Windows
Posted by drew
Once again I've been caught in the trap of putting too much effort into a long blog post, only to run out of steam and set the post on the shelf for later completion. Three times now I've updated the first paragraph of that post, from "in the past day, I...", to "in the past few days, I...", to "last week, I...". I will return to that post, but I can't keep letting it prevent me from other writings.
Much boat progress has been made! I've finally replaced all of my windows, a non-trivial task to say the least. To do so I had to remove my former windows for a full day - not all of them, but a few anyway. There are three different types of window on my boat, but seven windows overall; four of one type, two of another, and the final window is the front "windshield" window, which for some reason looks directly in to the bathroom. I would remove three, to be used as pattern blanks by the plexiglass window cutting guys.
The downside of removing the windows was of course that it is now Fall in Vancouver and the temperature has been dropping pretty sharply. I have been able to see my breath lying in bed at night, and that's with the windows installed. Without the windows, I would essentially be spending my workday camping without the smores, and since I've been more or less camping all Summer, the novelty of the idea was somewhat lost on me. A call to the window fabricating guys told me that they had the time and the materials, and so Thursday morning I pulled out the three windows and dutifully strapped them to my backpack.
After I rode my bike over to the fabricators' shop near Hastings and Commercial, they told me that they'd have them finished in one business day, ie Friday, so I would have to spend the night essentially sleeping outdoors. This worried me somewhat, but whatever, I'm an able-bodied man in reasonably good health. Despite my broken furnaces I do have a little Coleman propane heater I could use, so while I was a bit choked I figured I could handle it, flu season be damned. The guy told me he'd call back with a quote in an hour or so, but by 4:30pm he hadn't called and I was starting to get a little bit worried. I called him back and asked for the quote, which he called me back with, but during that call he also mentioned that there would be a good chance they wouldn't have them done by Friday evening.
Now, let's reiterate; I'm essentially sleeping outdoors. It is Fall. More to the point, it is Canadian Thanksgiving, which not only means turkey and pumpkin pie, but also that this would be a long weekend. The man was telling me that I would not have windows until Tuesday?!
In the interests of brevity, I'll spare you the details. A little wheedling, a little explaining of the situation, and the guy managed to make the windows appear by 5pm Friday. On my way back home I realized that three 1/8" plexiglass windows weigh approximately 1/5th of seven 1/4" Lexan windows, and that perhaps I shouldn't be riding my bicycle with 80lbs of sheet plastic strapped to my back.
One thing I learned while installing the new windows: I am terrible at installing windows. Sikaflex 295 is horrible, horrible stuff.
Another think I learned: duct tape residue may be awful stuff to deal with, but the residue from the new clear duct tape - which, I might add, specifically says on the label "No Residue - Easy Clean Up" - is twice as difficult to remove. I had my previous windows held in and patched against the rain with clear duct tape, and will not use that stuff again for that purpose.
Anyhow. The priorities for the boat have shifted rather dramatically from "make her pretty" to "make her survive the winter", followed by "make her comfortable". The windows are in, though the caulking handiwork looks a bit like that of a seven-year-old with Play-Doh. The new Lexan windows, unlike the old, opaque Plexiglass ones, are completely translucent - so now I also need to consider some form of curtains if I want anything approaching privacy.
It never really stops, does it?
Long Overdue Update!
Posted by drew
Wow. Three of the craziest, busiest, happiest months of my life. How to compress them into one post? WHY compress them into one post? This seems silly, but I think the best way to re-jumpstart my blogging is to get this all out of the way in one post, and then go back to more regular updates. *sigh*.
At my last major post, I was about to speak at the Open Web Vancouver conference at the Vancouver Conference Center. My talk went pretty well, I guess - I mean, I definitely didn't win any awards, but nobody walked out either. I met some great new folks and had a good experience overall. I know now that speaking at tech conferences is almost exactly like doing live-pa techno in front of a big audience - the more prepared you are, the easier it is to let go and just be yourself.
Since then, there's been... God. Seriously, where to start?!
