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I blew right past the May 1^st start, but then we didn't even arrive in Maine until May 9^th. Then there was and still is a long list of must get done items on our Dome house. But things have gotten a little less hectic and thoughts of the Tiki 30 come back. This picture gives and idea of the to be the site for the build of Tiki 30#164. Our dome house has a ruff diameter of 34 ft but the sides with entryways cut down that measurement. So the dimension from the face of the garage door to the opposite wall, which is through behind that stud wall through the door, is 31 ft 10 inches. From garage door to stud wall is only about 21ft, so some house remodeling will be the first order of business. The plan is to open up that wall about 7ft to the right of the door. The glass door will be reused in the main floor mud room.

 Next comes finding a place to keep my CLC Passagemaker dinghy.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand … Simplify, simplify." --H. D. Thoreau

The wait continues, Donna’s new 2nd Generation Catrike Trail has still not arrived at Mt Airy Bike. So we haven’t departed for Florida which means we haven’t left Florida to get to our home  in Maine the Tiki construction site. So I have been bent over the Tiki 30 plans for hours and hours over the last few weeks.

Every boat is a compromise naturally enough but I’ve found myself wanting more in the area of sailing performance out of my boats. But sailing performance is in near direct opposition to crew comfort. I forget where I read this and I’m in debt to the original author, “anything on a boat that doesn’t make it sail better, then by definition, makes it sail worse”.

Our first boat Tschuss, which was a Catalac 10M catamaran, sailed with two drogues in the water. Sure the three blade Michigan props made Tschuss a good motorboat but seriously detracted from any sailing performance. Our next boat Rubicon was a Heavenly Twins 26ft catamaran. Rubicon with an outboard that raised to the bridge deck and canoe hulls could sail circles around Tschuss. We lived aboard both and Tschuss was without a doubt more comfortable but I liked Rubicon immensely more.

I saw my first Tiki, I think it was a Tiki I didn’t know of Mr Wharrams designs in the summer of 2005, and I was in love. Here I was on this hideously complex boat, Tschuss, and there was that simple Tiki and it’s owners enjoying the same harbor. Now I’m reading about Rory’s “Cooking Fat” a Tiki 21 with just netting for a bridge deck and no motor and his amazing round the world adventure and cross Atlantic Jester Challenge races.  I really think that the best approach will be to keep changes to the basic Wharram design to the minimum, i.e. keep it simple!!

Yeah! got the call the Trike is in!!!! So no more Tiki updates for a few weeks when hopefully the build will be started:)

Can I really have refrigeration?

It’s been a rainy day so no trike riding. It’s been a day of design work. “Design work” a kind way to describe trying to put 10 lbs of sand in a 8 lb bag.  The TIki 30 was really designed as a tropical backpacking type boat. This makes sense since it can be disassembled and transported across a continent behind a small pickup truck. My problem is trying to put some more modern amenities in the equation. Adding a two burner stove or even an oven is trivial compared to adding refrigeration which is anything but trivial.

In this case I would like to have a small, approximately 5 cu-ft, ice box with Adler/Barbour Cold Machine refrigeration. I know that many long term cruisers do without refrigeration, heck some even do without a motor. But we’ve had refrigeration on our last two catamarans that we lived aboard from 2005 until last November. So I’m spoiled.

It is not an easy or cheap to add refrigeration. Here a a few things that need to be considered.

1. Spend over a grand to buy the Adler/Barbour compressor(CU-100) and evaporator(VD-150).
2. Find a well vented place to mount the compressor, preferably out of ear short. The evaporator will be in the Ice Box.
3. Design a 12 VDC battery system that has enough capacity to go a few days without recharge. We got away with 4 deep cycle batteries in the past. This will be adding to the boat probably 500 lbs in batteries, switches, circuit breakers, wire, etc. That’s 22% of the boats designed load carrying ability. Batteries and hardware will run several hundred bucks. And then find a place to put a few cu-ft of batteries.
4. Now design a way to keep these batteries charged when not at the dock. I’ve found that with a sunny day and under 90 degF ambient, my last ice box could keep cold with two 80 watt solar panels. But it’s not always sunny so the batteries are needed to carry through the less than sunny times. A wind mill would also help, since it does seem that when those cold fronts come through wind also comes with the clouds. The weight of a couple panels and a wind mill, cables, switches etc. can run about 50-lbs total.  And cost is again well over a grand.  And find a few sq-ft of space to mount the solar panels, without shadows. I don’t even consider running the engine or a generator since they destroy peace and quiet and have even higher life-cycle costs.
5. Next it would be nice when we’re at a dock if the batteries could be kept topped off using shore power, that will extend their lifespan and we could even run a toaster. So now I need to design an AC system with weather proof power cord, receptacle, circuit breaker, battery charger, wire, connectors, etc. Probably another 50-lbs of stuff and more than a couple Benjamin’s out of my wallet. 

