4 Months as Live Aboard Sailors – Q&A.

We've been living on this boat, Curiosity, for almost four months now and we get a lot of questions and we can't get to all of them but it doesn't mean that we can't try. So today we're going to do a little Q&A in an attempt to answer some of those questions. Our first ever Q&A. So I just posted on Facebook and Twitter asking what do you want to know so let's dive in. While Jason finishes up the dishes. She won't let me let them soak. We'll get started. All right this is an appropriate one. How is cooking on the boat different than before? Is there any appliances that you can't use or ones that you want to get like an ice cream machine? You know my advices. Let's see. Cooking any different? I would say not necessarily. It's pretty much the same as the RV. We have a propane stove which we almost never use. Okay it works just fine it's just it creates a lot of heat which you don't usually want inside. I tend to gravitate towards electrical devices. One because we usually set ourselves up as we have done with enough lithium power and solar to offset my electrical needs. Also just because the electrical devices just create a lot less heat. This is one gadget that is actually sitting here because I'm getting rid of it. So I won't tell you about that. It's been with us for like I don't know we've had this since long before we ever hit the road or we're nomads or anything else. It's least 10 years. It's starting to slowly die and also it's made to be on a level surface so the juices and stuff kind of tend to spill out and onto everywhere else. And since the boat is absolutely never level. Never. Not the best device. Love my central oven. I do a lot of baking in this. Cooking all kinds of things. You've probably already seen these in our videos. And then I just got this as a replacement for this because it's somewhat similar. It's not quite a panini press or a griddle but it has a little lip so stuff doesn't go everywhere while we're underway. She might have a problem. I'm just saying. Did I? That's it. Should I go get the bread maker too? No. But I do have a bread maker and I love my bread maker and fresh bread not having to go to stores often is awesome. And an induction plate and that that's my kitchen. But minus this. This is going away. Yeah that one's going away. Yeah. Are you coming along over there? Slightly but surely. I'm almost done. Okay go ahead and answer another question. How are the kitties mastering their sea legs? I'll let them answer. Cleo how are your sea legs? Do you like living aboard a boat? Nod or blink if it's yes. Ignore me if you love your life on the boat. She loves it. All right let's go see Singa. This is Singa's room. She's taking over this cabin for whatever reason. Singa. Singa how do you like life on a boat? Do you have your sea legs? Do you just nap all day? So yes the cats are fine and they very much enjoy their life aboard the boat. I think they like the extra freedom when we were out on the hook and they get to run around and stretch their legs and bask in the sun. And even the uh sailing part they just sleep. So they stay in here with the AC on if it's rough. The AC if it's not rough you don't turn on the AC. They're fine in here with the airflow. But they don't even want to come out. So I think they love it. So far so good. Yeah. I think I'm done. Okay. We have a lot of questions about solar and power management and technology but a lot to do with solar and how are we running AC and can we run AC all day 24-7 and all that. Air conditioning, solar, running the AC off the batteries, generators, just general technology stuff. It's a whole nother 20 post at least ice maker. But I can show you quickly our solar. It's kind of funny life in a marina. We're stuck and we walk off of our little boat onto this 60 foot sun reef which is like a one and a half million dollar boat just to get to the dock. And that's the solar. That's the solar. It's kind of a mishmash right now. The stuff on the back here is from Go Power. The stuff we stole from the RV. The other panels were already on the boat. There's two different charge controllers inside and four 300 amp hour lithium batteries. I'll link to the solar that we have and the lithium batteries that we have on our website. On the post to go with this video. But that's so much information and so much to talk about. I'm gonna have to save it for another time. But sneak peek I guess. This is a good one. Where do you store dried goods and how much do you carry? Saw the additional freezer. Nicky's ice cream obsession. Okay so the freezer actually does house more than just my ice cream. But yes that is here and it has made a big difference in how much we can carry because now we've turned our freezer into just a refrigerator. So we have double the capacity there and then this thing actually works much better as a freezer than the thing that came on board. So I'll show you that. Oh and I'll show you dried goods. So now these are both refrigerators and can house a lot more food which is good. And dried goods actually keep quite a bit of stuff here in all of these little containers. Bunch of canned foods stuff like that. We've got nuts and granola bars and then there's another little. All in ziplocs of course. Yes because the moisture is a beast. And then pastas and extra dried goods in this little compartment which actually goes pretty far back there. So between this and a couple of other little stash away cubbies which we could use for really stocking up for longer passages. I feel like we've got plenty of food storage space. I can stock up for a month or two no problem and then I've got additional spaces I could start to fill if we really needed to be. What about your other vice coffee? Coffee um coffee stored here. That's all that matters. Okay thank you. Next question. All right so we've got a lot that are like this one which is from Annie. How is sleeping on the boat? Do you get dizzy seasick etc? Oh also anchoring. Yeah there was some about anchoring. Which anchoring do you which anchor do you have? Do you feel comfortable safe sleeping with the anchor? All of that. Yes and so far I am a little embarrassed to say that we sleep really well. Maybe we should be worried. Yeah probably too well. Uh we do set anchor alarms. Yeah we set an anchor alarm which there's apps for that and then newer systems not our old beast of Raymarine um have that built into as a thing you can drop a pin. I don't know but when we have the GPS we set the little GPS on the iPad right next to us so we can if we wake up in the middle of the night we look out the window we look at the GPS we can see how far our boats move so we feel safe and just can easily fall back to sleep. Yeah because we can see our track how we've been moving um and then the only anchor alarm is set so it'll go off if we move a certain distance from our original coordinate. It's wonderful the the boat kind of just rocks a little bit and you hear the water running along the the holes. Yeah so it's not uncomfortable by any stretch of the imagination it's and it's I don't know there's just not that