Over the last few years I’ve been testing and playing with a number of different ideas for long term food storage. I’ve finally settled on our strategy for long term food storage when we get ready to leave Key West. I’ve got multiple goals when thinking about long term food storage and sources: Self sustainability while away from society. I have a...
Recently I had the pull cord on my Honda generator break. I tried to restring the coil myself and somewhere along the line I screwed up the release that allows the coil to disengage from the cooling fan (I think I overtightened the screw that holds the assembly together). This caused the coil assembly to chew up the teeth on the cooling fan. Now we couldn’t...
My partner has a hard time starting the outboard engine on the dinghy, which limits her ability to get off the boat without me playing chauffeur. So I bought a electric start kit for our outboard from Boats.net. The proper kit is 6DR-W8180-11-00 (around $300). I don’t have any affiliation with Boats.net, just a site that I find parts for what I’m doing...
These are all photos taken last month while on a short walk about town before a night shift. I tend to overshoot so it takes me a while to work through all the photos (the end product is 1/3 of the shots I take workout into a picture with only 15 or so out of 300 frames being worthwhile in my opinion). I broke the images into 4 different categories, Shots I liked...
I still do a little bit of freelance work remotely. Finishing up a onboard office has been low on my priorities so when I have a bunch of computer work to do I go to land and find a place with public wifi and grab breakfast, when these locations are small independent shops I tip well for the resources I use. In Key West internet service is marginal when you pay for...
It’s difficult for me to get out and dive in Key West. Running out to one of the offshore reefs in my little dinghy (9′ with a small 6 hp motor) means I can only head out on the calmest days. Those calm days always seem to happen on a work day. But a couple months ago I was able to get out to the Western Sombo reef which is due south of Stock Island. This...
As I’m in the process of pulling out all the core electrical wiring (everything before the distribution panel) and rewiring the engine room and new distribution panel I decided it was a good time to upgrade the core house bank batteries. I was in a little bit of a bind when leaving Jacksonville a couple years ago, both in time and budget respects. The house...
Originally I had planned to hold off on solar panels until I installed the arch across the stern, probably one of the last items I will do. The thought was that I wanted to do it once, and technology in this field was always changing and there might be some step forward before I left in 2021 (now bumped to 2022). I had been powering my fridge by running the suitcase...
Recently I added some solar panels to keep my fridge going without having to run my generator. I didn’t take good care of the batteries that I have now (I was between generators for 9 months and just let them set) and they were a stop gap when I left Jacksonville anyways. For a long time I’ve needed to rewire the complete boat but keep putting it off as...
For Thanksgiving week I took some time off work and made a trip back to California to visit family. The Wedeking Clan are mostly offroaders, I’m the oddball in the group of oddballs. Unfortunately, I ran into an unexpected winter storm and had to deal with snow, which I am not prepared for. A quick trip to a department store for shoes (which I don’t...