I've had repeated, profound musical experiences on the boat, jamming with friends. Picture if you will a mirror-smooth False Creek, with the boat anchored about fifty feet offshore. Dan Ross playing guitar and singing, Chad Taylor playing muted trumpet and providing some percussive backup and myself on mandolin and backup vocals - folks walking past, double-taking and sitting down on the seawall to listen, applauding between songs. Making music on the boat with friends has given me far more joy than I ever imagined it could. Actually, making music on the boat at all - I've been spending on average about eight to ten hours per week sitting on my deck, playing my guitar and singing. If there is a greater peace than playing music on the water, I haven't found it yet.
Yarrrr!
I've gone on three epic sailing adventures, the third of which is still ongoing - as of this writing I am anchored in this lovely little bay, surrounded by million-dollar waterfront houses and a beautiful cliff infested with rock climbers. More on that in future posts - but suffice to say this ongoing solo-sailing adventure is not without its trials and tribulations.
The first of the three epic sailing adventures was with a beautiful woman named Miya who I met at Burning Man in 2008, and who had come to visit me several times over the past year. Her confidence in my sailing ability was appreciated, though perhaps unwarranted, as we left Vancouver and immediately ran into eight-foot breaking swells just off Point Atkinson, enroute to the Sunshine Coast. The sailing got a lot better after the first day, but we still had to spend a few days on Bowen Island with engine trouble - mostly waiting around for a mechanic, until we tackled the problem head-on with the manual and some elbow grease, finally solving it ourselves and getting the engine back up and running. We then cruised up the coast to Secret Cove and Smuggler Cove, where we spent a night before returning to Vancouver. It was an amazing trip; the ocean opened my eyes and put a good fear into me, and the company was exquisite. The parting of ways at the end was wistful to say the least.
Drew and Laurel spinning fire on the boat at Diversity
The second sailing adventure was with yet another beautiful woman, Carrie, who joined me on a trip to the Diversity Festival on Texada Island. Technically we were supposed to sail with a crew of six, but Vancouver being the city of flailers that it is, the crew slowly called in to cancel until it was just the two of us. The winds were against us the whole way there and back, forcing us to motor around 90% of the tip, so it's debatable whether or not we actually saved any money travelling by "sailboat". We did get the sails up once or twice, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. The festival itself was excellent, with us arriving in full pirate regalia to great fanfare, spending a weekend surrounded by beautiful people and great music, and rolling out again on Monday with a grand exit. Sunday was a bit crazy, as the wind suddenly went from 5kn up to 25-30kn, and Tie Fighter danced in four-foot swells for the night - I now have a lot more faith in my anchor than before. Another boat nearby actually did slip their anchor, and came within a few feet of hitting us, but we held steady and Monday was much calmer. Another thing learned: rowing a dinghy in calm waters is one thing, rowing through four-foot waves as they break on the beach is another thing entirely! I made very good use of the drybags my sister gave me for my birthday.
The next weekend after Diversity was the Emrg-N-See Festival just outside of Salem, Oregon. I went to this festival with Trent last year, and it was probably the best festival I'd been to to date - it was as though someone had sent a personal invitation to every single gorgeous, blonde, dreadlocked, dubstep-loving yoga instructor on the west coast. I cannot express how many times I had to stop and shake my head at the sheer beauty surrounding me. This year was similar, though somewhat diluted, as though every guy who went last year went home and explained the situation to every guy he knew. I know I did, which is why I was surprised that the crew going down fron Vancouver was much smaller this year. Regardless, I definitely got my fill of amazing dubstep and bassline music, on very excellent soundsystems. I also got to take a tablespoon of dancefloor dirt out of my nose every morning, which I am choosing to look at as preparation for this year's Burning Man expedition.
The weekend after Emrg-N-See was Sequential Circus 5, an electronic music event that I guess I'm sort of in charge of. I say that with some reservation, because the show couldn't happen without every one of the seriously talented and driven people involved - we've got the whole thing pretty much down to a science now, and even with six live acts on a small stage, we continue to be efficient and competent, and we still have a good time doing it. This SeqCirc was probably the best music to date, though we were up against some very stiff competition. The capacity of the venue is about 180 people, and we had about 100 people, so while it was never packed, it never felt empty, and nearly everyone who was there at midnight was still there at 3am when we turned the lights on, so I count that as a win. The next Sequential Circus, SeqCircSix, will be in January.
