Sail Life - 3 years as a liveaboard on 30 ft & winter projects - DIY sailboat repair

Hi guys, welcome back to yet another fun DIY video here about good old Athena. Wait a minute, this is not Athena, this is Obelix. We'll head over to Athena in just a few minutes, but fair warning, this video is gonna be a little bit different. Because by the time you guys see this video, I'm gonna be in LA with my girlfriend Ava, so this video is pre-recorded and a little bit out of sequence. I didn't want to leave you guys hanging without a video while I'm in LA, and I figured it might be fun to give a short little update about liveaboard life here on Obelix and then head over to Athena and take a look at the upcoming projects. I've been living here aboard Obelix for a little over three years now, and in case you're new to my channel, Obelix is an Elvin Ballard, she's from 1973, and I guess she would qualify as a Razor Cruiser. That means there's not a lot of room down here. Sitting on a settee, I can basically reach anywhere in my little home, which is awesome when you're reaching for the ketchup, but the lack of standing headroom got old pretty fast. When I sold my house and moved aboard, I had to downsize quite a bit. For instance, this is all of my clothing. Actually, it turns out this is plenty of clothing for me. I've got a bunch of short-sleeved shirts here, which, well, you've seen all of these in previous videos. I've got a bunch of t-shirts, some thermal underwear, and a big pile of pants here. When I first moved aboard, I only had room for one pair of pants, and look at me now, I'm flush with pants. Right next to the tiny locker with my clothing in it is the V-Berth. Here inside my luxurious V-Berth, I have the option of putting up this super-duper high-tech separator device. This is primarily to keep Jerkul out of here when he's wet, and Jerkul is my Icelandic sheepdog. This is the aforementioned beast, but we'll get back to him a little later in the video. Right across from the tiny locker next to the V-Berth is what used to be the head. As soon as I moved aboard, I just converted this area into storage. That's the layout of the boat forward of the main bulkhead. Now, if you thought headroom was lacking in the saloon, it is a lot worse in here. Stepping out of that somewhat claustrophobic space, the first thing we get to is my reflex diesel stove. This thing is the bee's knees. This is what keeps me warm during the frigid winter nights here in Denmark. The stove is not on yet because it's not cold enough yet. If I turn it on right now, it's gonna be a sauna in here. Generally, I like to get it down around 5°C before I turn on the stove. Up until that happens, I will just use a little space heater and one of these electric blankets to keep warm. Not a lot has changed here aboard Obelix in the last three years, but a couple of things have broken. In fact, there are only really two things that have broken, and both of them are located here in the galley. The first is the foot pump for the fresh water, and the second one is the thermostat for the fridge. For this summer's road trip with Eva, I picked up one of these coolers, and this thing has been awesome. It's also a lot easier to get into than the built-in fridge, so I just haven't gotten around to fixing that thermostat yet. Now, fixing the thermostat is not a big job, it's just I haven't gotten around to it because this thing is doing just as good of a job. Mind you, this thing is not one of the thermoelectric coolers, this has a proper compressor in it, but yeah, and it even has a little light that turns on when you open the lid. So yeah, pretty cool. As far as the foot pump for the fresh water, I haven't gotten around to fixing that yet because the water tank here aboard Obelix is so small that it's just as easy for me to carry back and forth a little two-liter bottle every day, and that's enough water for the two of us. What are you doing? Hardly anything has changed here aboard Obelix over the last three years, and that's fine. Living without a shower, living without a head, living without standing headroom is not really luxurious, but it's a nice simple and affordable way of living. Selling my house and moving aboard Obelix is one of the best decisions I have ever made. In fact, I would say it's the second best decision I've ever made. It used to be the best decision I've ever made, but it's been bumped down the list because now the best decision I've ever made was to reply to the email Ava sent me about a year and a half ago. Ava and I met each other because of these videos. Now, I was able to continue making videos because I sold my house and moved aboard Obelix and purchased Athena, which turned out to have lots of DIY fun hidden inside of her. So yeah, I would say only good things have happened in my life because I sold my house and moved aboard Obelix. The longer time I spent living aboard, the more I realized that it is a nice simple way of living, but it's not a radically different way of living than from living