So was Jenny. And everyone else.

Jack and Jess made us a great dinner of grilled bacon wrapped scallops followed by alfredo noodles and chocolate cheesecake. And of course plenty of beer and wine was drank.

After such a long day of sailing the aft berth Jenny and I were staying in couldn't have looked more comfortable, and indeed it was. I slept like a rock. Despite the 20 mph winds outside and occasionally choppy waters.

The morning was cool as, being such an infamous fishing town, we got to see plenty of fishing boats heading both in and out.

After breakfast it was back out to sea.

I don't really have too many return trip pictures. Lots of water to see and that was about it. Except for one very exciting and unfortunately undocumented moment. In keeping a lookout for lobster pots and bouys Jessica yelled, "Hey there's something in the water ahead of us, but it just went under. I think it was a bird!" No, it was a whale. It was way cool. We actually all got to see it. Just after the glimpse of it that Jessica had seen went away it came back up to breath we all saw it break the surface and blow air/water up in the air, then slowly submerge and retreat to the depths again. We had hoped for another sighting when we all had our cameras ready but it must have swam away from where we were sailing. Very cool to see even once though. (and to be fair to Jessica, the cormorants are big black birds out here that are all over the place and often dive down for fish. Only seeing a glimpse of whale fin, it is not so ridiculous that she mistook it for a diving bird. However, we still made fun of her plenty).

After that, it was down to figuring out how to best approach the harbor with the given winds and whatnot.

My one pic of Elton: exhausted and asleep under a seamanship manual.

Pulling back in the harbor a cruise ship was leaving.

Well, that was about it. It was an awesome trip. Gloucester looked like a very pretty town. Next time we'll have to take a dinghy and go ashore. I'd like to see the place. Jenny and I learned quite a bit about sailing this time and how it all works. A sailboat is definitely an option for sometime in the future. We'll see.

random blog

2007-08-23T20:05:00.000-04:00

We have started making new canvas "curtains" for all of our ports. Bought a cool new "snap" tool. I do the snaps, Jenny does the sewing. It works out.

Here is the cat looking more awake than usual in front of a new curtain.

And here is the cat look more asleep like normal, except with me.

In other news, we were planning on going out to the islands this weekend, but we also have an invite to go hiking at Mt. Washington. We will have to see how things pan out. Our friends Jason and Katie are coming to visit for next weekend (labor day) and we will likely get out and do some island cruising that weekend. Should be awesome, so look for an update then.

In the meantime, I should give our friends Walter and Jeff a plug for their new charter service. Go to www.imagineboston.net to see about chartering their 50 foot yacht for a day or night out at the islands. They have just started this business and are very excited about it.

Thats all for now.

-Justin

forgotten picture

2007-08-21T22:33:00.000-04:00

I forgot I had this picture on my phone. Our friends Walter and Jeff bought an awesome 49' Gulfstar. It has large crane on top for lifting the dinghy. While anchored out at the islands a couple weeks ago they put the anchor to better use and hung a hammock off the edge, allowing themselves to gently swing inches above the water. BRILLIANT!

shirts and flutes

2007-08-18T18:12:00.000-04:00

Jenny got a belated gift card for her bday a while back and we just now made it out to use the thing. She got a very maritime looking shirt and has been inspired to learn some old chantey songs on her flute.
Also, found this SWEET map complete with seamonsters and other awesomeness:
http://ian-albert.com/misc/zoom-gutierrezmap.php

Totally need seamonster tattoos.

massive post

2007-08-17T00:53:00.001-04:00

Alright! Here is the "long awaited" post with some real pics. For an entire summer aboard, this is a pretty meager sampling, but well, it's all for now...

My parents and sister came to visit for the 4th of July festivities here in Boston.

My father:

My sister:
My mother (somehow the Harvard shirt doesn't really work with the wingnut hat...):

We went on a visit to Salem, MA that week as well as an overnighter on the Charles river for the fireworks. These two pics are of me driving to each place (in that order)

This is where we stayed in Salem at Hawthorne Cove Marina:

More of Hawthorne Cove . It was very quiet and nice:

Then, the river was the loud party fun part of the trip. Carl and Susan came to visit in their "sports car" version of a boat (aka 17 foot bow rider):

They brought the pug, Jack:

This guy drove his car through the river:

TIME WARP!

This is now pictures from last weekend. I got a new snorkel set!:

There was a rainbow:
At some point there were many seagulls behind a lobster boat...

Jenny and I went fishing at this lighthouse: caught nothing :(

and we got engaged at Peddocks Island...as was mentioned in a previous post:

This is the view as we departed Peddocks:

Happy couple:
and a nice Peddocks Sunset:

That is all for now!

net

2007-08-15T23:30:00.000-04:00

With the acquisition of Sprint Mobile Broadband our floating palace is now internet capable. woohoo! This will mean many more frequent updates for all of you would-be blogger readers.

