Aboard No Boundaries
July 4, 2009
Happy Birthday, America! May you still be the land of the free on your next birthday!
A marvelous thing happens when you exit the C&D Canal and enter Delaware Bay.
As you approach that exit, you are looking forward toward a view defined by the banks of the canal. For a mile or more, you look down that visual funnel toward what looks like a shore with houses and trees. However, before you truly exit the canal, you pass between a pair of stone breakwaters that push out into the Bay. Beyond the breakwaters, you see nothing but water in every direction, including the direction where you once thought you saw houses and trees.
It is waterworld. In fact, the illusion that grips you is a feeling that the water is encroaching on those breakwaters. It is as if you are in the center of a huge encircling wave. As you pass out of the canal and into the Bay, the impression remains that you have entered a world where nothing matters but water. We have been at sea where no land could be seen, and that is an impressive experience the first time it happens. This is different. Somehow, the contours of the canal banks and breakwaters change everything. There seems to be water above and below and all around, and all of it is coming your way. You don’t really escape for probably a mile.
Today we are truly passing out of sight of land. It is just past noon on July 4, and when I was still in the cockpit a few minutes ago, I could see no land except a hazy bubble of trees along the western horizon. We will exit Delaware Bay soon, and eventually every hint of terra firma will fade away. We will truly be at sea.
This is what we worked and dreamed for. When we left Harborview on May 1, we would never have predicted it would take two months to get here. Today the duration of two months fades unimportantly away. We are here. The dream is happening. The champagne is in the fridge. We are moving forward. All around is water, and that is a good thing. Sailboats love water. Our poor sailboat has been a prisoner far too long. It must feel like a bird let out of a cage. I know I do!
Ship’s Log
No Boundaries
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
What’s the Price?
Every householder knows the cost of running a home. The water bill. The electric bill. The phone bill. The internet bill. Nothing is free.
We have similar problems aboard a cruising sailboat, but they look a bit different.
For example, if you live in a house on a lot in a Baltimore suburb, when you decide to wash your hair, you go to the shower, fiddle with the water until it is the right temperature, and then let the water sluice over you. You wash head to toe with soap or body wash. You drown your hair in water and then continue to enjoy the lovely feeling of that falling water as you massage the shampoo to a lovely foamy suds. You rinse and repeat, all the while letting your personal waterfall carry all your troubles away. In the back of your mind, you may remember a few public recommendations that you take shorter showers, so you may work a little faster, but you probably never turn off the water until you have finished.
Aboard a boat, when you decide that you want to wash your hair, an accounting must be done. The same kind of accounting applies to almost any activity that uses water or energy or both. Hot water, for example, can hit all the issues.
On our boat, we have 4 water tanks that hold a total of 240 gallons when full. Experience teaches us that we can expect to use that 240 gallons in two weeks if we don’t do anything special to manage our usage when we are in a marina where we can shower without using water in our tanks. Washing hair involves at least two applications of shampoo and then a complete rinse. To achieve cleanliness and in order to rinse out all the shampoo, absolutely essential, we must use several gallons of fresh water. Neither of us has yet reached a comfort level with washing in salt water, and most people would agree with us. When we are out and about, at anchor in a lovely little cove, we need to use our resources wisely and efficiently in order to spend more time in lovely coves than in marinas.
Washing my hair requires plenty of fresh water. Fresh water comes from some source on land or can be acquired by running our watermaker which desalinates sea water. If we get water from land, for example we might be able to get water at a fuel dock if we buy fuel, then we must be sure that we do not run out of water before we have a chance to get more. Dirty hair is a trivial complaint compared to dying of thirst. Our 240 gallons seems like a lot until you remember that we cook, wash dishes, wash hands, wash our bodies, wash our hair, wash our clothes and so forth all with fresh water. Hmmm. Gotta be careful. Imagine that you had to live on 12 gallons a day, and that your supply had to last 20 days. You want to be able to eat and cook and wash your hands and your body. How often would you wash your hair?
And this is only the water account. Don’t forget that I want to wash my hair with hot water. Hot. We have a hot water heater on our boat. I can have hot water when I wash dishes and when I wash my hands, or my body, or my hair. However, that water is not free and the hot is not free.
First, the six gallons of water in that water heater (you read right – six gallons!) is a deduction from the total amount of water available to us. If it is in the hot water tank, it isn’t in the tank for drinking water. To be sure, when I mix hot and cold to a comfortable level, I use from the total 240 gallons available at the most, but I don’t have a forty-gallon hot water tank. I have six gallons. I could use up my whole six gallons in a leisurely shower.
Second, the water becomes hot by means of an electric heating element. In order to warm up the hot water, we must use AC electricity. And where does that electricity come from? Not from BGE. If we have electricity, we make it. We can run the diesel auxiliary engine or we can run our generator to charge the batteries. Batteries produce DC current, so we must run the inverter to obtain AC. Either the engine or the generator uses diesel fuel, so hot water ultimately is a charge against our fuel account. Those tanks have a limit, too.
Furthermore, running the inverter to convert DC power to AC power as required by the hot water heater results in a small loss of the total DC power in. The inverter gets hot, an energy loss that does nothing for us. For that matter, when operating, the engine and the generator throw off worthless heat also.
Oh, I do have another option. I could heat the water on the stove in a large kettle. Well, I still use water, and I add the use of propane. We have two fifteen pound tanks of propane that will in total last about two months. Two months, that is, if we do not use propane to heat the water for bathing and washing. Hmmm.
There is an energy price for charging the batteries. There is an energy price for converting DC to AC. There is a water price to fill the water heater, and there is an energy price to warm it up. Or there is a water price to fill a kettle and a propane price to heat it up. There is a water price for the cool water to mix with the hot water for washing my hair.
Whether I wash my hair or my hands, whether I cook pasta or green beans, there is a price to pay. The trick is to balance it all and still relax and enjoy life.
Which we do. This life has its challenges, but it has wonderful rewards. Another day we will share more of the rewards.