Wood Stove

    After a month or two or measuring, searching the internet, and worrying about burning the boat down, we finally went and got a wood stove. We decided on a Morso 1440 "Squirrel,"  which is essentially a 14"x14"x27" box made of cast iron and fitted with a small window and frilly little legs. Morsos are made in Denmark, and have a whole bunch of complicated little combustion chambers that allow them to meet European emissions standards (and allow us to burn wood without our neighbors finding out). It also has heat shielding on the back, so we were able to put it only 6" away from the wooden cabin wall. Unfortunately, all this fanciness comes with a bit of a downside- weight. The little bugger weighs somewhere around 200 pounds, and it was a bit of a struggle to get it onto the boat and down the narrow side deck to the cabin.

    Once we got the stove onto the boat, I cut a rectangle out of the carpet, and my mom laid down some tiles. My dad then cut a nice big hole in the ceiling on a miraculously non-rainy day, and everyone spent a few hours grappling with the chimney. Eventually, everything was aligned and properly assembled, and after waiting a few days for all the caulk and sealant to dry; we fired it up. Unfortunately, we didn't know that new wood stoves are typically rubbed down with oil, and that your supposed to start them outside to let it all burn off. Instead, all that oil burned off inside Misogi, and the entire boat filled up with a foul-smelling blue haze. We had to open all of the doors and windows on a 40 degree day, and the boat smelled vaguely like burning oil for about a week afterwards.

   Now that all the oil has burned off, the little Morso is looking like the perfect stove for Misogi. It's pretty efficient with wood once it gets warmed up, it keeps the wall behind it fairly cool, and it gets the salon up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit when the temperature outside is around freezing. We now only use the diesel furnace in the mornings, which is very nice considering that it managed to burn through 30 gallons of fuel last month. The only disadvantage to wood heat so far has been that only the salon and pilothouse are properly heated; the staterooms and heads stay down around 58 degrees. I now end up staying awake as long as possible to avoid getting into a refrigerated bed.

Tile

Temporary Skylight

Everything Put Together

The Chimney

My Dad with His Chimney

It Lives!

General Update

     We've been living aboard for a couple weeks now (or maybe a few; I can't remember and am too lazy to do the mental math), and have gotten mostly moved in. The cardboard boxes of stuff are finally out of the salon, and their contents squirreled away in the proper drawers and cupboards. Our diesel furnace, which went kaput 2 days after we moved, has been replaced with a newer and safer model, so we finally have heat. Most importantly, however, I have moved my favorite potted plants aboard. I had been storing them on Cornwall's front porch, but some sub-humanly vile jerk smashed the pots on the sidewalk, resulting in an emergency run to Fred Meyers for more pots and soil. Luckily, I got the plants in their new pots soon enough, and they all survived. The plants are now scattered around the pilothouse. I stuck them down with museum putty, so hopefully we won't be assaulted by flying cacti next time the boat starts rocking.

    Speaking of rocking, we had our first proper storm on Misogi this week. 60 MPH winds combined with a very high tide resulted in waves smashing over the breakwater and two foot swells within the harbor. The docks, which are fairly rigid concrete structures, were bucking and undulating; and Misogi was rocking enough to make dishes slide around. I thought it was pretty fun.

    The less fun part of the storm was the resulting mess. Although nothing got damaged, the spray coming over the breakwater coated everything (including the cars way up in the parking lot) with a crusty layer of salt. I ended up spending an hour this weekend cleaning the salt off of all of Misogi's windows. Our boat, by the way, has 36 windows. 36 windows is a lot of windows, and most of them are either weirdly shaped and angled, or in hard-to-reach places. It takes great skill and perseverance to clean them all. I did get them all cleaned though, so now I just have to clean the non-window parts of Misogi at some point. That might be even more work.

    The only major problem with parts of the boat that we have restored is black spots on the deck. They're tiny little pitch black speckles that started appearing as soon as we moved Misogi outside, and have been  multiplying rapidly ever since. They don't come off when scrubbed with soap and water, and seems to ooze black pigment when they get wet. We're really hoping that the black spots are just soot from other boat's exhaust, and not a paint defect, because it would really suck to re-kiwigrip all of the decks next summer.

Misogi at Night

Home is Where the Cactus is.

More Cactus

Panorama of Pilothouse Windows (there's too many of them!)