In the meantime, we spent three beautiful days anchored off of Peddocks Island in Portugese Cove and managed to get engaged in the meantime! Yay!

things...

2007-08-07T16:01:00.000-04:00

We stayed out on an Island Mooring for the first time! It was pretty darn sweet. The leaky stuffing box issue has finally been fixed so we are happy to be able to do things like island moorings whenever. Boat life is darn nice so far. :)

We also went lobstering on Carl and Susan's boat. That was darn fun.

More later. We are getting the net at home within a month!

2007-07-13T18:58:00.000-04:00

Having no Internet is making for a very weak blog on our part, and we apologize. We are thinking about getting the Internet on the boat when a) Justin goes back to school or b) in the winter...but for now, you will have to be patient.

The coffee house (Sorelle) that is nearest to the marina is really wonderful. They have great food and drinks, and is just a very nice place. If I could make it here more, I probably would, although now that I don't spend all my time online, I feel as though there is not much to do once I'm here.

Justin's parents visited, and we took our first real significant trek to Salem, MA. A couple of days later, we took the boat up the Charles River for the famous 4th of July Fireworks w/ the Boston Pops. Again, great fun, despite the minor problem of the bilge pump breaking right as the pops began their concert. Typical!

Well, this is a pretty pathetic post, but it's all I have time for, for now.

-Jenny

whew...

2007-07-09T15:18:00.000-04:00

What a week. My parents came to visit on Sunday the 1st. We left that afternoon for our first big boating trip. We went out and up to Salem, MA since my sis wanted to go there real bad. It was a ton of fun, if not a bit nerve wracking, but we made it just fine and it was great to dock in a different marina for a night. The ride back was more relaxed, since we knew what we were doing a bit better. Then, on the morning of the 4th of July we took the boat through the locks system up the Charles River and anchored out for 24 hours! It was sweet. Disasters happened, both with our boat and with others on the river, but through some improvising and brainstorming all crises were averted and a great time was had. I can perhaps explain more later, but I'm in a hurry for now. It was lots of fun and we feel like we've finally been able to really use our boat for boating and not just for living... it was awesome. Pics to come, hopefully.

-Justin

picture time!

2007-06-28T12:49:00.000-04:00

Well, with our limited internet access we have an abundance of pictures to put up. This is just some of them, in no real particular order:

This big beast came to visit us a while back. It is the USS Nashville, an amphibious command center type of thing.

I finally caught a fish, but have yet to figure out what it really was.

Here is a close up.

They took the USS Constitution out and turned it around on a very rainy Bunker Hill Day.
Looks like an awesome ghost ship.

Nashville and Constitution both.

My friend Amy came to visit from New York. Her and Jenny and I hung out on memorial weekend/day.

Amy took a real pic of Jenny and I on the boat... not too many of these yet. Thanks Amy!

This boat, Canim, pulled into the marina for a couple days. It is so sweet because it looks just like the boat that Mr. Herzog pulled over the mountain in the movie "Fitzcarraldo".

Just a cool, rainy, choppy day on the water.

Me, hoping to catch some fish.Thats all for now!

-Justin

3 weeks

2007-06-20T09:54:00.000-04:00

Dang, it's been like 3 weeks since we've posted. Ah well, such is life with no internet. The sticker reading, "the Fitzcarraldo" finally came in the mail yesterday, so it will be officially renamed soon. We will have to get some champagne and have a renaming ceremony so as not to offend Poseiden. That'll be fun. We have a few pictures to post, but... for another day.

Here is a pic of Poseiden/Neptune looking all majestic to keep you entertained in the meantime:

-Justin

Pictures

2007-05-27T11:55:00.001-04:00

Well, I finally got around to posting some pictures!!

There are a lot of cormorants that hang around the marina. I got incredibly close to this one, and he didn't even move when I ran back inside to grab my camera.

There are always huge ships that dock near the marina. These were two battleships that stayed for a few days, and then were gone when we woke up bright and early.
The Jellyfish are everywhere...this isn't a very good picture of them at all, because usually it looks like there are more jellyfish than water.

Our boat!

Climbing out of the hatch...
Tada! I did it!

The living room. This is the built in couch, with the kitty sleeping on it.

The futon is on the other side of the room.

Our new spice racks that we are so proud of...

And the kitchen....also known as the galley.

This is one of the hatches that leads upstairs, but not the one I was climbing out of.
The bedroom.

THIS is the hatch I was climbing out of.

We took the boat out last night. Here's Justin driving.

Sunset, while we were out with the boat.

Lightning

2007-05-17T12:48:00.000-04:00

Two nights ago, we had our first lightning storm while on the boat. It was really fun, although I was dead tired from work and so not long after it started, I fell asleep and missed all the fun.