After recovering from SeqCirc, having a few sailing missions out and around English Bay, and basically settling down and focusing on dayjob work for a while, I took off on my first big solo-sailing trip, headed for Victoria...
Monday, Again
Posted by drew
Ok, five days since the last post. Wheeeeere to start.
I survived the rains of last week without incident. Actually, the rains are a really good thing, as they help by pointing out any spots where the cabin still leaks. I *think* I've got them all now, and it's almost time to start painting! I have to admit, the boat is looking better and better and better - I mean it goddamned well better be, given the amount of hours and money I've been pouring into her. Still, I needed a good project and every hour that I work on her she becomes more "mine".
I spent the whole weekend working on her, again - third weekend in a row of two solid eight-to-fourteen-hour days fixing, upgrading, grinding, fiberglassing, sanding, sanding and sanding. I'm starting to run out of things to fix which is a really, really good sign.
Thursday was a bit odd though - I basically wore out my Mastercraft random-orbit sander. The bearings just "went"... I went back to Canadian Tire to see what they could do about it, and they said not much without a receipt or at least a transaction number. Of course, I can't remember when I actually bought the sander, I think it was around two months ago. Two lessons learned: keep your receipts, and don't buy the cheapest power tool just because it's on sale. A hundred dollars later, I have a new DeWalt sander.
When I returned from the store with the new sander, I arrived at my rowboat and looked out to see a large, shiny, expensive fishing boat tied to mine! Obviously I jumped right in my boat and rowed out as fast as I could to find out what was going on. Apparently the guy lost one of his two transmissions, and wasn't able to get his boat out of 'forward' to steer back into his marina properly, so he quickly dropped anchor and called his mechanic - but apparently where he dropped anchor wasn't the best place, so he drifted right over into my boat. He put out his fenders so there wasn't any damage, but he was still bumped right up against me. He explained the situation
"So," he said, "I thought I'd just tie off to you for a while until my mechanic got here..."
Which he had - his docklines were now tied to my boat, and my docklines had been untied and lay on my deck. Now, I'm a pretty friendly and gracious guy, so I didn't lay into him - still, I'm pretty sure that boarding someone else's vessel without permission is considered a hostile act under maritime law, so at the very least it was very poor manners. I glowered at him some and hurried him along until he realized that he was utterly unwelcome to stay tied to my boat for any longer than absolutely necessary. He made some noises early on about leaving his boat there overnight, but I think my derisive snort got my point across.
To top it off, my anchoring permit, with my cellphone number written on it in sharpie with a message saying "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, PLEASE CALL:" wasright there, posted in the nearest window. If running into someone's boat and having to tie off to it isn't an emergency, I'm not sure what is.
Anyhow. Within an hour his mechanic got there, and they got the boat untied and moved along - I'm not sure if he was fixed or if the mechanic was just a better pilot, but whatever. Barely a thank you, and no hint of an apology. I don't know whether he was just a newbie boater, or didn't consider live-aboard squatters to have the same rights as people from an expensive marina, or if he was just utterly oblivious. Still, I have half a mind to borrow an RV from someone and go park on his lawn for a couple of hours with 'engine trouble'.
The weekend was mostly calm, with twenty-odd hours of hard work in the sun putting a new layer on my tan. I got a tonne of work done on the deck, spent way too much money at the marine store again, and finally installed my LED lighting system. I had gone to Ikea mid-week last week to find the fixtures, and managed to find the perfect fixtures - these ones to be precise, in white plastic. They have a fixture-mounted switch, they accept the LED bulbs perfectly, they have a long cable, and they're mostly plastic so they're ideal for the marine environment. I am incredibly pleased with these lights! I had purchased five, with the intention of putting two in the salon, one over the navigation table, one in the bathroom and one over my bed - but instead I installed all five in the salon and will have to purchase more. WOW though - I do not at all regret the purchase, nor the decision. In one step, the salon at night has changed from "camping" to "home". The light is warm and pleasant, and the difference in the general "feel" of the place is staggering. I will be purchasing another five of these lights, at least. The best part is that even with ten lights installed, I will still only be drawing a total of 30w of electricity to light the entire boat - just about half the draw of a *single* regular lightbulb!