Specks on the Kiwigrip

Living Aboard

We're finally living aboard. It's been about a week since we moved, but a combination of internet problems and school work has kept me from updating the blog. The move went surprisingly smooth; my parents hired 4 college students, and we put all of the contents of our house into the basement of I Street, a vacant apartment in Cornwall, and the boat in only four hours. In fact, it went so quickly and efficiently that I doubt we'll be able to remember where we put anything. Amazingly, all of our clothes, utensils, cooking hardware, tools, and a few bits of art managed to fit on Misogi. She has an amazing amount of weird-shaped storage tucked into every possible nook and cranny. There is a hand-sized door in the galley that leads to a cavernous cupboard about the size of a small dog, a drawer under my bed that is a 7-sided polygon, and closets with small doors that turn out to be big enough to stand up in. 

We hired a professional cleaning person to try to salvage the carpet and counter tops, and somehow they succeeded. The boat is cleaner than it's been in 9 months and smells like food and diesel instead of wet dog. My bed is very comfortable, although because of the list of the boat (we're still trying to figure out howto fix that) I keep falling out. All the sinks have hot and cold running water, and the toilets are... acceptable. All in all, Misogi is pretty comfortable, and mostly dry inside.

Unfortunately, not everything has gone so well. The refrigerator barely keeps food cold, the oven and range didn't work until yesterday, and the diesel furnace is too sketchy and dangerous to use. So, we have no heat. A leak has developed under the hatch to the flybridge, which is really quite vexing because it was a part of the boat that we rebuilt. I have a plan for fixing the leak (caulk everywhere!), and the heating issue will hopefully be solved by a new furnace and wood stove before temperatures drop below freezing.

For those of you curious about what Misogi looks like inside, I tried to take some pictures. There's not very many, because I discovered that most of the rooms are too small and awkwardly shaped to photograph, but here they are:

Salon and Galley (with messy counters), looking forward. 

Salon, looking aft.

Pilothouse

Pilothouse

Scary stairs leading to staterooms.

My parents' room (well, half of it).

Spare stateroom

My room

Moved (the boat).

Today we finally moved the boat back into our slip! It was a beautiful, sunny day with light winds and not much current, so the maneuvering was pretty easy. I got to do all the driving, and it went pretty well except for almost scraping a piling on the docking bit. Misogi responds to the controls really quickly with her huge (4 foot diameter!) props, and maneuvering her is actually easier than Mariah was. I had to back Misogi out of the boathouse, which was pretty tight, then pivot 90 degrees and back her all the way down the side channel. I swung her around in the main channel, and drove forward straight over to our slip. Embarrassingly, my first docking attempt was a bit cock-eyed, so I had to back out and try a second time. Thankfully, the second attempt went swimmingly  (or floatingly?), and Misogi is now tied up at good ol' gate 5. 

All of the decks now have kiwi-grip and are theoretically watertight, and there's only a few railings and gutters to install before the exterior is finished. Misogi's interior is extremely dirty, but the electrical system is adequately functional for living aboard, as are the water and sewage systems. Unfortunately, the heating system doesn't work, and we will probably have to replace all the fluid and bleed the air out before it will work again. Misogi's rear end is impressively ugly with the temporary roof and stained canvas, so hopefully we will get motivated to finish replacing the back deck before too long. Everything else is fairly pretty though, which is good because we're moving aboard in 5 days!

Misogi and her temporarily ugly butt getting backed out of the boathouse.

Driving Misogi Backwards Down the Channel

Coming in for the Landing

Scraping the Dock a Little Bit... 

Kiwigrip

 Unfortunately, school has started. I now have a lot less time to work on the boat, but it is 99.99% watertight now. Most of the remaining work is in painting and working on the electrical system. We have sold our house, and have to move out of it by October 15th, so we have a proper deadline to work with now. I finished up the corner on the port side deck by installing some "water funnel things" between frames. They will drain water towards the scuppers and prevent it from pooling and rotting out the bases of the frames. My dad did some sketchy temporary plywood and epoxy patches on the flybridge; hopefully they won't rot out too soon. David has finished up most of the redneck-ish temporary roof for the back deck. It looks really, really, REALLY ugly. I'll post some pictures of it when it's done.

My mom and aunt have managed to finish varnishing and paint nearly half the boat over the last couple of weeks. Today they put Kiwigrip (a very tough and waterproof rubberized deck paint) on the foredeck. Hopefully we'll have Kiwigrip on all of the decks before we're out of the boathouse.

Water Funnel Thing

 

New Plywood

New Name

Foredeck Before Kiwigrip

Foredeck After Kiwigrip

Mom, Dad, and Aunt Painting

Kiwigrip Seen From Flybridge

Fewer Teeth, More Boat

This week I had my wisdom teeth taken out, so I didn't get as much done as I hoped. I didn't feel a thing during the surgery bit, and the recovery didn't hurt very much, but my cheeks did puff up until I looked like a chipmunk.

