Anchoring Vector

We are still anchored in a cozy spot, Bow Cove, on Mill Creek off the Patuxent River, in Solomons, Maryland.  I had so much ground to cover when I posted yesterday, that I omitted the difficulty we had finding a spot to anchor here.  We are still pinned down by weather today, so I thought it might be a good time to spend a few moments explaining what is involved in selecting a spot and getting settled.

The decision to anchor in a general area is made well in advance of arriving.  Generally speaking, it is made before we even depart the previous location, as part of our route planning process, which could be (and probably will be, at some point) the subject of an entire post unto itself.  Sometimes, though, it gets made while underway, due to circumstances such as weather or mechanical trouble.

Charts

In either case, lots of resources come into play in selecting a general location for anchoring.  Chief among these are the detailed nautical charts for the area in question.  We have paper charts for everywhere we go, but the most detailed and up-to-date charts we have aboard in electronic format.  Here in the US, they come directly from NOAA, and we can read them with any of three electronic charting programs we have aboard -- OpenCPN, Sea Clear II, and Polar View.  Right now we use our laptops, but I am also in the process of converting the primary helm navigation system from a dedicated chartplotter to a PC-based system so we can actually drive the ship with these programs.

The charts show us where protection from wind and waves might be provided by geographic features, how much water depth is available, and the type and condition of the bottom surface, to which the anchor must attach.  They also indicate areas where anchoring is prohibited for one reason or another, such as underwater cable crossing areas, fish sanctuaries, unexploded ordnance (really), or navigation fairways and traffic schemes (more on these in a bit).  It does take a bit of practice to be able to look at a chart and know, based on wind direction and other factors, which spots make for a good anchorage.  We get better at this every time, but it is a skill which we are still developing.

Other Resources

Fortunately, there are some other resources as well.  These include cruising guides (both printed and, more recently, on the web), anchorage handbooks, the Coast Pilot, and web databases such as Active Captain.  All of these resources list "suitable" anchorages in various places, based on the experience of the author or the collective experience of other cruisers.  But there is a reason I put the word "suitable" in quotes; permit me a brief digression to illustrate.

We began our cruising life on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), since we bought the boat in Savannah, which is along that waterway.  Moreover, we had previously started our training along a different stretch of the ICW, in Florida, way back in 2009 when we booked a one-week training charter there.  Back then, we had purchased a guide called Skipper Bob's Anchorages Along the ICW, and we made good use of several of the anchorages listed therein over the course of our training cruise.

Fondly remembering Skipper Bob's as a useful guide, we again purchased an updated copy for use aboard Vector, and we referred to it several times during our training cruise along the ICW in February.  What we learned from that is that Vector can use only perhaps 10% of the anchorages listed in that guide.  As our training captain said at the time, "Remember, Skipper Bob had a 36' boat with a 3.5' draft."  He also helpfully pointed out that Vector did not need nearly the same amount of protection that most Skipper Bob readers will need in their much lighter and/or smaller boats.  He pointed to an area on one of our charts and said "look -- you could anchor anywhere in here, even though many other boats would have trouble."  The area he pointed to did not show as a suitable anchorage in any of our guides.

Fast forward several months to our month-long cruise up the ICW from Hilton Head to Norfolk, wherein we confirmed without question that Skipper Bob and similar guides were not for us.  It quickly fell into disuse and now sits forlornly on the shelf -- I doubt we will even take it out again on our cruise south.  Information in the Waterway Guide, which we use primarily for marinas, is similarly suspect for us.  Beside the fact that we simply do not fit in many of the listed anchorages, among the biggest problems with these guides is that the conditions in the anchorages that might fit us can change considerably between the time they go to press and when we might arrive at the anchorage.

The Coast Pilot. by the way, has the opposite problem.  Whereas publications such as Skipper Bob and its ilk are generally targeted at vessels smaller than Vector (or, at least, with less draft), anchorages listed in the Coast Pilot are generally intended for large ships.  Sea conditions that can scarcely be felt on the deck of a 900' freighter with 30' or more of draft could have us bobbing around like a cork, and we'd have to put out all 400' of our chain to anchor in water that deep anyway.

Returning to our current practice, we find the information in the Active Captain database to be the most useful adjunct to our own experience.  To be sure, a majority of anchorages listed there are unusable for us due to depth, accessibility, or swing room, but there are more listed to begin with than in any printed guides, and we can page through the user-generated reviews of each anchorage.  These reviews often reveal critical details such as actual depth, where the best water is, which side of the entrance channel to hug, etc., and they are dated, so we can tell if the information is fresh. Still, we take everything with a grain of salt -- conditions can change in as little as a day, depth sounders can be off, and information can be entered incorrectly.

The updated Active Captain data is always available on the Internet, but we don't always have Internet available as we are searching for a spot.  This is especially true if we are having to modify plans under way due to weather or other factors.  For this reason, we ended up buying the Polar View chart software, even though we already had the free OpenCPN and Sea Clear software aboard.  In addition to reading and displaying the same free NOAA charts, Polar View can also download the entire Active Captain database for offline use.  We update the database when we have Internet access, and then it is available whenever we need it.

Anchorage Requirements

So what makes a good anchorage for Vector?  With our six-foot draft, we like to have at least eight feet of depth available at mean lower low water (MLLW), which is how depths are reported on charts.  That eight foot (or more) depth must extend out in a circle from where we drop the anchor for a distance at least as great as the amount of anchor chain we deploy plus the 52' length of the boat.  This is known as "swing room," as the boat swings around the anchor position in response to changes in wind and current.

In something of a catch-22, the amount of chain deployed also depends on the depth of the water.  There is a great deal of debate in nautical circles (pardon the pun) about the amount of anchor rode required for a given depth, a concept known as "scope."  That, too, could be the subject of an entire post, and tomes have already been written.  Suffice it to say that we are engineers, and we understand the simple trigonometry involved in the scope calculation.  We would never consider leaving the boat or going below to sleep with anything less than 7:1, and we extend that to as much as 10:1 if we are expecting storm conditions (notwithstanding the reader who once berated us for a 7:1 scope, on the grounds that we were using up too much of the anchorage -- see "courtesy" below).

What that means is that if we anchor in eight feet of water, we need to deploy at least 56' of rode, including our eight-foot long nylon snubber which is attached at the waterline.  If we anchor in ten feet, we need 70', 20' of depth would require 140', and so on, up to the total available amount of chain.  Our 400' of chain means we can anchor in relatively calm conditions in water up to about 57' deep, or, in rough conditions, water only up to 40' deep.  Note that, while we use depth at MLLW to establish where we can and can not anchor in shallower water, we need to instead use the depth at high tide to establish the amount of chain deployed.

As an example, where we are anchored now, the depth (at the anchor) ranges from about 11' to over 13' depending on wind and tide.  That means we need at least 91' of rode.  If the rode becomes tight, due to wind or current, that 91' of rode translates to 90' on the surface, and adding in the 52' of boat length, our swing circle becomes 142' of swing radius or a circle diameter of 284'.  Allowing for some imprecision in exactly where the anchor dropped, and/or some movement of the anchor (not uncommon if the boat swings around it in a circle),  this is really more like a 300' circle.

It's important to note that within this circle there must be not only no depths less than eight feet, but also no other objects such as docks, pilings, buoys, or other anchored or moored boats, nor can it encompass any prohibited area.  This is where it gets tricky, and why we sometimes need to move on even though a spot may look good on the chart.

Anatomy of an anchoring

When we first arrived here in Solomons, we already had in mind two or three spots that looked good on the chart and had favorable information on Active Captain.  But as often happens, other boats were already here, taking up many of the "prime" spots.  One of the things we have to do when other boats are involved is to mentally map out their swing circles as we assess ours.  It's OK, and often unavoidable, for the circles to overlap -- wind and current tend to move all the boats in the same direction.  But boats don't all swing at the same rate or in the same manner, so it's best to keep the overlap to a minimum, and preferably no anchor itself is overlapped by another boat's circle.