in, say, like a very, very, very small apartment. I still come home from work, figure out some kind of dinner situation, plop down, watch some YouTube videos, go to sleep, get up, go to work, and just repeat that cycle. At least that's what I'll do for another few years. If any of you out there are considering moving aboard a boat, I would say go for it. I have yet to find a single downside to living aboard a boat. I mean, if you go for a slightly bigger boat than Obelix, it would be just like an apartment or a small house. You could even have a shower, you could have hot and cold water, you could have a washer and dryer. So yeah, if you want to move aboard a boat, you should go for it. No update about liveaboard life would be complete without a small section for Jekyll or Mr. Snuggles, as is his day-to-day name. This little guy has adjusted really well to life aboard Obelix. His favorite spot here aboard Obelix is up on the chart table. That way, he can look out the port lights. Already before we had moved aboard, he had figured out how to get up the companionway steps without me lifting him, because apparently being lifted is very undignified. But you want to go for a walk? I built this rather dodgy-looking prototype for a gangplank to be able to get Jekyll on and off the boat. But it works really well, so I've just never gotten around to building the final version. Right across from the marina is basically the perfect area for dog walking. Today is an overcast day, so everything is going to look a little bit bland, but these are beautiful woods. There are thousands of trees here to sniff and, of course, to pee on. This is basically like doggy heaven. While Jekyll can use the woods, I doubt it would be well received if I did the same, so I am forced to use the facilities here at the marina. We've got one of these newfangled RFID systems. This is used to open doors and to pay for showers and laundry. We have a couple of washers and a single dryer, but that's enough. I basically never have to wait to get my turn. Everything here is in working order. It's well kept and reasonably new. We've got a bunch of these little shower rooms as well as four toilets. And two of the toilets even come with their own shower. Not too shabby. Located here in the marina, we've got a couple of restaurants, one of them located directly behind me. We've also got a diving club, a sailing club, a windsurfing club and a rowing club. I don't really use any of those things, but that is just because I don't have the time. It's kind of nice that they're here. And this right here is why I don't have time to join any of those exciting clubs located in the marina. This is Athena. And as most of you know, she's a 1987 Warrior 38. The plan is for me to move aboard Athena next fall and then for Ava to join me about a year after that. Before the summer, I set a somewhat ambitious goal for myself for what I wanted to achieve over the summer. Let's take a look at how that turned out. I did manage to take care of all of the big, very time-consuming jobs. So that's awesome. But as you can see, there are still a lot of tasks stuck here and to do and in progress. The osmosis treatment is done. The deck is done and the cabin tub. And I've applied Kiva Grip, at least to the cabin tub. So that's the good news. The medium good news is the fact that the engine compartment is coming along nicely. And within a few weeks of coming back from LA, that should be pretty much done. Oh, and the cleats. I figured out what cleats I want and I've ordered them, but they just haven't shown up yet. And that brings us to all the stuff I didn't have time to do this summer. There's the Joker that's waiting for me to move the engine back into the engine compartment. There's the blue line. I simply just didn't have time to do that. There's the rudder. Didn't have time. New through hauls waiting for the Joker and new tow rail. Some of these I am going to go ahead and just stall until next summer. Judging by past comments, I am sure some of you are thinking, hey, why don't you move Athena into a heated shed so you can continue working on all of these tasks during the winter? And I would absolutely love that. Sadly, it's not really feasible for me to do that. For one, it would be horrendously expensive in rent. Also getting Athena moved there would be horrendously expensive. And also, I don't know of any places here that are heated that allow people to do that kind of big jobs on their boat over the winter, because there are most likely going to be other boats in that shed, and they're going to get dusty, and it's going to be a whole big deal. So yeah, it's not really an option. Add to that the fact that I'm only paying around $100 or $200 per year to be up on the hard here in the yard, plus around $300 to rent the cradle. Well, financially, it makes a lot of sense to just stay put, hunker down, find some other jobs to work on for the five months it's going to be too cold, and then resume working on that stuff in the summer. Depending on