Of seals, ice, and weirdos

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...

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

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:

At the Heart of Winter

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.

as if...

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!

Chews Wisely.

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

heat!

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