I swear we will one day post pictures, but not today. I am on a laptop at work (not my own) and until I am able to get my computer on a good wireless connection, I won't be able to get any pictures on here.

Justin has his last exam today in 4 1/2 hours, so after that, he will have more time to work on the boat. I know he's been really wanting to work on it but devoted his time to school instead...now he'll have a couple of months off (of school at least, but not work) so that'll be really cool.

I've been trying to fix up what I can on it, which is surprisingly a large amount. I have been painting and staining things, patching up old nail holes, vacuuming (over and over and over) and just cleaning and fixing whatever I can. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find little projects to do, but I certainly haven't a lack of them.

Time to get back to work.

-Jenny

Weee!

2007-05-09T16:10:00.000-04:00

Plenty of exciting stuff has happened.

1. The electric blew out and we had to figure out (with much help from Carl) how to get that back up.

2. We went sailing on our friend Mike's boat "apollo". That was tons of fun.

3. We finally took the fitz out to sea!

4. Aft bilge pump broke down and began flooding the engine compartment. Holy scary. Fixed now.

We have plenty of pictures, but they are all still on Jenny's camera.

Hopefully we can get them up soon.

more later.
-Justin

week 1

2007-04-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

Well, my parents came to visit about 3 days after we were moved on. We really hadn't even settled in and were/are still trying to figure out just how exactly this whole thing works. So it has been HECTIC as of the first week, but my parents went back home yesterday (mind you, it was great to see them again since it has been so long-- it has just been hectic for moving aboard). Anyhow it seems like it is going to be an awesome life. We are enjoying the heck out of it so far.

We also didn't realize that when we were moving to the town of Charlestown (a neighborhood of Boston-still within the city) we were moving to such an awesome place. While my parents were here we didn't get to spend a ton of time on the boat but we did get to do a lot of exploring. Charlestown looks like such a sweet place. It is all upscale but laid back and just nice. Gaslamp streets and all. Sure beats my old neighborhood in Lansing MI!

We took a ton of pics when my parents were here but they are all on my parents camera, so whenever they get those mailed to us we'll put some online.

more later, I'm sure!

-Justin

the move

2007-04-25T11:44:00.001-04:00

Jenny here. The move went great. We had beautiful weather and EVERYTHING FIT! It was grand.

Now we are just trying to quickly get things finished up before Justin's parents arrive tomorrow. This means a lot of running around for Justin today, and a lot of cleaning for both of us tonight.

We tried the 3 day trial of the internet at the marina and it was too awful to spend the $ to sign up. Instead, we have decided to go without internet for the summer and see how that works out for us. We live close enough to the north end which has a great coffee house that we both really enjoy, and they have free wi-fi. I don't imagine we will be updating too often (I am doing this from work), but I am hoping we can update at least once a week.

Anyway, my 15 minute break is up and it's time to get back to work.

More soon.

-Jenny

countdown continues....

2007-04-19T23:31:00.000-04:00

33 hours til we move aboard.... I know that's a little absurd, but we are seriously excited.

Nor' Easters and more.

2007-04-17T23:23:00.000-04:00

Some actual exciting news: We will definitely be moving aboard on Saturday! ....in the immortal words of my sister, "Woot Woot!!"

Also, we had the advantage of using somebody's free car for the week, so we went to Ikea to get some decoration stuff. We got plenty of cool things to make the boat look more sweet and more like home, but you can see all that stuff when it is installed and looking cool.

As one last exciting thing, we are still in the waning stages of what is apparently a very big Nor'Easter storm out here. Susan, the woman living on our boat now, said that Sunday night was by far the worst -storm wise- night on a boat she has ever experienced.

We can't find any pictures of what the night was like at our marina, but these are some nearby areas.

This is in New Hampshire, the farthest away
of the pictures, but such a cool picture that I
couldn't leave it out.

This is Revere Beach. How these people aren't
getting bowled over by these waves, I dunno.
This is just up the road about a 1/2 mile from
where we live now. We went there the night
before to see this site and it was pretty cool,
not as big as in this picture.

This lighthouse is in Cohasset. South of us by
just a little bit, but right outside the harbor.

Other than the huge waves, there was plenty of rain and wind, but it really didn't seem like a HUGE storm to us. We'd probably think differently if we were out on the water.

:) That's all for now.

-Justin

upholstery

2007-04-15T16:17:00.000-04:00

I decided to take a couple of pictures of the new upholstery I bought for the couch that is built into the boat (there was a picture posted on April 3rd...)

The nice thing about it is that it will match the futon very well (which is the color of the pillow in the picture. We currently have a sheet over it, but won't once we move). In fact, it should tie everything in together quite nicely. The only thing I worry about a bit is the incredibly strange colored carpeting, but I think that once we get the rug down and the couch reupholstered, the carpeting will look ok.

-Jenny