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!