This problem increases in complexity the more boats there are in an anchorage.  It's also impossible to know just by looking how much scope another boat has deployed or exactly where its anchor lies.  It becomes a game of adding safety margins on to best guesses.  And so it was that we took a stab at a good place to anchor just upstream of a pair of already-anchored boats, in a space bounded by the shoreline and its accompanying shoal, a dock, and the main channel of the creek.  The depth there was 16' when we arrived.



We made two passes to get the anchor to set, and then paid out some 110' of rode.  The track on the left of this photo shows how we moved around before and after dropping the anchor.  (There may be some image distortion on your screen from a photo artifact known as a Moiré pattern -- click to enlarge and then make it original size to minimize this effect.)  Once we were securely anchored, though, the wind had us positioned very close to the main part of the navigable water.  That felt too uncomfortable to us, so we weighed anchor and headed further up the creek (off screen to the top).  Finding nothing better there, we returned and tried again on the other side of the creek, where we are now.  We've been here a while -- the dark semicircle with the boat in it represents all the swinging we've done here, and the anchor is more or less at  the center of that semicircle.



Once we are "set" we go about double-checking our circle and the distance to any hazards.  While the electronic chart with our position shown is a guide of sorts, charts are notorious for inaccuracies and mistakes.  We instead use the radar set to verify the actual distance to the shoreline, other fixed objects, and any other boats that might be anchored nearby.  The radar is extremely accurate, and can also validate the position of any charted surface objects (such as the shoreline) when we set it to superimpose the radar image on the chart data.  Here you can see my cursor (the X below and to the right of the blue dot representing the boat) is on the return from a nearby dock, and the top of the display tells me it is 0.03nm, or about 180 feet, away.  The three red blobs to our left are the radar returns from three anchored boats.

Prohibitions

We've received a number of comments since we moved aboard about perceived inappropriate anchoring, including being anchored "in a channel."  Since we ended up moving in this case because we felt too close to "the channel" for comfort, now is a good time to address this issue.  There are really three main factors involved here: "rules of the road," safety, and courtesy. Let me take these one at a time.

1. "Rules of the Road."  I have to put that in quotes, because that's not really what they are called out here on the water.  There really are rules, though, and they are codified internationally in the IMO's International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, which are themselves incorporated into the US Coast Guard's Navigation Rules, International - Inland.  The regulations are nearly universally referred to as the "ColRegs," short for "collision regulations," because the full title is a mouthful, although the Coast Guard often calls them simply the Nav Rules.


Our copy of the Nav Rules.

All vessels in US waters are required to follow the colregs, which can be downloaded for free.  Due to Vector's size, we are required by law to keep a printed copy aboard at all times as well.  I have more than a passing familiarity with them, because I have completed the full course of study for my Master's License.  At the moment, I lack the sea time for the license, so I will not take the exam until I have the required sea time under my belt.

The ColRegs prohibit anchoring (circumstances permitting) in a "narrow channel" (Rule 9).  However, "narrow channel" is nowhere defined in the rules, and it is generally left to admiralty court to sort out any fault in a "narrow channel" collision.  This article on a forum for tugboat skippers illustrates the ongoing confusion in this regard.  It is generally recognized, though, that the narrow channel rules apply in places where vessels of certain beam or draft are constrained to navigate in a confined part of the waterway.

Under the Colregs, no part of this section of Mill Creek constitutes a "narrow channel." The water is nearly the same depth all the way across, and vessels of such a size as to be able to navigate in the creek at all can easily avoid other such vessels anywhere in the creek, whether under way or at anchor.  One quick test for whether an area is a "narrow channel" is to apply a different part of Rule 9: if you are in a "narrow channel" you are obliged to keep as far to the right as possible at all times.

Another test for narrow channels is to apply Rule 34, which obligates all vessels to sound whistle signals any time another vessel is passed (in either the same direction or opposite directions).  If there is enough room on the water for operators to run their boats without need of keeping far to the right and/or arranging passing via whistle signals, then that area of the water is not a "narrow channel" as defined in the rules.

2. Safety.  Having established that we were not in a narrow channel (nor were we in a "traffic separation scheme," another anchoring prohibition defined in Rule 10) , we could legally have remained anchored right where we were.  In fact, this morning when I came upstairs I noted a sailboat anchored more or less dead-center in the middle of the creek, not far from that spot -- he came in after dark last night and left sometime this morning.  But just because it is legal to do so does not mean that it is either safe or wise.


This sailboat is anchored mid-creek, even further from shore than our first attempt.

We'd like to think that all boaters are familiar with the ColRegs and take seriously their responsibility to keep a proper lookout and operate their vessels in a manner that avoids collisions.  Nevertheless, collisions do happen.  Anchoring in an area that has a lot of traffic can increase the chance of a collision.  For this reason, we generally choose to stay off to the side of any well-trafficked part of the waterway.  This is particularly important when visibility is reduced due to weather, or in very dark areas on moonless or cloudy nights.  We did not think visibility here would be a problem, but we didn't know how much traffic the creek saw or how fast some of it moved (even though there is a 6mph speed limit buoy right next to us).  We opted to move for safety reasons -- so we wouldn't get creamed by a speedboat in the middle of the night, perhaps after a few beers.

3. Courtesy.  This one might be the hardest to define of all, and we've certainly noticed a plethora of discourteous boaters in our short time on the water.  But we do try to keep some distance away from marina entrances, fuel docks, private homes, and obvious thoroughfares whenever possible.  When sharing an anchorage, we also try to keep a minimum scope to be fair to other users, so long as it is safe to do so.

The waterway is a shared resource.  While we try to be courteous, it is unreasonable to expect that we can always anchor where no other boat will ever have to go around us.  I've already lost count of the number of times I've had to go around someone else, or had to abandon a plan altogether because we were simply too late, and this is a first-come, first-served environment.

Other Factors

So far we have not encountered a situation where our anchor would not set.  But we know that day is coming.  Every anchor has its strengths and weaknesses -- there is no one "magic" anchor that will work in every bottom.  Our 50-kilo Bruce is good in mud, sand, and loose rock, but we've heard it will have trouble in sea grass.

Unfortunately, the design of the boat permits us only a single main anchor (many boats have dual rollers on the pulpit to carry two anchors) and the size of the bow roller limits how large it can be.  Adding another roller or enlarging the one we have would involve a great deal of cutting, welding, fitting, and painting, over and above the cost of the components and the anchor(s), so it is not really in the cards.  We do have a Fortress 85 stowed in the lazarette with a 250' nylon rode that serves as our emergency anchor, stern anchor, and perhaps our sea grass anchor.  And we will be looking into what other types and sizes of anchor might fit in our existing bow roller.  But for now, we're certain we will have to turn away from some otherwise perfect anchorage because we simply can not set the hook.

However well-set the anchor may be, sometimes they do come out, and the boat can "drag" the anchor from its original location.  I wrote here about how we witnessed an unmanned sailboat drag all the way across an anchorage and end up banging into a dock.  To combat this, we set the anchor under power, and we set multiple "anchor alarms" which track the boat's position relative to the anchor and sound a loud alarm if we exit a predefined circle.  One of these alarms utilizes our ancient GPS-equipped iPad and a free application called, appropriately, Drag Queen.

Indications

Our anchor day shape.

One of the rules established in the colregs is that vessels at anchor are to identify themselves as such both day and night.  Among other things, this lets other skippers know that avoiding a collision is entirely on them, as your vessel is not under power or command and unlikely to be able to take evasive action.  While we seldom see it on other anchored boats, we do deploy the required single black ball "day shape" (Rule 30) during daylight, and always use the all-around white "anchor light" after dark or in reduced visibility.  Although our size does not require it, we also turn on some of our LED deck lights at night if we think it is warranted.

Summary

Anchoring can sometimes be stressful, but it becomes easier for us each time.  We've come a long way since we once had to abandon the anchor and chain after a failed attempt.  When we first passed Bow Cove here we thought it might be too tight a fit for us with proper scope, but in hindsight it is a perfect little anchorage and we are glad we moved here from across the creek.  We felt secure enough to drop the tender and go out to dinner last night at Stoney's Kingfisher restaurant, which has its own docks for cruise-in guests.  Of course, I had to fix the temperamental davit again first, but that's a story for another day.