My dad found a bunch of rot in the fly bridge, which was incredibly annoying. We're just going to cover it up for now and fix it properly in a couple years. We've gotten a lot of little things done, like putting the davit back together, cleaning up the upper deck, epoxy-filling screw holes left by removed fittings, and caulking cracks. My mom and aunt have varnished most of the teak, and it looks really smooth and beautiful (except for a few places where I dropped sharp objects on it). My dad has continued his electrical projects, and now has the new panel in the salon almost completely wired up.

I put the new deck down over the hole that used to be on the port side deck. The plywood pieces were pretty complicated because it had to be notched for the frames, but I think they turned out really well. There aren't any gaps larger than a quarter inch, and everything slopes in the right direction. Unfortunately, I also had some less successful woodworking adventures. I had to make a joint for the new starboard toerail on the upper deck, and I used a handsaw to make the cut. It did not turn out particularly wonderful. Liberal application of epoxy and almost an hour of planing ended up fixing the problem aesthetically, but it was still pretty embarrassing and the rail is now not quite as strong as it could be. I did laern from the experience though, and the port toerail went on much more smoothly.

In the next couple of days, I plan on getting my corner on the port side deck finished up. It will be quite rewarding to see it all back together.

Rot? What rot?

Davit Back Together

My Beautiful Woodworking

More of My Beautiful Woodworking

Template

New Wiring

Really Crappy Joint

Still Crappy, But Now Smooth Joint

New Wood

We have just accepted an offer on our house, and passed inspection, so we have to have the boat ready to move onto by the end of September. This is probably a good thing, because we never really had a solid deadline before.

Most of the progress since the last post has been putting new wood on to (hopefully) water-proof the topsides. We capped the sides of the plywood upper decks with epoxied-on old growth fir strips. They will both prevent rot, and provide a flat, even surface for the next piece to be installed on. The next piece is a 2"x3" fir board that will run the entire length of the upper deck, and funnel rain water out and into gutters. The 2x3's looked kind of small when we bought them, but now that they're on the boat they seem gigantic. It feels like we put sidewalk curbs on the sides of Misogi. 

We bought most of our fir from a cabinet maker that a person at the wood store had told us about. He had a huge stockpile of old growth fir salvaged from historic houses. He was nice enough to rip the wood we bought to size, and to plane it all smooth. 

My dad went down to fisheries supply in Seattle to pick up our new inverter. It is very pretty, and surprisingly, built right here in western Washington. The inverter will tie the entire electrical system together, so hopefully Misogi will have electricity soon.  

Inverter!

Fir Strips Glued to Deck Edges

Doug Fir... Curbs?

Japanese Plywood pulled out of wall.

Hot.

The past couple of weeks have been really hot. Really, really hot. Like, almost 90° hot. Even the cats, who normally bask in the sun like a pair of fuzzy, blimp-shaped lizards, have not been having a fun time. This morning they went out onto the patio to eat grass, and collapsed into puddles of melted lipids before they even made it halfway across. They eventually had to be picked up and carried back inside.

Melted Cats

Despite the oppressive heat (and the accompanying stench of seagull droppings), a lot of work has gotten done on the boat. All kinds of little boat-bits, like lifelines, trim, stanchions, porthole rims, and wood bungs have been re-installed. Randy finished up the rub rails and some new pieces of trim, then moved on to somebody else's boat. Now that we don't have a shipwright working on the boat, I'm going to get to tackle some more ambitious projects than I was expecting. My dad installed and fiberglassed the final upper deck pieces, so we can paint it soon. We are going to patch up the very back of the upper deck with 2-by-4's and OSB, then fix it properly next summer. I spent a few days shaping and installing some new deckbeams for port side deck, so we can now install the actual deck there.

Unfortunately, I spent so much time on my knees when I was working on the side deck that I got prepatellar bursitis. I now have to stay off my knees for about 3 weeks, which will slow down my projects a bit.

Lifeline Attached

New Rubrail

New... Fancy Trim Bit

New Upper Deck

New Deckbeams

For a quick break from working on the boat, my parents, my aunt, and I took a day trip to Victoria. The weather was beautiful, and there was a lot of incredible 19th century architecture. I only got around to taking 2 pictures, but one of them was of a stunning stained glass window in the provincial capitol building. The other one is of active pass (I think) on the ferry ride home.

Window in Victoria

Active Pass, on the way back from Victoria