The Joys and Sorrows Of a Life At Sea » recycling

Recycling continues

Petr Šimon & Jana Benešová — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:10:01 +0000

When I was a small kid back in the communist Czech and Slovak Socialistic Republic, a friend of mine introduced me to this marvelous new gadget – a digital watch. The Vietnamese throw them into the garbage when the battery is dead, said my friend. Yes, that marvel was battery operated. I’ve never seen battery operated watch. Why wouldn’t the Vietnamese replace the battery instead of tossing the whole watch I didn’t understand. My friend just shook his head and pointed out to me again that the fact that these can be found in garbage cans is what I should be concentrating on.

Surely I did peek to garbage cans for a while then before emptying the content of our household bin. Yes, there were no plastic bags used then. All went to the bin, we would fold an old newspaper on the bottom, and the bin would have to be cleaned from time to time, because it would start to smell quite badly. I guess we were quite ecological back then, regardless of the fact that people didn’t know much about being ecological.

But the times they are a-changin’ and we buy and discard on a daily basis. Those who take a screw driver and disassemble are breaking warranties and are being labeled as handyman or in more contemporary lingo as hackers.

I digress, however. We try to remain faithful to our promise to the mother Earth and create as little garbage as possible. Thus, knife in one hand scissors in the other, I started butchering one of our old mainsails. You see, right now we have three mainsails on board. A very old one, then the one that was rigged when we bought the boat and now the new one, we just bought in Hong Kong. The time for the other too has come, holes here and there and patches, chafed all around, grommets corroded, leech lines, stuck to the fabric.

I stretched that large piece of shred and started to plot my attack. We need leecloths, helmsman awning, weathercloths, and couple of bags for lines, bag for cloth pins, there’s never enough bags on a boat. So far we’ve been using plastic bags (sic), because there’s such an abundance of those things and especially in Taiwan, most things are usually packages at least twice. Receiving piles of plastic bags seems unavoidable, but it’s time for us to say no. Not to mention that some of the plastic bags are so noisy.

So after a few hours effort, we got new leecloths, bottom firmly screwed to our berths and the top hanged on the cabin handholds and a massive eye through bolted to a bulkhead. We can stretch nice helmsmen awning, called “the square” over our cockpit. Our 100m mooring lines are now stowed properly in their own bags, line flaked inside so that it can be let out quickly without snags. And we have a new bag for a mainsheet in the cockpit (the photo of which will remain unpublished, because it’s a recycled cover from an outboard and it does not look particularly nice – but it works…).

In the conclusion I can say only this: Long live our fabulous Singer machine!

Another Uneventful (sic) Week Aboard

Petr Šimon — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 12:47:28 +0000

Ode to recycling and woodbutchery

Petr Šimon & Jana Benešová — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 23:38:02 +0000

We’ve spent last few days trying to further improve our living quarters on Janna. Even though frequent rain showers or outright downpours were against us, we’ve managed to move ahead a bit.

Gutted galley

Our original plan was to completely rebuild our galley. This has not happened, mainly because we couldn’t find any suitable timber to use. Either too soft or we would have to buy in bulk. Neither was an option. Thus we followed Fatty Goodlander’s prime example of yacht refitting from old garbage. He calls it recycling. So do we. There is a great benefit hidden in this approach: you save money.

So we disassembled the whole galley and found out that most of the wood is still quite usable. Well, we knew that part. We’ve plugged old screw cavities with some epoxy putty and drilled new holes. After a short wrestling match, we’ve managed to set the boards in angles quite resembling the right angle and fasten it all together. Our companion way stairs are attached to the galley and suddenly they stopped squeak. Praise the Darwin! Alas, that was just a beginning.

So far, our galley was basically just a worktop, no doors, no nothing, just a big gaping hole under a sink. And that gutted piece of seagoing furniture started to dispirit us. When we have hauled out for the first time in Singapore, we threw out the dysfunctional and grossly under-insulated fridge. It was followed by the rest of crap that was stashed under the sink by the previous owner. Then there was not time to play carpenters. We had to learn how to manage the whole boat and get her out of Singapore before we go broke on marina charges. So, we thought that we could cover the mess behind the galley door, which, however, could not be used due to the (only) slightly oversized four burner stove with oven that we demanded and installed. Thus the door remained stashed out of sight in our starboard storage area, more conventionally referred to as quarter berth, until four years later our galley-rebuilding project finally began and to fit in, the door had to be shifted few inches to the side, for the sake of which, we butchered nice piece of mahogany. But it was worth it.

Like-new fully functional galley

Since our engine installation extends slightly under the galley, we have also built a small encapsulation so as to stop the hot stinky air from the engine room to flow directly into the main cabin. We’ve rebuilt the stairs at the same time and removed the old filthy foam that was glued at the back side and replaced it with nice new and flashy soundproofing. Nothing fancy, just a generic car stuff. Let’s see how it fairs.

Janička is removing old filthy foam

Then we’ve switched hand pump for a foot pump so now we have the fresh water foot operated, which frees both our hands. The foot pump can be quite nicely controlled so you get just the amount of water that you need. Why didn’t we switch it earlier? Just why?

And we also sealed the galley sink so that water can’t run under it. Under the sink we’ve installed two partitions, which created two huge storage areas. All this took about three days, mostly due to the rain. To celebrate our new galley, we went shopping to Costco and filled our new pantry with some lovely stores. The best thing about all this is that we must have about two months worth of food in there and it is still half empty!

New pantry, still only half full, or half empty?

Next project was a folding table. It turned out to be a little challenge. Again mostly because we could not find any suitable wood. Up with the recyclin’! We had this sliding door, that was jammed all the time anyway, laying around. It was just the right width. So we trimmed the old table a bit, dug in two double acting hinges, installed two support timbers and now we have nice large 100x100cm folding table. Let guests come! And may them be plentiful! It’s not a work of beauty, more of a woodbutchery, but if works just fine.

Hinges must be counter sunk first

Table unfolded

In the meantime, Jana managed to create a paper towel holder from an old coat hanger and changed our companionway pad lock, since the old one was furiously rusting away.

And since it was raining cats and dogs, some of the water got inside. Not dripping, mind you, it was pouring in along a VHF cable. Once the rain stopped we ran out and caulked the hell of out the through-deck wire seal. There’s never enough caulk if you ask me.

The day before yesterday we’ve also received our brand new propeller, but the water is too muddy and just plain dirty due the rains, so we have to wait with the installation until the harbour cleans up. Let’s hope the typhoons will take a break for a while and the monsoon will also ease up, so that we can go out and do some of that sailing we hear so much about…

Janička fits everywhere