the outcome of the Joker, there is a very limited number of jobs I want to get started on here inside of the boat over the winter, that is. And that's also the reason why I'm going to hold off until the spring to go full time here on YouTube. I want to make sure that there are enough jobs, and that I can really dig into the boat and get a lot done. Let's get back to the items on my to-do list for this winter. The very first thing I want to do is to take care of as much prep work and small little jobs that require the use of epoxy as I possibly can before the temperatures go too low. That task is called epoxy fun fund. Next up is to get my super duper spiffy new diesel tank into the engine compartment. Once that is done, I can then go ahead and get the engine and sail life serviced. And after that, I can go ahead and reinstall the engine and the sail drive in the engine compartment. And that will allow me to get to the Joker. Some of you guys might recall that the Joker was my little nickname for the somewhat annoying fact that some of the structural members underneath the cabin sole are having some issues. They're very wet, and some of them were even a little bit spongy. I might have to replace some of them. I haven't figured out the extent of it yet. If I need to replace all of them, it means tearing out all of the interior of the boat. So fingers crossed, I won't have to do that. The Joker is a two-part task. The first part is to figure out the extent of the issue, because I can't fix the issue now. It requires the use of epoxy, and the temperatures are going to be too low. And also, it requires me to brace the outside of the hull And I don't want to do that during the winter, because the yard floods almost every winter, and that would just turn into a big mess. These are the most immediate jobs I want to deal with, and I should easily be able to take care of this over the winter. So to make sure I don't run out of stuff to do, I've planned some extra things. I want to take a close look at my steering pedestal and figure out if it's serviceable. If it's not, then I need to go hunting for a new one. I of course also need to build the new rudder at some point. Provided I get all of the epoxy work out of the way before it gets too cold, I can also go ahead and paint and mount the fiberglass dodger. Last but certainly not least, and I'm really looking forward to this one, I think this is going to be a lot of fun, that is to remove the old aft head bulkhead. This right here is what I mean when I say aft head bulkhead. Eva and I have decided to turn the forward head into storage and enlarge the aft head. And for us to do that, we're going to have to remove this bulkhead here. And I think that should make for a really fun weekend. And just to see what that does to the space in here, that's going to be awesome. So overall, this is my plan for the winter. What do you guys think? Does it make sense? Go ahead and leave a comment down below. Before ending this video, there is one little final last thing I want to touch on. And that's the fact that the channel is coming up on 50,000 subscribers, which is freaking insane. I remember when I was first starting out, I thought I'll never get to a thousand. But this is very exciting. And to just celebrate that a little bit, here is a clip of one of my very first videos. This is my second day of my 2014 summer cruise. It's going to be roughly seven weeks long. A couple of hours ago, I just dropped off three friends I had along for the first day. It was a lot of fun having those guys on board. But now I'm on my own. That's pretty cool also. I'm heading towards a small island off the east coast of Denmark. It's called Gjelland. I'm gonna spend the night there. This is actually going to be my first time ever anchoring. So that's gonna be fun. I have a 15 kilo ragnar and a 10 kilo bruce aboard. About 100 meters of rope and 20 meters of chain, I guess. So I'm guessing the 15 kilo ragnar will definitely hold me. Especially since the wind is going to be nothing special. So I'm looking forward to trying it. I think it's safe to say a lot has happened since then. Now to further celebrate this awesome occasion, Eva and I are going to do a live stream in the very near future. But because this video is shot in the past, I don't know when that's going to be yet. I'll announce the date and time on Facebook and on the social or community tab here on YouTube. And there are links for both of those places in the description. And that is basically going to be it for this video. I know this video has just been a bunch of yammering on and I'm sorry about that. But I didn't want to leave you guys hanging without a video while I'm in LA. So yeah, this is what I could cobble together on short notice. Now, as soon as I get back from LA, we're going to resume our regular scheduled programming and get started on those tasks. So yeah. As always, feel free to leave a comment down below. And don't forget, if you've enjoyed this video, remember to leave a like. See you!