So it probably costs 3 or 4 grand and adds about 600 lbs to a small boat. Damn, Donna and I could buy a couple of good beers every night for a couple years for that price and the only added boat weight would come from the extra pounds the beer will put on our bodies.

Wow, after typing all that up I’ve convinced myself that we need to learn to do without refrigeration, it’s just too expensive in cost, weight, and volume. A supper well insulated Ice Box will have to do. Plus this boat is not going to be a full time live aboard vessel, the plan is to cruise for 3-4 months a year.

Tiki is back on!

The rational half of my mind say "there is no time, a house to build, training for 2012 RAGBRAI" but then I see a picture of a Tiki and my mind immediately begins imagining white sand beaches and clear blue warm waters, and my irrational mind says "so what I WANT A TIKI 30!".
So I've been going over the plans again trying to see if I can fit the items we put in the "very nice to have" category.

1. A propane stove with oven,  a Force 10 compact would be nice.
2. Refrigeration.
3. Air Head composting toilet. 
4. In hull galley table. 

Now these hulls are narrow, I think pretty near a 10:1 length to beam. So after several drawings and discussions with Donna, the oven is out. Some type of smaller stove that can be moved from a in hull location to on deck location is in. Then I think I have room for the other "necessities".

Time to stop before getting started

Due to to many items on the agenda the Tiki build will be on hold until at least summer 2012. Thought I'd say this since I hate it when I find a blog that just stops without explanation.

Time to find materials

Action has been slow since we're still in Annapolis and my build site in Maine. We plan to be in Maine with in a month so now is time to start investigating materials. My approach was to write up a letter with a materials list for the plywood, softwoods and some of the hard woods then e-mail that to several suppliers. The initial result is shopping around works! For just the 54 pieces of Okoume plywood( of 9mm, 6mm and 4mm thicknesses) with shipping resulted in an Annapolis supplier price of $6368 and a Toronto supplier of $3777, or over $2500 less! Note to other builders, always make sure to check on shipping cost for these big items, in this case one was $1896 and the other $472, and both to our Maine address. And the cheaper one is 100 miles closer and across an international boarder.

Also this is making me take a hard look at the plans and I'm finding they leave some things to the imagination of the builder. Such as on the first page the say to nail the butt joints for the hull sides using copper nails. Problem, no nails in the bill of material. Same for copper wire for the stitch and glue. Then there is a different type of issue where they say drill hole "Big enough to allow hull sides to open". Last time I checked "big enough" is not a measurement.

Oh well, not really complaining, it's all easily overcome but I can see an absolute newbie might have some anxiety.

On having less stuff.

I'm starting to experience a feeling that I last had about 6 years ago. 6 years ago we made our first break from the ordinary American lifestyle. But It all started 10 years before that when my father had died 6 months after retiring at the age of 60.5. He had worked hard and accumulated loads of stuff and dreamed of sailing off in his 25ton custom steel sail boat. He had been installing batteries when he died on a sunny warm October morning in Florida. We had been planing to sail the boat to Europe and mom would fly over. His death shook my world.

It took me about a year to really begin to understand what we missed. That's when I decided to leave "normal" life by age 45. Stocks were roaring so at 43 my wife and I were beginning our new life and selling the house, giving some furniture to Goodwill selling other stuff on Craigslist. I was a car/motorcycle nut. 7 years ago I had 4 cars, 3 motorcycles and a 34ft catamaran with twin inboard diesels for a family of 2.

Then one day as we sold some of that stuff I woke up and had this peaceful feeling and realized how much tension I had tied up in that stuff.  I then remembered a homily our priest had once given and in the end he had asked whether we owned our stuff or our stuff owned us? Now I knew. But I didn't get rid of everything, oh no 2 motorcycles and a car had to be kept in storage.

Well here we are years later and my life of stuff has again defied thermodynamics and increased in complexity. I was back up to 3 cars, 2 motorcycles, and a couple sailboats and wanting to build a Tiki. Something had to give. Now the Goldwing is sold and solid plans to sell the BMW and MGTD. And I've sold about 40 odd books and car/motorcycle parts and more to go. It really feels right.