We share all our little tips and tricks we've developed from a whole year of living aboard a sailboat full time. From the galley to the Nav Station, we show ...

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What's this week's video about Nawal

This week we're gonna cover some tricks and hacks that we've learned along the way over the past year. Absolutely

We've been living on the boat for a whole year now

And actually if you want we just made a video about what it costs to live aboard for a whole year

So just click here to take you to that video

We've kind of come up with a few things to make life easier here on board. Yeah, we did.

I love going online and checking out life hacks

a lot of them are geared towards

Living in a home and so on. For live aboard you have to go through all the hacks in order to find the ones

That would best fit live-aboard lifestyle. For some of these we did some research, for some

It just was obvious to us what to do. They were really helpful for us. Yeah, they were

Hopefully you guys will find them helpful too. So

Enjoy this video

So as you can see it's winter again

We've got the enclosure back on the same as last year if you want to see how I did this

I shot a whole video about how to put up a winter enclosure. Just click this link and it'll take you to that video

I did a few improvements this year that I didn't do last year

one of them is that I extended the bottom of the enclosure a little farther this time and

I heat shrinked this bottom section to tighten it up better around the bottom because I noticed last year

It was kind of lifting up a bit. Another thing

I did was I

Tightened up the collar around the mast because I had a lot of water coming in through the mast last year

So that was something I wanted to change

Another thing you can really notice is that there's a lot less tape this year. Last year. We had tape all over the place

I thought I really needed it to reinforce the thing but this year we were able to just to get away with

Enough tape to basically connect all the pieces

This is basically just drop sheet plastic that you get at the hardware store and we've got like one two three

Four five strips of it taped together. So the tape is just holding the plastic together essentially and that's it

But it's much better and closer this year

In the kitchen, I whipped together my own little net to hold our fruit

We purchased some baskets that fit perfectly in these little nooks and crannies here

This is our shower curtain hook that I'm using to hold our two tea pots at the moment

So I went on Amazon and was looking for some closed cell foam

to use for

Installation and I picked up these ones that are designed for cars for like sound dampening or whatever

On one side there's an adhesive layer and on the other side

There's a foil layer and it makes a really good insulation for the back of the cupboard here

So we put this in here to control the moisture. It's working really good. So far some of my best work

happens in the galley

It's true. It is. It's true, you're a chef. I really love it. I really enjoy being in there and our galley was not bright enough

I needed more light! The boat came with the original

fluorescent bulbs that were really popular with campers and boats like back in the

1980s and I kind of made it my mission to do something about that. When I was in Lebanon

I went into a dollar store and

found some LED strips. So you can cut them with scissors. There's a lot of lights on them

They're really bright. Super cheap. To save some money

I just took the old fixtures that we had and gutted them out and installed these new LED strips right in there

So now we've got LED lights throughout the boat. The galley is much brighter, Really happy with them. Very low power consumption

It's gonna be really good when we're underway and on 12-volt. Dan also found these clear tubes. This was your idea. Yeah

Yeah, we actually found these tubes at the hardware store. They're actually flexible water pipes

Okay

So our boat has those original boat counter tops

From when it was first built and they're basically antiques at this point

So we picked up this mat that I thought would work at Ikea. They're silicone mats. They have this grip to them

Nothing slips or slides on that surface. They're great for cleanup: crumbs everywhere, spilt some juice..

Yeah, they're easy to install you can just cut them with scissors. Last summer

We did a cruise down the South Shore of Nova Scotia to Lunenburg. We ran out of water Midway? Out of water

I think we had one jug left and that's all we had to drink. Probably last like a day. To conserve some fresh water

I decided that I would go outside with a bucket and fill it up with seawater to do our dishes

So yeah to avoid that problem again, we decided that we should have a raw water intake into the sink in the galley

So I took this job on not too long ago

I had a couple Y valves kicking around in the boat

So it didn't take much just a quick trip to the hardware store and a few pieces of hose and a few pipe

clamps and a couple

attachments and I was able to rig up this Y valve so that using the foot pump in our kitchen we can choose between raw

water or fresh water and

we've got a nice big brass ball valve here to keep it from backing up into our good fresh water system so that we can

just have sea water whenever we need it

so I no longer have to go outside with our

bucket fill it up with sea water and bring it back onboard. I can just pump! Really excited about this