Boats, boats, boats

I wrote here a couple of posts ago that I would try to share some of our boat search process on the blog. I'm guessing a lot of our readers are really in the RV community and won't care one whit, but I've received messages from a number of others that they may be following the same path some day, and would like to know more. Also, we get suggestions from time to time to consider some boat or other, many of which are really orthogonal to what we are looking for. Perhaps sharing a little more of our process will clarify things a bit.

Let me start by saying that I've always had the travel bug, and I had two great ambitions rattling around in the back of my head for "some day," presumably in retirement. One was to convert a tour bus and see the U.S. and perhaps beyond. And the other was to buy a sailboat and cruise the world. Even the most recent of our readers will know that I have more or less achieved the first ambition: in the eight years we have lived full-time aboard Odyssey, we've been to all of the lower 48 continental states, and six states in Mexico. We've racked up nearly 150,000 miles on the bus, and another 10,000 apiece on our motorcycles or scooters in that time.

For sure there are places we have not yet been and to which we would still like to go. Alaska, for example. And early on in our bus adventure I had harbored thoughts of going down the east coast of Mexico and perhaps into some of Central America. None of that is really "off the table," and in our "take life as it comes" philosophy, we might very well yet explore one or more places on our grand list while still in the bus and before we have a boat. In other words, we are not "done" by any means, and absent other forces at work we could easily continue the bus adventure another decade -- and we still will not have seen or done everything we'd like.


Old school GPS. You can't get to Alaska from here.

All of that said, we have, though, reached a point where we can honestly say to ourselves that we've had a good run at it, and we can be happy with what we've achieved without feeling the need to press on regardless, whether that's one more year or ten. And we are aware that boating is a much more physically demanding environment than RVing -- we want to turn our attention to the water now, while we are still young and fit enough to enjoy it to the fullest. In fact, we've been told on a number of occasions that we've done things out of sequence: the conventional progression for an adventurous couple, so we're told, is Sail Boat, Motor Boat, Motor Home, Nursing Home. We, apparently, put the Motor Home well out of sequence by starting with that first.


These people may also be too young for their bus.

As it turns out, we will also be skipping the Sail Boat portion of the program. As I said earlier, one of my ambitions had been to get a sailboat and cruise the world. That's because I started sailing long before I ever drove a motor boat, and also conventional wisdom has been that the only small recreational vessels which can cruise anywhere in the world operate by wind power.

Louise, by contrast, will not sail. I had more or less written off the possibility of cruising the world, until one eventful day at the Seattle boat show while finishing up construction on Odyssey. Rather than repeat that whole story here, I will refer you instead to the latter half of this post, wherein I described what brought us to the boat show and the epiphany that we had there.

You might discern from that post, six full years ago, that we still had much to learn about long distance power boats, and were even on the fence as to whether or not we wanted ocean-crossing capability. In the ensuing six years, we've done a great deal more research, to include taking in eight or so Trawler Fest shows, going on two separate week-long training cruises, reading hundreds of articles, books, and blogs, and generally immersing ourselves in "trawler" culture as much as possible. All of this culminated in our retaining a broker back in October to help us find a boat, an individual whom we had met at a number of shows and with whom we had a good rapport and friendship.

After going aboard hundreds of vessels (each Trawler Fest hosts anywhere from 50-100 boats), and reading voraciously for six years, we've managed to somewhat prioritize our wants and needs when it comes to the boat. The reality of boating is that every boat represents one or more compromises, and the point we have come to has more to do with knowing what compromises we are willing to make, rather than having a bullet-point list of must-haves and must-nots. And, of course, there is the small matter of budget -- the "ideal" boat does not exist, but you can get a lot closer to it with an infinite supply of cash, something we do not have.


His face is his fortune. Probably not enough to buy a boat.

That's a really long lead-up to where we are at today in the search process, and why we have mostly crossed quite a number of boats off the list, including most recently the Hatteras 58 LRC. Let me start off by saying we are looking for a "trawler," which pains me to say, because that word is poorly defined even in the industry, has been co-opted for marketing purposes by many boats that don't really belong in the class. It is even more confusing to our friends, family, and non-boating readers, for whom it likely conjures up images of shrimpers on the bayou, or worse, those crab boats on "The Deadliest Catch." Or possibly the Andrea Gail.


Frugal boaters agree that old tires make the best fenders.

In recreational boating, a trawler is generally a roomy power boat that moves at displacement speeds, with relatively small engines, relatively good fuel economy, and usually all the comforts of home. They are a marked contrast from, for example, speedboats, which plane over the water, and are usually distinguished from motor yachts which, while similarly outfitted in the living spaces, are also designed to plane over the water and have enormous engines to allow them to do so.


Hull shape is the key.

Since no one can really agree on the definition, there are now all manner of boats with semi-planing hulls and larger engines which are also marketed as trawlers, and there are likely boats that more closely align with the definition above which, for whatever reason, are marketed as something else. We're immune to marketing hype, however, and we are only looking at boats which move at hull speed, and prefer boats with engines to match that goal, and fuel tanks to provide great range.

Having settled that, next up on the list is size. There is a joke in the recreational boating community that if you have a "Whatchamacallit 50," then your boat is 60' long when bragging about it at the yacht club, and 40' long when paying the dock master for a slip. At some level, this joke is a fitting metaphor for the size we are looking for.

There is a mantra in the cruising community that one should buy the smallest possible boat that fits everything needed. There are good reasons for this: the smaller the boat, the more anchorages into which it will fit, the easier it is to handle in close quarters, and the less expensive it will be to dock (marinas usually charge by the foot of overall length for dockage), operate, and maintain.


Too big.

That said, there are downsides to smaller boats as well. For one thing, the longer the boat, the safer it will be in heavy seas, all else being equal. For another, there is the matter of hull speed: displacement boats are limited in speed by a formula related to waterline length. While counter-intuitive for many people, what this means is the longer the boat, the faster it goes. It is simple physics, and is immutable; the only way to make a boat go faster than hull speed is to make the bottom hydrodynamic, and push it so hard that the hull comes up out of the water and skips along on top -- planing.


Too small.

What this means for us is that we have decided our boat should be at least 40' at the waterline, which usually translates to 43'-47' overall. That's good for a top speed of close to nine knots, and should handle fairly rough seas reasonably well. And, until recently, we had also decided our boat should be at most 52' overall. That's to keep dockage costs down, reduce insurance premiums, make for fairly easy handling with just two of us aboard, and, not least of all, keep us from rattling around a ton of extra space that we don't really need.

Trawlers in this size range generally have two staterooms (bedrooms) and one or two heads (bathrooms). Below that and they start to get cramped, and above this length they often will have three or more staterooms and heads -- more spaces and equipment than we want to clean and maintain. For the last six months, we have therefore concentrated our search on trawlers from 43' to 52' overall.

As I have discussed here over the last few posts, we talked ourselves into a particular 60' boat in Washington, which is clearly well past our self-imposed limit. The boat had three staterooms and three heads, fully one more of each than we need, and that extra ten feet or so of boat to maneuver and pay for at the dock. But all boats are compromises, and this one seemed to meet every other criterion, in a way that no other boat we'd seen to date had. In the end, it fell through because of some technical issues with the boat that lurked beneath the surface. (As a side note, we'd still buy this boat if the seller would drop the price by the amount we'd need to spend at a boat yard fixing those issues.)

Having broken the magic 52' barrier with this boat, we decided to expand our search to include boats up to 60' in overall length. That's what led us, for instance, to look at the Hatteras 58 LRC last week. But, and this is a key concept, the size of a boat is not only measured by overall length, and, in fact, this number can be very deceiving.

The 60' boat we liked, a Dutch-built aluminum model, had a very low "house" (the part of the boat that is built above the main deck and protrudes above the hull). Wide walk-around decks, a very long foredeck, and generous afterdeck (the areas in front of and behind the house, between the house and the bow and stern of the boat) combined with the low house to make for a very sleek vessel with interior space, above deck, commensurate with many boats more in the 50' range. Even below decks, the space was constrained by a very fine and highly raked bow, and sleek sides.

