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Sailing AUKLET

~ Small sailboat cruising and related thoughts

Sailing AUKLET

Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Boat Farm

29 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by shemaya in Sailing the Farm

≈ 2 Comments

IMGP2863Sailing the Farm is the title of a book written by Ken Neumeyer in the 1970s. Used copies are sometimes available on Amazon. Details of the book may or may not be perfect, but I find the concept an absolutely outstanding model, and I am working toward putting it into practice. A movable homestead, and a boat undertaking that provides for itself in some of its most pressing needs, from water to fresh vegetables. I’m also very interested in foraging, but that does involve getting to land and all – except for seaweed, which is tasty pulled out of clean water as it floats by!

On the growing front, so far sunflower sprouts have been particularly successful. This in soil in deli containers – a shallow container with holes poked in it for drainage, set in a pint one that catches the drips. This boat has tremendous windows, and we made removable racks (thank you Theo!) with cutouts the right size for holding deli containers, yogurt containers, and the fancy sprout containers made by The Sprout People. Turns out regular sprouts haven’t been so successful, because of wild temperature variation in the cabin, and the enormous amount of fresh water needed to keep them rinsed. However! It also turns out that another way to do some kinds of sprouts is in about a half an inch of soil in a container. This has been much, much more workable. A couple of tablespoons of water and consistent spritzing keep the plants perfectly happy, and the sunflowers grow like crazy. They’re quite tasty, pinched off at three or four inches tall. And simple: half-inch of soil in the container, sunflower seeds from the natural food store (with hulls) spread over the top of the soil so they are just touching one another, water and spritz. In a few days they start growing. As you snip and eat the tall ones, the slower starters get going, so one container produces for many days.

Things that matter for deli container gardens: it seems like it would make sense to use soil from the garden, and it seems like all those garden books that talk about sterile soil are a little over the top. However! Speaking from experience, it’s worth picking up some of that “pathogen free” potting soil. This is because of a little creature called a fungus gnat, that can be just hanging around waiting to get in gear in average garden soil. Out in the garden, it’s not a big deal – they come, they go, they fly away. Indoors, they know exactly where they want to be – moist soil, with plant roots for their larvae to eat. And the only place for that in a boat cabin (or your living room) is all those nice containers with a half-inch of soil, or anything else potted… Besides being really annoying when they fly around, they’re bad for the plants. Which do need their roots intact, after all.

An alternative to buying potting soil is to start with soil gathered from the ground and then heat it – some people use their oven, and I have the idea that spreading it thinly in a clear plastic bag in the sun would do quite nicely. But for now, it’s potting soil. The other thing that can help is to add something that feeds the plants. Worm compost is nice – another thing from the garden store. It’s nutritious, not smelly, easy to store and use, and the plants love it. A couple of teaspoons in the soil in each deli container gives it a little something extra, and is easy to manage. So all in all, the boat farm supplies include a couple of quart bags of potting soil, a yogurt container of worm compost, plastic deli containers, some seeds, and a small spritzer bottle. And the best part, the plants give you somebody to talk to!

I’m still experimenting with different seeds, so far with mixed results. Will report more on that when some of the details are better worked out. But for now, those sunflower sprouts are exceptional, especially in the hot weather. Many thanks to Jules and Helen, for sending me in the direction of sprouts-in-soil, and sunflower sprouts in the hot summer cabin. Funny how all it takes is the right information at the right time, and next thing you know, you have fresh food!

Sailing the Farm – Rain Catching

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by shemaya in Sailing the Farm

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IMGP2850This is an experiment. At home with the sewing machine, Suzanne and I made this fabric thing, hemmed on the edges, with loops at the corners, and a funny fabric funnel stitched into a 4 inch hole cut in the fabric, which then ties onto a length of PVC tubing. This is a variation on a suggestion made by Lin and Larry Pardey in their book The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew. I’m using cotton fabric rather than plastic, or waterproofed fabric, on the theory that if this works I will use it for drinking water, and I’d like to have fewer chemicals in the water. Never mind that I’m storing the water in plastic containers… Seriously, the same chemicals that make a plastic sheet flexible enough to not crack are keeping everything soft enough to also come away in the water.

It’s a work in progress – first comes seeing if it’s possible to collect enough water with this small sheet of fabric to be practical. This first water will be for freshwater washing, and for watering plants. Then I get to work on hygienic strategies for drinking water, or resign myself to filtration.

Here’s the good news! Today we had a good soaking rain for about an hour, and at the end of that I had refilled the 2 quart wash water jug, AND the 10 quart plastic bucket. That’s great news on the sheet size. I have a small plastic manual bilge pump dedicated to wash water transfer, so half the bucket got pumped into the freshwater tank (which topped it off) and the rest went for rinsing the salt out of those orange fuzzy rags that are so nice for dealing with stray water where it doesn’t belong.

Still to go is drying the rain catcher cloth, which I didn’t leave set up because the wind was picking up and I was worried about it getting thrashed around. But once dry, it’s easy to store, and stays clean and salt-free. Not to mention free of stray dirt and bird droppings. I believe it’s going to be a workable system, and I’m ecstatic about being able to keep up with water for plants so easily.

With that for inspiration, more planting has gone on in the interior containers that go in racks under the windows. More on that when they’ve grown enough to be a little more photogenic. Meantime, here’s a try at including a picture of the rain catcher in action. Outdoor cockpit plants are slightly visible toward the back left, behind the bucket.

Launch!

23 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by shemaya in Trips

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It’s happened again – miraculous. Boat – and I – went in the water on Sunday, June 9. Close to a week at Warren and Margo’s dock, in Deep River (Connecticut) and then gradually down the river. Hiding out in back of Goose Island for a storm out of the northeast, with a tremendous visit by canoe from Mike, and then a morning visit with Suzanne at the Old Lyme Dock Company a little further down river. Issue with an anchor swivel resolved, and a few more supplies, and then a sweet little sail down to North Cove in Old Saybrook. Thunderstorms and rainbows, and a couple of days later we (AUKLET and I) were out of the river!

Old Saybrook to Block Island, and then Block Island to Cuttyhunk. First thing yesterday morning, Cuttyhunk to Waquoit Bay, on the south side of Cape Cod, and then today back over to Falmouth. Suzanne comes tomorrow – supplies, and a chance to fill in an absentee ballot for our pesky Senate race here in Massachusetts. Not to mention visiting!

Now the wind is blowing like crazy, and I’m happy to be in such a snug harbor. Tuesday morning, weather permitting, it’ll be back out of the marina-filled harbor, and maybe down to Cotuit, for quiet water and some time to enjoy the pretty sand.

Last night in Waquoit there were lots of striped cusk eel sounds – that rhythmic clicking, calling back and forth from different locations, sometimes right underneath the boat. So glad that I finally know what that sound is! Thank you to Rodney Rountree for identification of a recording from last year in Wellfleet.

So that’s it for now. In another post I’ll put the list of improvements we made over the winter – the time, and effort, and production are feeling quite worthwhile along about now… Hooray for AIS, and for a water tank (among other things)!

And my many, many thanks to everyone who has helped to make this possible. It is so truly a team undertaking, and I dearly thank each of you.

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