I can't wait to try it out. Yeah, it works pretty good. Okay, the aft head. Some hacks

We've come up with for the aft head would be this white container here

I believe it's designed for office supplies, but it's working wonderfully for our toothbrushes and toothpaste

Dan had found this cereal container. I believe it is. We are using it for a rubbish bin

It wasn't quite sitting up high enough

So Dan decided to cut a water bottle just to give it that little extra lift. Up here. I

Decided to store some toilet paper. I had these clear mesh bags laying around and two rolls fit in there perfectly

Just use the string here and hung them up

I'm happy with them hanging up here rather than under the sink where they might get some moisture. This is our seating area

Dan, and I would hang out here wishing that we could cuddle

I Really wanted an extension to this couch and the previous owners I think had one because there's a little slit

We got a piece of wood that would just fit right into the slit here

Okay, the aft cabin. Some tricks we've come up with this year are these white bins.

They've been great for organizing our things. Keeping everything off any surfaces where condensation may form. But this year

Nope, it's been nice and dry. I've been using this wooden laptop rest as a

Nightstand for myself. I'm glad that I have it

It's just nice having that extra little surface there to rest things before I go to bed

Took us a very long time to come up with what we could use

Under our clothes so that we wouldn't get that moisture build-up. Yeah, that's right

We were noticing in a stack of clothes that you'd put in the cupboard like the bottom layer would get wet. We were looking

For some kind of barrier under there that was perforated

To let some air into that pocket and we kind of lucked out. We found this mat, but this one was really great

I mean you can cut it with scissors you can shape

it it lifts everything up about a half a centimeter and there's lots of air underneath so it's been really good and what was even

Better is that we were able to use a big piece of it in the door that way

You know when you're coming in with snow and stuff on your boots

You're not getting rocks on the deck. One thing that we've always been wondering is what's the actual temperature under this greenhouse

enclosure that we've built if you want to go up and chill out and the enclosure; what's the temperature up there?

we opted out for the cheaper version of this thermostat that

Will tell us what the temperature is inside the boat

But also it just has a separate piece that Dan can attach up on deck - yeah. No, that's right

it's just this wireless box that you can install like anywhere and

The receiver will just give you the temperature in that area wherever it is

So we put it up in the cockpit. That's giving us an accurate temperature for the enclosure

One of the biggest things that we've done recently for the boat that's been really great is we installed this Raspberry Pi

Navigation onboard computer that's been fantastic

So a Raspberry Pi can be used with your existing

Navigation systems to crunch all the data that they output and then it can send it to all your devices onboard over Wi-Fi

So like your phone tablet or your PC, you can run a chart plotter or whatever you want

It's super innovative and if you want to check it out

I have recently just did an entire video on how to install one of these things. So here's the link go check it out

It's really great. And it's probably one of the biggest things we've done here on the boat. The internet connection here sucks

Yeah, I'm sure a lot of boaters can relate to like bad or weak internet connections

So Dan after doing a lot of research went online and purchased and Extension thing

See your laptop has an antenna inside but it's like this tiny little thing

most people don't realize that. This thing is actually an external antenna that

boosts how much of the Wi-Fi you can actually receive and send it's been really helpful for us if I think this one was about

$40 on Amazon. I think every cruiser should have one

So on the boat, we have this outdated single sideband radio that doesn't have any line out

I knew that if I could access the audio signal from it

I might be able to get a weather fax working on our laptop I decided to try to

Splice the speaker wire and it worked. I just kind of hacked the radio

I installed this line out here

outside of the radio here on our panel and there's a switch here so I can go between

Speaker and line out

So I picked up this cable that guitar players have been using lately. One side has a quarter inch jack

the other side has a USB and you literally just plug this into your computer and any audio signal coming down that cable will just

Go into your computer as a line in or a microphone

So it's been working for us and I've been able to access the audio coming out of the HF radio

so now when I tune in to one of the weather fax stations

I should be able to read that data and get a weather fax report right here on the computer, which would be really helpful

Especially if we're offshore and we're, you know, out of cell phone range and so on

Thanks for watching

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I hope you guys enjoyed this video. We'll see you later. Bye!