In marked contrast, the Hatteras 58 was a much larger boat, even though it had two feet less overall length. The waterline length of the Hatteras was actually greater, and the boat was both wider and taller, both below decks as well as above. This boat, for example, had four staterooms and four heads, one more of each than the 60' boat. In short, it was really too much boat for us on almost all counts. To top it off, it was already at the top of our budget, leaving little for any changes, and lacked a bow thruster, an essential feature (for us) that we would have to add before we could even leave the dock.

Along with type and size, among our top search criteria is seaworthiness. We are not looking at any boats that can not handle "green water" across the deck -- meaning ocean waves breaking across the decks of the boat. This rules out boats with poorly sealed doors and windows, low freeboard (the distance from the waterline to the lowest opening through the hull), insufficient ballast (heavy material at the bottom of the hull to right the boat when it tries to roll over, like those old punching bags or Weebles toys), or attachments to the decks that can't handle rough weather.


Not a displacement-hull trawler. Also not very big waves. But plenty of testosterone.

While seaworthiness may seem like a no-brainer, there are plenty of so-called trawlers that are not meant to be taken to sea in heavy weather. Even many salt-water boats spend their whole lives in protected waters such as estuaries like San Francisco Bay, or the Intracoastal Waterways. Many of these boats are fine choices even for the Bahamas, just a day's passage from protected waters in Florida which can be made in favorable weather, but can not weather an open ocean crossing.

Whether or not we ever take our boat across the Atlantic, for example, to cruise the Mediterranean, or across the Pacific to Hawaii and the South Pacific, it is a sure bet that we'll at least be out in the ocean a fair bit. Even getting from San Francisco to LA requires a stint in open ocean, and we won't buy a boat that is not capable of making such a passage in relative safety.

From here, the list starts to get more fuzzy, and we enter the territory of compromises. Probably next on our wish list is range. Even the most seaworthy boat can't cross the Atlantic without a range of at least 2,000 nautical miles, so if we ended up with a boat with less range than that, we'd be limited to
"coastal cruising." Range is a function of the fuel mileage of the boat and size of the tankage, and the fuel mileage is somewhat controllable by speed. Most of the boats we are looking at would have to slow down to about six knots to make a crossing on the available tankage.

After range would come stabilization. Stabilization counteracts the tendency of the boat to roll from side to side, and is a matter of comfort and safety in heavy seas. Some hull shapes are inherently more stable than others, but many boats can benefit from the addition of a stabilization system. There are lots of ways to do it, including passive fins protruding from the hull known as "bilge keels," active fins which are electronically controlled by a gyroscope and are steered, much like airplane ailerons, to counteract the roll, towed "paravane" stabilizers suspended from poles on either side of the boat (and imparting more of a fishing-trawler appearance to it), massive gyroscopes, and anti-roll tanks full of liquid ballast, to name a few. Adding stabilizers to a boat that does not already have them can be an expensive proposition, so we are trying to look only at boats that have them, or have plenty of headroom in the price to add them.


Boat with paravane stabilizers out.

While it would seem at this point that next on the list should be lots of technical items like engine systems, generators, water makers, and the like, or maybe bridge electronics like radar sets and chart plotters (what a GPS navigation system is called on a boat), or even safety equipment like life rafts and radio beacons, I am not really concerned about those. The more we pay for the boat, the more of these things need to be good-to-go, but I am confident in our own abilities to update, upgrade, repair, or replace these kinds of things as needed to make the boat safe, comfortable, and efficient. Instead, our next category is accommodations.

At some level, this can really be moved to the top of the list, because, in reality, if the layout and accommodations don't feel right to us the moment we step aboard, we seldom get as far as looking at the engines, fuel tanks, stabilizers, and the like. We've stepped aboard more than one salty and seaworthy boat that could easily go around the world without even breathing hard, only to make an about-face after sitting down in the salon (living room) or stepping into the head.

Some of our non-negotiables here include a panoramic view from the main living area, which is where we would expect to spend most of our waking hours aboard. A master stateroom with at least a "queen" berth (bed), which I put in quotes because many berths are not rectangular and the mattress might only measure up to queen standards in a specific spot. A master head with enough counter space to put in and take out contact lenses, and a shower large enough to stand in and wash comfortably. Room somewhere for a washer and dryer. And a guest stateroom with comfortable berths for two adults.


You can really get the feel of a boat from a good model.

I have to confess that it is really this accommodation category that makes me appreciate Odyssey -- so many of the boats we have visited represent a step down in overall comfort and convenience from what we have today. And while I am willing to do (or invest in) some minor remodeling to make some of the spaces more closely align with our needs, we don't want to repeat the Odyssey experience, wherein we ended up gutting the bus and starting from scratch, a costly lesson.

So there you have it, a run-down of the top considerations for our boat search. To summarize, we are looking for a robust, open-ocean boat in the 43'-60' range that moves efficiently at hull speed, has 2,000-mile range, stabilizers, and a comfortable layout. Ideally we'd like walk-around side decks, a "fly bridge" (outside controls) in addition to the pilot house, draft less than 6', air draft (height with all masts lowered) less than 19', a double or queen berth in the guest stateroom, and good access for scuba diving. There must be a way to get the boat to port even if an engine fails, which can be a second engine or a "get-home" system such as hydraulic drive from the generator. We'd like to stick to two staterooms, but will settle for three if the price is right and all else meets our needs. The rest, as they say, is negotiable.

Finally, a number of people have written to express their concerns about the future of this blog. Rest assured that I will continue blogging even after we have moved to a boat. Most likely that will be right here at OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com, because our life will still be an odyssey even if that is not the name of the boat. And the 1,700 or so posts already here thus far will remain as an archive of our time on the road. I hope you will continue to follow us, but we do understand that quite a few of our readers are here specifically for the RV or bus content. I am sure we will also pick up some new readers who are more interested in cruising than RVing.

All photos used under a Creative Commons license. To see title and creator, hover over or click on each picture.

About those batteries

I heard back from the battery dealer, and it looks like we will not be able to pick them up until Wednesday. After checking on the camping situation on the coast, which is slim pickings at this time of year, we decided to just spend another night right here at Lee State Park.

In the meantime, regular reader Rod left a comment on this morning's post that I think merits an answer here in the main text of the blog. Rod writes:

I am certain that customers requiring eight 500 amp-hour AGM batteries don't come along very often for battery vendors. Since the price of this seems to be at least a dollar an amp-hour, I am curious as to the number of cycles that can be expected with your bank. I read that discharged 80 percent, one could only expect 400 cycles. That would be $10 a cycle which seems quite high. Perhaps the trick is to never discharge below 50%. Just curious. ...

First, let me correct the numbers: the Trojans are 230 amp-hours (AH), some of the other batteries we considered were as large as 260 amp-hours (although that seems a bit optimistic for me for an 8D), and they averaged around 245 amp-hours in the 8D size. That makes our bank of eight a total of 920 amp-hours (at 24 volts; remember these are 12-volt batteries). That puts the cost per amp-hour at about $4.24 for our 24-volt system; it would be $2.12 per amp-hour for a 12-volt system.

That's about the going rate right now for AGM batteries. You might find a lower per-AH cost for batteries that are in a more common size (8D is not a very common size for traction batteries), but mostly, batteries of all types are a commodity item and the price fluctuates broadly based on supply and demand. Cost of materials does also enter into it, and lead and other components of these types of batteries, also commodities, have been rising steadily over the past few years. By way of illustration, most vendors wanted to charge me about $60 more per battery without a trade-in, so my used, fully depleted 8Ds are worth that much just in recycling value.