Today, it's back to the grind. We've committed to having one of the gossip sites live and launched in the Amazon cloud by Wednesday. Just in time, the weather has turned sour, and later today and tonight it promises to rain. I've still got a few holes in the front of the boat, so I'll need to cover those with garbage bags or something for Tuesday, but then Wednesday and on through the weekend is supposed to be bright and sunny, so I should be able to get that job finished this coming weekend.
Just in time, too - coming up, I have a speaking gig on cloud computing at the Open Web Vancouver conference, an open offer of a live-pa set in Victoria, a possible second live-pa set at a music festival out on Texada Island (plus I can sail there!), and a third offer of an acoustic live set over on Vancouver Island. Furthermore I have a lovely young lady coming up from Michigan for a ten-day epic sailing adventure in June, a hacker conference in Washington the weekend after that, and I am putting together a live electronic music show on the only weekend in July without a three-day outdoor festival to go to. It never stops!
I have to pick and choose between the musical bookings, because I frankly don't know how much free time I'll have to practice up between then and now - but it's all very flattering nonetheless. 
Public appearances come with a thrill of adventure, but also with a dark sense of foreboding which drives me to work much harder on my music and performance so that I don't suck. It's one thing to play badly in your living room, it's another thing entirely to play badly in front of hundreds of people!
Fake Monday
Posted by drew
Today is Tuesday, but it's technically the start of the week since yesterday was Victoria Day, a statutory holiday here in Canada.
The holiday long weekend was gorgeous. I technically took Friday off of work also, so it was a four-day weekend full of sunny boat repair work. I got so much done! Where to begin...
Thursday night I went out to the Anza Club to catch a show - Tarran the Tailor was playing upstairs. Excellent time, great music as usual - afterwards I biked back to my rowboat, but as I approached I noticed a couple of bicycles abandoned at the top of the dock ramp. As I arrived, I found three 20-something folks sitting in my boat, drinking bourbon - they mistook me for a fellow Midnight Mass rider and invited me to join them. As I explained that I was actually there to kick them out of my boat and go home, they were shocked and extremely apologetic, but really, it's not like they were hurting anything. The boat is always locked up with a padlock, and there's nothing left in it to steal. I mean, if they'd thrown my oars in the water or tried to damage the boat in some way, it would have gone much more sourly - but as it was, they were nice enough folks, geeks even. We exchanged names and URLs, so Adam, Andrew and Rebecca, if you're reading this, feel free to drop me a line.
Friday and Saturday I got up at 8am and worked hard on the boat - I finished a bunch of epoxy work, got hinges onto all the storage hatches finally, and made progress in getting the hinges and hasps onto the cabin hatches - that project still needs more work, of course, but the end is finally in sight. I spent a bunch of time in the engine compartment working to get the kill switch in place, and finally succeeded - but when I went to test it, it didn't work, and in fact I've apparently damaged the cable to the point that I need to go and find a new one. Boo - at least now, after two visits to the marine store and one visit to Canadian Tire, I know that the cable is called a 'utility cable' and that I should be able to get a new one from LloydCo Auto Parts.
I also removed the traveler on Friday - ie the seven-foot-long pulleys-on-rails thing that the boom attaches to - so that I could fix a few leaks in the bedding hardware. The leaks were directly over the stove, which meant that every time it rained I'd have to use steel wool on the cast iron stove grill again to get rid of the big patch of resulting rust. The leak had, over time, caused some of the roof to rot; this led to the first cutting of a large hole in the boat roof, and the bulk of the 1/4" of sawdust that covers everything in the galley at the moment. The hole is patched, the surface is fiberglassed, sanded, faired perfectly with epoxy and fairing compound, and the traveler is now ready to be rebedded - perhaps this afternoon, if the weather clears up for a while.
Sunday I had a few guests over helping me work on the boat - it seems unfortunately that adding more people to a project doesn't necessarily make the project go any quicker. Still, it was nice to have the company, and a few projects got nailed down properly - though when I removed the trampolines to fix a few small cosmetic problems on the center bow of the boat, we discovered a few patches of rot that quickly grew into a huge seven-foot hole in the boat. The rot wasn't structural, which was a relief, but all that wood still needed to be replaced. I got a bunch of the wood in, but then Sunday was mostly rainy, so I had to cover the work site with tarps and pray for the best, spending the day curled up, drinking rum and watching movies with a friend. Sunday night was more rain and a lot more wind, which picked up the tarps and blew a cold wind through the boat, though as far as I can tell not much rain got in. It's supposed to be rainy today and tomorrow, but then it's supposed to be calm and sunny for another five or so days in a row, so this coming weekend I should be able to completely nail down the problems in the bow, and be done with it for the foreseeable future.
