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