Now, to answer the question, the number of cycles, as you note, depends heavily on the depth of discharge (DoD). Some reputable manufacturers actually publish a chart or graph plotting cycle life vs. DoD. For example, the chart on the last page of this document, from Trojan, shows that Trojan AGM batteries can deliver nearly 2,000 cycles at 40% DoD, dropping to 1,000 at 55%, 450 at 80%, and fewer than 300 cycles at 100% DoD. Charts from other manufacturers are similar, and one can extend the summary results of these charts really to most brands of AGM battery in the same size range.

Armed with this information, it is possible to do some optimization of discharge/charge cycles to maximize the value, rather than the lifetime, of the batteries. For example, while phenomenal cycle life is available by keeping to within only, say, 25% DoD, the fact is that putting the last 25% of energy back into the batteries takes way more power than putting the first, second, or even third 25% of the energy into them. Lead-acid batteries, like many other things in engineering, follow what we like to call the "80/20 rule," wherein putting the first 80% of charge into the battery takes 20% of the power, and getting that last 20% into it takes the other 80%. Any given battery will not be those exact percentages, but you get the idea.

For this reason, most of us put that last 20% in, a process called "topping off," only when the cost of power is very low. Typically, this is when we are on shore power, provided as a fixed part of the cost of a camp site, for example. Many of us choose to stop the charging process at about 80% state-of-charge (SoC), or in other words still at 20% DoD, when charging from a costly source such as a diesel generator, where the cost to run can be upwards of $5 per hour.

If you know the number of cycles vs. DoD, from a chart such as Trojan's, and the charge absorption profile of the battery, and the capability of your charger, and the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to supply that charger, you can completely optimize the exact DoD to be routinely using in order to minimize the "cost per stored kWh" for a given set of batteries.

That's all well and good, but for RVers in the real world it's not that simple. That's because our discharge needs, charging capabilities, and cost per recharge are highly variable. Ultimately, we end up with a different DoD for almost every cycle. Even boondocking for two weeks in the desert, where you'd have the most control over when to start and stop the charge process in each cycle, the fact that most generator auto-start systems can only work on voltage and not actual DoD will mean that you are not controlling the process precisely enough.

I'd love to tell you how many cycles we got out of this set of Trojans, but I simply can't. Most battery monitors, ours included, simply can not keep enough history. What I can tell you is that our meter counts up to 1,999 cycles, and we're well beyond that. However, it also shows that our "average" DoD is a mere 20 amp-hours. That's because 20 amp-hours is deep enough to cause the meter to start counting, and so even if we stop the bus for an hour to get a bite to eat, or go shopping, or whatever, we'll get a 20 amp-hour cycle, as the main alternator will very quickly charge that amount back up while we drive.

Even as we sit here today, connected to a 30-amp pedestal, we are racking up 20 AH cycles. We have our inverter max input dialed down to 24 amps, but when two air conditioners cycle on at the same time, we are drawing 26-28 amps, plus whatever else we are using, and the inverter supplements it from the batteries. That can draw the batteries down 20 AH before an A/C cycles off, dropping the load below 24 amps and causing the charger to start recharging the batteries, and the cycle repeats ad infinitum.

This same meter also tells me that my greatest DoD since we installed these batteries was 877 amp-hours, or a whopping 95% of capacity. (Shortly after that episode I adjusted the LBCO on the inverter to prevent this from happening again.) In practice I can tell you that when we are boondocking for multiple days, we draw the bank down to about 75% DoD and charge it back up to about 75% SoC, so we are using about 50% of the total capacity, and this happens over and over again, with a cycle time of about two days in temperate weather, or a mere half day (12 hours) if we are running an air conditioner.

When we drive every day, in temperate weather, the generator never runs, and we drop to about 20% DoD while parked, and recharge to 100% SoC while driving. Without a complete history of the last four years, I can't say with conviction how many of our cycles are the 75%/25% variety, how many are the 20%/0% variety, and how many are the 10%/0% variety that the meter likes to count.

Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, though, I can make some guesses. Completely ignoring the 10% "blips" that the meter likes so much to count, I would guess conservatively we have over 2,000 cycles on these batteries. I would further guess the average net DoD of those cycles to be in the 35% range, or right between the 20% sort when we drive and the 50% sort when we boondock. That's consistent with Trojan's life cycle prediction for these, which shows about 2,500 cycles at 35% DoD.

If my guesses are correct, and adding in some of those 10% cycles for good measure, we've gotten (and replaced) about 650,000 amp-hours, or over 15,000 kWh from this set of batteries. That works out to a cost of about $0.25 to "store" a single kWh of power. This is in addition to anything it might cost to generate that power, and might be compared to the nationwide average cost of grid power, about half that amount. So on an RV, even "free" electricity (say, from solar, or included in campsite fees), stored for later use, costs more than grid power at a typical fixed structure.

That's a very long-winded answer to your question, but it is a source of much confusion and a topic on which I often spend a good deal of time in my seminars. This is one of the reasons I often have to caution people with unrealistic expectations about "free" solar power, or installing large battery plants in preference to an appropriately-sized generator. There are many good reasons to have a large battery bank, but cost savings is not a slam-dunk; it varies widely by circumstance and you really need to do the math.

This provides a good opportunity to reflect on our current mode of travel, "power pole to power pole." As long-time readers know, we don't generally do this and it is not our preferred way to live. Mostly it is something we do when we are traveling through hot or humid environments and we need air conditioning full-time, a sort of travel we generally avoid unless we have a specific destination, such as a Red Cross deployment, or a conference someplace, where we need to be.

For many RVers, though, this is standard practice, and while it is not our own preference, it makes perfect economic sense. This is especially true for those who are not full-timers, and who use their rigs for a couple dozen nights each year. You can buy a lot of $30-$50 camp sites for what a good set of batteries will cost, and when you're done camping, that camp site investment does not require any ongoing maintenance. This, too, is something I discuss in the seminar.

When all is said and done, there is not a single one-size-fits-all answer for the right balance among batteries, inverters, generators, solar, and power-pole usage for all RVers. Our set of choices is almost the right balance for us. If I were in the market for a generator today, I would buy a 6.5 kW as opposed to the 15+ kW unit we have now (and which came with the bus). But I would definitely not trade in my large battery bank, and the flexibility it buys us, even though it costs us about a grand a year.

Photo by mikeysklar, used under a Creative Commons license.

Sweet sound of a purring two-stroke

Today we started the main engine. It fired right up, and other than a minor leak in the power steering system, quickly resolved, all seems to be well. Clearly Joel is confident, since they put the tailgate back on this afternoon. The cooling system is filled with plain water, in preparation for a good flush over the pit before we put all new coolant in, per the recommendation of the radiator shop.

In the meantime, I spent most of the day in the generator bay, trying to get the enclosure and ductwork back together. Yesterday I managed to replace the old and crappy wire-type hose clamp on the leaky coolant hose with a standard worm-drive type. That seems to have cured the leak, although only a long load test will tell, something I can't do with the exhaust just millimeters from the shop door.

We did not get a chance to test the transmission today, as we did not actually move from our position, in which we have been for three weeks. And while we did not actually finish everything up today, I am hopeful that tomorrow things will be buttoned up enough for a road test. If that goes well, we should be able to leave sometime Wednesday, for parts unknown.

My last few posts here have generated a lot of comments, many expressing either sympathy or, perhaps, disbelief. I want to take a moment to address this. While, to some, these sorts of posts may seem to be nothing more than an exercise in whining, I write up all of our mechanical tribulations for two reasons. The first is that, for whatever reason, the mechanical issues and repairs posts are enormously popular with our readers -- more on this in a moment. The second is that, just like a ship's log book, this blog is the record of everything we do with, to, and on this bus, and we often find ourselves needing to go back to our own posts to verify what has or has not happened in the past. For example, while we have been here at this shop, I have gone back to several posts from the two times we had the engine rebuilt, as well as the time the power steering pump was replaced, and of course the posts about our original discovery of the end-plate gasket leak. All of those references yielded valuable information for our current circumstance.

About that popularity... I would like to think that most of the readers who are fascinated by these posts are learning something from them. In my fantasy, readers are looking at these mechanical issues, seeing how we deal with them, and that is giving them the confidence to strike out on their own, knowing that all these sorts of problems are manageable. Some, I hope, are actually gleaning a technical tidbit or two, while others are seeing that there are resources all over the country to help even those of us with weird, out-of-production, custom-converted rigs get things fixed.