Today, however, I'm back to the day job. I'm working to figure out why the bottleneck in our EC2 migration appears to be network traffic - the frontend webservers seem to handle my load testing without a hiccup, but the database server spikes to a load of over 50, even though it's an "extra large" EC2 instance. It doesn't appear to be file I/O wait, nor a lack of CPU time, so I'm stuck. I'm not sure what I can do about that - I've always been under the assumption that network bandwidth between EC2 instances would be incredible, seeing as they're virtual instances on more or less the same physical hardware. This week I have to solve the problem, but I'm not sure how just yet.
There's still a few holes in the boat. I still don't have clean water, though that's just a matter of time - a reasonable amount of time actually, because filling the tanks takes a good fifteen minutes, then the bleach should be left in for an hour or so, then fifteen minutes to empty the tanks, then fifteen minutes to refill, fifteen minutes to empty, fifteen minutes to refill, fifteen minutes to empty, and finally a final refill. The traveler is still sitting a few feet away from where it should be mounted, and I still have more research to do on epoxy compounds before I can put the hatch doors properly back on the boat. The work is tiring, but very fulfilling, and a few long days of working in the sun have topped up my stores of vitamin D and left me with a positive outlook and a fantastic tan.
I’ll Never Stop, Nancy.
Posted by drew
Argh.
I spent a gorgeous weekend working on the boat, a stupid grin on my face most of the time. The end results are a few less fiberglass problems, a nagging cough from the sanding dust that got past my dust mask, a mild sunburn in the middle of my back, two more banged-up fingers, one of which is looking a little bit infected, and a hangover.
The boat is a disaster right now though, with every powertool I own littering the kitchen, a sink full of dirty dishes and screws and bolts and wires on every flat surface. I really need to spend some time cleaning up, but frankly I don't know when that's going to happen.
This morning it's back to banging my head against the bulkhead - hey, maybe that's the source of the name 'bulkhead'? I slept well, but when it got light outside I was awake. I lay there for a long while, convincing myself that while it must already be 10am, with my work schedule I could afford to stay in bed until 11am or so... but then my pager went off with a work emergency. My laptop batteries were low, so staying in bed only lasted a few minutes before I had to get up, dress, and switch to the aft cabin (ie, walk out through the pouring rain). On my way out the door I grabbed my cellphone to check the time: 7:15am. I guess my internal clock needs some adjustment.
It was so cold this morning! I could see my breath, so I decided that it was probably time to tackle the stove - and at around 10am I rolled up my sleeves and dove in to clean it out with a stiff wire brush. Of course, burning sooty for the past week or so hasn't done it any favours, and soon there was a three-inch deep pile of soot in the bottom of the burner. This is when I was struck with a rare moment of genius: I have a generator now, and so I can use the little shop vac that came with the boat!
Well, it worked, and I was able to suck up the soot just fine - but since it's a shop vac there's not really a filter, per se, and so about a third of the soot was promptly blown out the other side of the shop vac, all over the inside of the cabin. The second I noticed this, I put the motor portion of the shop vac outside, so I could continue cleaning out the stove, but it just blew soot all over the cockpit instead. You thought my boat was dirty before? Let me tell you, it was positively sparkling compared to now.
For now I've given up on the stove, and am returning to work. I went to Canadian Tire and picked up a decent single-burner propane camping stove instead, and proceeded to make coffee in under five minutes instead of an hour. It's much warmer out, and I'm somewhat dry, so my mood is infinitely better, but damn, what a crappy morning! Best part: it's supposed to stay rainy all week again. :/
Argh.
Posted by drew
Ok, well, it's day... six? I guess. Day six of officially living on the boat fulltime. This is the first day with any doubts.
Of *course* it's raining, and it's grey and cold outside, just like yesterday. It's also very windy out, with gale warnings last night that had me keeping an eye on my GPS long into the night. Furthermore I haven't had any coffee for two days, because my water supply has somehow become tainted, and my stove isn't working properly.