Of course, I could be way off base. It's possible that the popularity of these posts is a kind of schadenfreude -- "Gosh, hon, look at all the trouble Odyssey is having. Boy am I glad we bought a Bluebird/Monaco/Newell/Marathon/YadaYada coach that has no problems whatsoever (cough, cough), and, even if it did, we can just go to the dealer and slap down our Visa card and get them fixed."

In any case, I want to assure our readers that we are fine, and we consider all that has transpired in the last three weeks to be par for the course -- part and parcel of owning a 27-year-old weird German bus. I haven't seen the bill yet, but when all is said and done here at Choo-Choo Express, it will not have cost us even as much as one year's property taxes from when we lived in a condo in California. In fact, when we are done here we will have spent the better part of a month, and we've paid nary a cent for rent and utilities, even though we have been helping ourselves to power, water, and sewer. Again, back in San Jose that would have been perhaps a $2,000 expense for the month -- a good bite out of our shop tab right there.

Sure, I'd rather not have had to do this. But in the grand scheme of our lives, it is but a minor annoyance. As you may know, we are contemplating moving from Odyssey onto a boat, and I have every reason to believe that boat ownership will be more of the same, except with higher shop rates. No way are we ready to trade this lifestyle for "the American dream," complete with property taxes, utility bills, pesky neighbors, and, of course, all the same plumbing/electrical/Internet/whatever problems that even homeowners must navigate.

One of the television programs I have taken to watching on occasion is a show called Holmes Inspection on HGTV. Perhaps that is my own form of schadenfreude. It is a good reminder that there are "conventional" homes with even bigger problems than an orphaned quarter-century-old German tour bus. In a day or two, we will be back on the road and enjoying the life of travel that we love so much, and all of the hard work of the last few weeks will fade into the background.

Photo by Godfrey DiGiorgi

About that boat...

Photo by Koocheekoo

My last post here generated a question of sufficient magnitude to warrant answering with its very own post. At some point I will post separately with our current whereabouts and plans for the next week or so.

Reader Lisa asked: "Are you getting rid of the Odyssey when you get the boat????"

This, of course, is an excellent question, and deserves a complete and thoughtful answer. Which is, "Maybe." In all seriousness, when we first decided to follow our land tour of North America with a sea tour of, umm, the rest of the world, we assumed that we would be somehow parting with Odyssey whenever we completed the transition to the boat. The "ideal" situation would be that we'd be able to live in Odyssey at the boat yard while "the boat," whatever she may be, was outfitted and readied and tested and whatever. Then we'd pass along Odyssey's keys to her happy new owners as we sailed off into the sunset. Or so the story goes.

To that end, at some level, Odyssey has always been "for sale." And, face it, like that old "will you for a million dollars" joke, nearly everything in the world is for sale, at the right price. Having said that, though, I will tell you that in our very first year on the road, a woman expressed interest in buying Odyssey and we were definitely, at that point in time, not ready to sell -- at least not at any sort of real-world price. But after perhaps our second year we started saying that if the right offer presented itself at any time, we'd take the money and run. And of course, the "right offer" naturally has decreased over the years.


Photo by Elsie esq.

In our first year on the road, someone would have needed to offer us not only every penny we invested in the bus, including the value of our own sweat equity, but also something extra to make up for the time setback to our dream, sort of a loss-of-use payment. Somewhere during the second year our price had dropped to just under what we had invested, and after we'd been to every state in the continental U.S. it was more like "fair market value," where our idea of fair market is influenced by the special capabilities we included when we built it.

What has happened, though, in the past two years has really changed everything. Which is to say, the bottom has dropped out of the RV market, and in particular the bus conversion market. Many of our readers already know that several coach builders went out of business entirely, and others were bought for a song. Inventories are at an all-time high, and used rigs are all but worthless. Many RV owners found themselves upside down on their coach loans in short order, and the resulting short sales and foreclosures or repossessions have driven used inventory up even further and prices lower.


Photo by P M M

The reality is that we'd have trouble selling Odyssey in today's market. Oh, sure, I harbor fantasies that there is someone else out there "just like us" who would value the highly specialized features and capabilities of our bus as much as we do and would be willing to pay a premium for them. But to most buyers, Odyssey is just another converted bus, and a quarter-century old one at that, and there are thousands of used bus conversions on the market today. Most are newer than ours and many are selling for a fraction of what we could accept for our beloved bus. Compounding this issue is the fact that we have led a very public life right here on this blog, and so every tiny little problem with the bus, whether since corrected or not, is now public knowledge. We can't very well claim that it belonged to a little old lady who only used it to boondock at church on Sunday.

So here's the answer: Odyssey is, and has been for some time, "for sale." If someone walks up to me with the right offer, which might be cash in hand or it might even be a trade for an appropriate boat, with some cash in one direction or the other, we are ready and willing to move out of it and turn the keys over tomorrow. But we are not yet to the point of actively pursuing such a sale by, say, creating a sales page on our site, or listing Odyssey with any brokers or sales sites, although that day will surely come. However, we are making alternative plans for the possibility that we will move aboard a boat without selling Odyssey at all.


Photo by Ole M

Those plans broadly fall into two categories. One would be to find a nice, inexpensive, secure, and climate-friendly place to store the bus indefinitely. We would take all the appropriate precautions to preserve its condition for some future time when we retire from boating and return to the land, at which point it would again become our home. In the meantime, several of her systems and appliances might be moved into the boat for use there, such as the marine refrigerator, the inverter, the diesel boiler, the Advantium oven, the A/V equipment, and even the batteries.

The other would be to find a "tenant" or bus-sitter. Someone with similar interests and skills who would be willing to take care of Odyssey, keep up the maintenance, and take care of any problems in exchange for the ability to live and/or travel in her rent-free. There would be a contract and some sort of deposit to ensure that the bus was not deliberately mistreated in our absence.


Photo by tracky_birthday

We are often asked about timing. When, exactly, would any of this happen? And in keeping with the rather unplanned and unscheduled nature of most of the rest of our life, the answer is not pat. We're asked often enough, though, that I am very practiced in responding: We will move from the bus to the boat when one of three things happens: 1. We get an offer we can't refuse on the bus. 2. We get a deal we can't pass up on a boat. Or 3. something happens to the bus that renders it impractical to repair (Louise worries about this one every time we embark a ferry). At this writing, #2 is the most likely event of the three. But you never know -- maybe someone with cash and a secret longing to own our bus is reading this post.


Photo by bunky's pickle. All photos used under a Creative Commons license.

A closet full of skeletons

We are parked at the Elks Lodge in San Jose, California (map). This is a frequent stop for us, perhaps our "most usual" parking spot in the bay area, due to its easy access to transit and its proximity to downtown San Jose, where we used to live and where we still own a condominium that we rent out. It's a little pricey here, at $18 per night, so we often stay elsewhere if we don't need the 50-amp power, but on this visit we're on a mission.

Long-time readers may know that we are "all-in" full-timers: we have no "home base" and no permanent home waiting in the wings. We kept the condo here strictly as an income property, and to hold a chip in the real estate game as a hedge against runaway property inflation for that day in the distant future when we might settle down again, in places unknown. So far, of course, that inflation has not happened, and, in fact, the place is worth more or less exactly what we paid for it ten years ago.

Our dirty little secret, though, has been that we kept a small storage closet here for ourselves. It came with the condo when we bought it, but it is a separate space, accessed through the common parking garage. We didn't even disclose its existence to the tenant or management company. It's pretty small, at just 3½ by 5¾ feet, but it afforded us the opportunity to store a handful of things we just could not get rid of, but either did not need or could not fit on the bus. For example, several banker's boxes worth of company records from the business Louise sold, which needed to be kept, for tax reasons, for seven years. Similarly, records from sales of previous property each of us owned, and our respective divorces, also needed to be stored for the IRS-mandated seven years.

Here we are, though, at the 5½ year mark of living full-time aboard Odyssey. This tax season marks the seventh year since the business was sold, and we are well past that on any previous real property or former spouses, and the banker's boxes of records can go to the shredder. And so it is that our "excuse" for keeping a storage closet of any sort has ended, and the realization has dawned that we could be making a few extra bucks every month by renting the thing out to someone else in the building (our own tenant, to whom we offered first refusal, does not want it).

Now the reality, of course, is that since we just had to keep the closet for record storage, and there was some extra room in there, we ended up filling it to the brim with things that, for one reason or another, we could not part with before we hit the road, but could not take with us. Mostly, the reasons were emotional attachment: Louise's family silver, handed down from her grandparents. Award plaques and other keepsakes we each had earned over the course of an entire career. A nearly complete set of Waterford crystal, a poor choice for bus (or boat) use, given to me by my parents at the time of my first marriage. Books inscribed by the people who presented them to us as gifts -- sometimes the authors. Stuffed toy animals from our childhood. The antique lacquered chest that had belonged to Louise's grandfather.

There are also items of less emotional content, kept for more practical reasons. The nearly brand-new 6' stepladder we bought for household maintenance in the condo. A carpet knee-kicker. Extra pieces of carpet and vinyl flooring, as well as leftover plumbing and electrical items from the complete renovation we did before we moved in. Even leftover paint, all kept in the name of maintenance of the unit as a rental property. Leftover bits of the bus conversion we did not need to carry, like the base stand for the TV, which we instead mounted on a swing-arm, or the 6-gallon air compressor that got repaired after we were forced to replace it with something better, and even an extra chain and sprockets for the Suzuki motorcycles we no longer carry.

Somehow, though, over the course of more than five years, our memories of what was really in there had grown dim, and the sheer scope of the project to empty it and move on did not fully dawn until we were halfway into the excavation. What we had remembered more clearly was the enormous amount of downsizing we had done before we moved onto the bus. We sold or gave away everything, or so we had remembered. Dozens of lineal feet of books, decades of accumulated furniture, a lifetime of knick-knacks, tons of silverware, cookware, glassware, stoneware, outerwear, everywhere.

Much of that process, too, had been hard. Selling the roll-top desk that I got as a young teen. Ridding myself of textbooks that I had accumulated through graduate school, college, and even high school, their wealth of information made obsolete by the Internet and the passing of time -- ten elements have been added to the Periodic Table since my textbooks were published. Parting with tools I had collected for nearly four decades. Most of the hard work, I thought, had been done.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth: the things that were simply too hard to part with, contained too many memories, ultimately went into the closet that "we had to have anyway." And so it is a closet full of skeletons, the "things" that own us, rather than the other way around, making a mockery of the word "possessions." We are determined to face them down, and live the life we have chosen, unfettered by closets full of things we don't use in places we don't live.

As I type this, I am sitting in a sea of cardboard boxes; the simple act of walking from the penthouse to the bedroom is an acrobatic exercise that often exacts collateral damage on the dog, who was always underfoot anyway and now has nowhere to escape. The past two days have been a whirlwind of eBay activity as we sell everything from sterling silver to bits of police motorcycle uniforms. There are more books than either of us remembered, between the keepsake and inscribed volumes, and the ones we thought we'd read "someday" in a few years, after we whittled down the stack we brought with us to while away the time (we've averaged only one a year since we left). Sadly, the books have no monetary value, and we are donating them to the library.

The bulkier items are on Craig's List, like the air compressor. I've got about five pounds of Freon R-12 refrigerant in a 30# cylinder that I'm trying to figure out how to legally sell, worth a couple hundred bucks. There are a daunting number of items still to list on the Internet, including motorcycle parts, collectible Matchbox cars, and various bits of memorabilia. We'd already exhausted the family and friends avenue before we hit the road: the heirlooms we've been storing were offered to family in the pre-departure purge, and our friends ended up with a lot of our furniture, tools, and kitchenware.

Louise is better at this than I. Other than a box of childhood toys that will need some kind of ceremonial send-off (they are too far gone even to be given away at this point), she has had no trouble glancing at items and plopping them into boxes or onto piles. I, on the other hand, have spent inordinate amounts of time thumbing through cherished volumes, fondling keepsakes, and ruminating about appropriate dispositions for gifts from now-deceased relatives. I am taking digital photos of the truly important items as a memento, but as they say at liquidations, "everything must go."

When we left here five and a half years ago, the bus was packed to the gills -- we crammed everything in that we possibly could. But over that time we've consumed the consumables, replaced the replacement parts, and simply got rid of lots of stuff that we realized we were carrying around for no reason. So today we have a little more room, and I expect we will once again leave here with none to spare. Some of the books will get crammed in the bookshelves, the motor uniform will get stuffed in the closet, and extra tools and parts will be squeezed into the bays.

Several boxes will likely fill the living room as we plan to cull through thousands of slides and photographic prints, both loose and in albums, and send the ones we'd like to keep off to be digitized. Some of the for-sale items will likely leave here with us as well, until their listings end or a buyer steps forward. And I am mentally preparing myself for the reality that, on our last day here about two weeks from now, there will be a huge pile of stuff that will have to go to Freecycle, Goodwill, or the dump. I hope I will be ready.

Haiti is broken: send money -- and nothing else

Yesterday, while researching the answer to a question about solar power that came up in an on-line forum, I landed on the web site of a large supplier of solar panels and equipment. I was disturbed to find there a plea for the collection of a large number of items for Haiti relief, including clothing, blankets, and prescription medicines. I was equally disturbed to learn a couple of days ago that well-meaning but ill-equipped civilians from the US have been spontaneously showing up in Haiti "to help." (I am not talking here, of course, about materials collected by legitimate and well-established relief agencies, many of whom are asking for specific donations such as medical supplies, or about volunteers being sent to Haiti by these agencies, which are both needed and logistically supported.)

While both these efforts are most certainly well intentioned, they are actually counterproductive to real, meaningful relief in Haiti. Rather than spend another several paragraphs here explaining why, I will just refer you to the following excellent articles:

This article from the New York Times does an excellent job of explaining why anything other than cold, hard cash is not worth the cost of delivering and processing it. We can confirm first-hand the part of this article that mentions piles of donated items rotting on the gulf coast after Katrina -- it helped virtually no one and diverted actual relief resources to deal with it.

This article from MSNBC does a good job of explaining why unsolicited volunteers are not helpful. Again, we can confirm first hand that there is very little a relief agency can do with an untrained, unbriefed volunteer from outside the area -- Haiti has no shortage of manpower right now, as virtually the entire capital is out of work, and able-bodied locals need the focus that self-rescue brings. Believe me, if we thought we could help, we'd be there -- and we're highly trained responders with specific technical knowledge that is badly needed there on the ground. (Some of our colleagues, who are certified for international deployment, are already there.) Without arriving under the auspices of a bona-fide aid organization, there would simply be no way for our skill sets to be put to use, and no provision to house or feed us while we're there.

In a related item, I will share that the cruise ship we sailed back at Christmas, Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas, has been stopping in Haiti every other week (our week was the other half of the itinerary, so we did not make that stop). Royal Caribbean invested millions of dollars into a private beach area on the north shore of the island for its passengers; this concept is nothing new, as most cruise lines sailing the Caribbean have done something similar, mostly in the Bahamas. They directly employ over 200 Haitians, and many other islanders come to the beach to sell their wares on port calls.

RCI has taken something of a black eye for electing to resume port calls to Haiti. (The private beach, in Labadee, is a long way from Port-au-Prince and was undamaged in the earthquake.) This despite the fact that they did so only after consulting with the Haitian government, who understandably were eager to have that economic activity resume. In addition to continuing to employ many Haitians (who otherwise would have to be laid off) and providing loads of direct revenue to local merchants, RCI has stated they will donate all net proceeds from Labadee operations to the relief effort, and the ships have even been delivering pallets of aid supplies.