The water I suspect I may have had a hand in. On Saturday I noticed that an old can of paint that came with the boat was leaking from the bottom seal. The paint was "bottom paint", for painting the underwater portion of the boat, and as such is very nasty stuff, full of heavy metals. The paint was black, but whatever was leaking out of the bottom of the can was sticky and green, and made a big mess on the carpet - given the chemicals involved, this was the very definition of "toxic waste"! When I went to clean it up (wearing heavy protective gloves, removing and throwing out the carpet, scraping the underfloor with a scraper, and laying down new carpet), I noticed that it had also leaked through the floorboards and into the bilge, where it had pooled in a small corner. Lucky for me - if the leak had been two inches to the right, it would have gone into an extremely difficult place to clean. As it was though it was contained to a small area, and so I took up the floorboards, stood on the water tank, and cleaned up the toxic waste.
As I stood on it, the tank flexed a little, though nothing terrible - the tanks are made of heavy white plastic and bulge a bit when they're full. I suspect however that this flexing is why my water now has a distinct yellow tinge. I don't really know what to do about this, besides flush the tanks and start fresh, and to do that I need to pull the anchor and head up the creek to the filling station. I'm guessing there might be something I could do involving bleach? WestMarine sells some kind of water tank freshener stuff, but it's pretty pricy and who knows what it actually is. I think I'm going to try adding 1/4 cup of bleach to the tanks, fill them, flush them out, then fill them again and see what that does.
The stove I think I may have figured out - it's been throwing a lot less heat lately and a lot more soot, but I managed to find a manual for it online and it appears that it's pretty much half poorly configured and half me not knowing how to use it properly. There's a fan (unconnected of course) on the bottom of the stove that needs to be powered up in order for the burner to get the right draft needed to vaporize the diesel fuel, and right now it's just not getting that draft. I'm thinking that probably what's happened is that the fan not being on has caused the stove to produce more soot, which has clogged the air intake, causing the stove to produce even *more* soot. I think all it will need is a good cleaning and for the wiring to be set up to provide power for the fan, but man. Have you ever touched diesel soot? That stuff is black as night, and since it's oil-based you need soap and water to get it off of you - no amount of rubbing on your pants will suffice. I do not look forward to being up to my elbow in the stuff, but if it means I can have a hot dinner then it must be done.
...but not today.
God. Just a constant barrage of new, tangible problems. In one way it's really nice to have to use not only my brain to diagnose problems and work out solutions, but also to get my hands dirty actually implementing those solutions. Still, it's dirty, difficult work, and my hands are not only dirty but scraped, cut, bruised, bandaged, rough and sore.
I've already done so much to make the boat a better place to live, but there's still *so* much more to do! In order of priority:
Argh. On top of all the boat work, I've got just over a month to come up with and practice a 45-minute talk on cloud computing for the Open Web Vancouver conference. I'm pretty confident that I can be educational and entertaining for 45 minutes, but it will still mean a lot of work to get it all together, make slides, practice, etc.
Anyhow. The stove is lit, and I've got some bottled water in the stovetop percolator - in an hour or so I should have coffee. Today I have to continue working on porting one of the gossip sites into the clouds - I've committed to having it up and running by Wednesday night, and I don't want to blow any more deadlines, so back to work I go.
Welcome to Disengage.ca
Recent Posts
- What a Week!
- Long Night
- Incoming Windstorm!
- Windstorm Aftermath
- Windstorm!
- Knives
- Back from Hiatus
- A Quick One
- Stress
- The Bits In Question
- Well, That Could Have Gone Better.
- Lockdown!
- Countdowns All Around
- What’s Up
- It Starts…
Twitter Feed
- mux: I *think* that's me all packed up for Burning Man... and with four hours to spare!! Wow, I guess the fifth time's the charm. August 25, 2010
- mux: reppin' c-dock. August 25, 2010
- mux: hmmm. apparently I did the transmission linkage backwards. "forward" is now "reverse". I should probably fix that. August 24, 2010
Blogs I Like
- Adventures of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
- Going Nomadic
- JC McDowell and the Family Unit
- Loose Moorings
- Sail To Trail
- Tired of I.T.!