While some cruise passengers are understandably conflicted about sitting on a beach in Haiti sipping cocktails while millions are suffering on the other side of the same island, morally speaking that's not any different from them sitting instead on a beach in, say, Jamaica, doing the same thing. I applaud RCI for sticking to its decision to continue to provide this business to Haiti rather than shifting it elsewhere; I remember how hard it was after Katrina for the gulf coast to reclaim its tourism business, which, in many communities, was the only industry at all. So if you really want to go to Haiti, take a cruise and spend some money there.

Read more about the ethics of cruising to Haiti right now in this article from the New York Times, and this one from CNN. If you would like to donate to the relief efforts in Haiti, we've added a link in our sidebar to the American Red Cross International Response Fund.

Photo: Talia Frenkel/American Red Cross

Shocking experience at the dump station

As we left Westworld this morning, we stopped at the dump station on the northwest side of the park (I believe there is also one just south of the big tent, but it was hard to be certain, whereas the one we used was clearly labeled).

As with many things at Westworld, including all 400 RV pedestals, the dump station was surrounded with four bollards, consisting of 4" or so diameter galvanized pipe driven into the ground, then filled with concrete, about 3' in height. A sensible precaution, given RVers' propensity to run into things with their rigs.

As I was wrapping up the dumping procedure, I had my hand on the bus someplace, and my arm brushed up against one of the bollards. I was quite surprised to get a shock. Hmm. After looking at the bollard and noticing some rough patches where the paint was flaking off, I decided that I must have just gotten scraped a little, and it just felt like a shock. I went back to what I was doing.

A minute or two later, it happened again, this time much stronger. In fact, the shock was so strong that I was reluctant to touch both items at the same time again until I knew what was going on. I finished up with the dumping, and, despite it already being 108° in the shade, got out my cheap backup voltmeter to check it out. Even though I knew intellectually that the bus was insulated from the ground, and therefore nothing on the bus could be creating this problem, my gut instinct was to make certain we did not have an on-board electrical problem.

When I connected the meter between the bus chassis and a bare spot on a bollard, at first I read 20 volts AC, but I knew the shock was stronger than that. After poking the probe around to get through the patina of rust on the bollard, the reading jumped to 239 volts AC, then jumped so high my cheapo meter would not read it -- it just flashed "OL" (overload), which meant it was over 400 volts AC. Wow -- that's a lot of voltage, and no wonder I got a shock.

Nothing aboard the bus produces that kind of voltage (well, OK, the HID floodlights do, internally, but they were off), and I was just about to conclude that the bollards were somehow carrying a voltage, when I realized I was hearing a 60-hertz hum coming from someplace nearby, and it was rather loud. Just then, I noticed that we were right under some high-tension lines.

I had noticed the two sets of transmission lines running across the property several times, but it did not really register that the dump station was right underneath them. The bollards, being metal and driven well into the ground, which, at the dump station, was very wet (I was doing cleanup, and so had the water hose running, washing down the dump hose and the ground all around the dump area) were at ground potential.



The bus, on the other hand, being 13' tall and sitting on rubber tires, was at a much higher potential (more than 400 volts above ground, clearly) sitting there in the enormous electric field of the high-tension lines. It was an eye-opening experience, and I will pay much more attention in situations where we find ourselves parked under transmission lines in the future.

This was also a graphic demonstration for me of something that I've known academically for a long time, and also is drilled into us every year when we re-certify on the Red Cross Emergency Communications Response Vehicles, which have 50' aluminum antenna masts that must scrupulously be kept away from power lines. We're even trained on how to hop out of an energized vehicle, then hop away, feet together, until well clear of the hazard. A difference of only a couple of feet in these kinds of fields can represent hundreds of volts -- enough to stop a beating heart.

I survived the experience to blog another day. But I have to wonder how many other people have gotten a shock while dumping there, and wondered where it came from.

Images uploaded by bre pettis. Illustrations from the book Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern.

Abusing my bully pulpit... Scam Alert: Longwood/Auto Marketing Systems

One of the great things about having a blog is that, when I am truly annoyed about something, I can use it as a place to vent. And while you may wish to simply skip the rest of this post if you don't want to hear me whine, you might also find value in reading, to avoid the same situation...

As I wrote here yesterday, we replaced the sleeper sofa here at Infinity. The sofa we removed, while it had some problems, specifically, the cushion foam was no longer comfortable, still had a lot of life left in it, and we knew someone else could get some good use out of it. Also, we abhor sending things to the landfill if there is any alternative. Of course, we don't have room to haul around an extra couch until we can get rid of it, so finding someone to take it within a few days (so that it also did not become an annoyance in the Infinity shop) was a priority.

We offered the sofa up to other folks converting buses, a notably parsimonious crowd, on two bulletin boards dedicated to that activity. But I also posted a for-sale ad on the Tacoma "Craigs List", on the theory that few bus nuts would be close enough to just come pick the thing up, and we really needed to move it. For the uninitiated, "Craigslist" is a free on-line want ad service, organized by geographic region and, as most want ad services, by category.

There are perhaps 30 categories on craigslist under "for sale," but "RV furniture" is not one of them. I could choose just plain "furniture," or "household," or even "auto parts," but to me the best fit was to just list it under "RVs." The ad very explicitly listed what it was that I was selling, had an asking price of $50, and included a photo of the sofa, so it was pretty clear to anyone who actually read the ad that I was not selling an "RV."

Craigslist is a searchable site, so anyone looking for a Flexsteel sleeper sofa would find this ad no matter where I listed it. But I did not want to get calls from people just looking for a household sleeper sofa, because I did not want to have to explain (likely many times over) how this one won't work unless it is bolted to the floor. As it turned out, I did ultimately get two legitimate calls from people in the Tacoma area interested in it, but after I had already promised it to a bus nut.

For the last week, my phone has been ringing every business day at about the same time each morning with a call from an "unknown number." When I answer, the line is dead. So this morning, when the call came, I let it roll to voice mail.

The message that was left was from someone named "Brad" from "Longwood, Inc." calling to tell me that his company could definitely help me sell my RV (huh?). There would be a small fee involved but it would be much more effective than traditional classified ads. He left a call-back number of 866-326-0949.

Of course, I called these folks back -- "Brad" was on another line (I don't think there is a "Brad" -- most likely this scam/sham/spam artist uses made-up first names to "code" their leads when/if the calls are returned). I read them the Riot Act, and I hope they have now removed my phone number from their database.

Clearly, this company, which also goes by "Auto Marketing Systems," "Longwood Industries," and perhaps several other names, and is operated by a Ms. Renee Fisher and Mr. Paul Russell from Bedford, Virginia, is using software to automatically harvest telephone numbers (and probably other salient details) from Craigslist ads in the Car and RV categories (and perhaps others), then making cold calls to those people to try to solicit business.

Now, Craigslist very clearly spells out in its terms of use for the web site that commercial enterprises are NOT permitted to call want-ad posters to solicit business unless invited, and every ad (mine included) by default includes this disclaimer: "it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests." But based on the huge number of complaints I could find on the 'net about this firm, they clearly do not care about this in the least. They apparently also cold-call sellers of vehicles in more traditional print-media want ads.

In addition to automatic harvesting of phone numbers from these web sites, Ms. Fisher, Mr. Russell and their minions clearly are scouring the internet for any signs of complaints against their company and its shady business practices. Mr. Russell has posted to myriad forums around the internet defending their business after complaints are posted. Since Google indexes this very blog fairly quickly, I fully expect Mr. Russell's robots to be reading this in short order, and I will not be the least bit surprised if (1) he comments here repudiating my account or defending their practices or (2) he or his army of underpaid boiler-room drones or software robots starts a spam or DoS attack here.

So, in hindsight, I have learned a valuable lesson, which is that phone numbers must be disguised in much the same way as email addresses when posted to on-line forums, lest they be harvested by spam-bots for nefarious purposes. I've also learned that Longwood Industries, AKA Auto Marketing Services, employs a lot of idiots who can't tell a sofa apart from an RV. And, lastly, the next time I want to sell an RV accessory or furnishing, I'll list it in a category that does not include vehicles for sale.

Photo by TarikB, used under a Creative Commons license.