much movement I think that's a big plus of having a catamaran is it's pretty darn stable so it's just you don't realize that you're on a boat. The hardest part has got to be about sleeping is airflow getting airflow into the cabin. Yeah. So you can sleep comfortably when it's 90 degrees still at night with the water being 85 degrees. Yeah Florida summers are a beast man so airflow is the only thing we've had to run the air conditioner overnight a couple of times which then you wake up and your batteries are lower yeah then we can't use as much during the day but that's a whole power management thing but anyway uh it's doable but for the most part sleeping is yeah we sleep like babies yeah like babies yeah oh and seasickness oh no we haven't been sick on our boat and definitely not at night it's very stable so it's not even a consideration and we've been in high winds and high currents and and uh popular spots where boats go by and everything so yeah so it's all been it's all been good yeah yeah no horror stories no dragging anchor yet yet no running aground yet but we do need a new anchor and i'm sure once we get a new anchor we will be sleeping even better which is really scary where and how often do you take on fresh water what is your water capacity compared to the rv do you get your holding tanks pumped out and what if at sea what are the rules on that do you worry about leaving your boat at anchor when you're leaving the dinghy how do you still protect it to make sure it's there when you get back yes it's all one question so uh let's water water is actually kind of interesting in the fact that um we do have sewage um or black tanks for the toilets which we've removed two of them and put in composting toilets because marine heads are crappy and smell and present a whole new set of problems uh and we still have one seawater flush toilet and that holds enough capacity for a couple of weeks of usage and then it does need to be pumped out properly it's not something you just dump when you're anywhere close to the coast you can be three miles or more out and then everybody just opens it and it goes directly into the sea and that is like that's the law that's regulation for the united states as far as your gray water goes that is the thing that's really mind-boggling is the fact that there is no tank it all just flows right out into the water so it doesn't matter whether we're at say like kivas gain which is a national park or if we are right here in the marina everything when we turn on our kitchen faucet or when we take a shower it actually just goes right out into the body of water so for me and jason makes us we're already conscious about the products that we use and our environmental impact but that to me if that is not a good excuse and a good reason to reevaluate what type of shampoo you're using and everything else to make sure that it's all biodegradable i don't know what does because yeah you become very aware of everything that you're using because i'm concerned about everything that's going down and into the water and that's affecting the fish and then when you're an anchor you look around all the other boats and you think do they care and what are they doing and what are they using and what the heck are they pumping into the water right now so it is a new interesting awareness i guess that we didn't have before and speaking of showers we've also gotten a lot of like water conservation and how do you get fresh water well we have a water maker on board which is amazing something we did not have in the rv industry we can just create water it requires us to run a generator but we can create water 50 gallons an hour kind of water it's amazeballs uh and aside from that showering is a very interesting thing so let's take you down to one of the guest cabins and we'll show you that i don't know why but showering and using a marine or a boat shower was just something i never really considered before we were actually using one um whenever you're a guest on our boat this would be your bathroom and this is kind of typical for a lot of marine heads bathroom showers whatever you want to call it uh so you take the sink faucet you put it up here and that now becomes your shower so you shower which means you're now going to have to wipe everything down and make sure anything you don't want to get wet is put away um your toilet paper is always stored behind a nifty little device there so you shower you shower you shower and your water slowly drains down to one of these guys and it goes down and into here and then you actually have to lift this guy up which is really hard with soapy hands well especially when it's wet so you lift this guy up because you want to make sure that all of the water drains out of here so get this you now have to hold down this pump and it pumps out the water but again not into a tank just out into wherever you are see and there you go and then you would squeegee down the whole bathroom and get it nice and dry and you're back to a regular bathroom again and a lot of people have said it looks like a lot more work they've asked is it more work and i guess the short answer would be yes everything seems to take a lot longer like the shower for example there's always more chores there's more things to clean but more things to maintain just like the uh like just to take a shower is a tiny bit more effort it's not exactly terrible or hard but it's just it's something interesting new different uh and then you have to clean a filter every single week that filters out the water before it goes out anyways there's there's something involved with everything but it's not it's manageable now we think i i think and i think nikki does too that it's worth the energy that goes into doing everything is completely worth the reward that we should get very soon no we kind of already have experienced some of it but yes it's when you get to get up in the morning and you can go snorkeling before you ever even have a cup of coffee yes you know it's those types of rewards that make it work definitely speaking of showers i should show you our shower so our shower is just slightly bigger than the other one uh and it's a huge huge shower like way bigger way bigger than any rv we've ever had so our our head or bathroom or shower whatever you want to call this area is awesome and this is one reason i love our boat so i still have to push a button and all of that but it's good how far are you willing to sail curiosity i.e would you sail up the east coast as far as maine or even west to mexico well mark we do plan to head well i'm not going to say around the world uh because i don't know that's that's a lofty goal but we will say we're going to sail around the world uh we we do want to sail around the world but i'm not going to say that not maybe not a perfect circumnavigation maybe i don't know it seems weird to say i'm gonna sail around the world and it's not weird i mean a lot of people do that and there are people doing that right now and that's a wonderful thing it just i guess there's lots of places we want to go and maybe it doesn't fit within that perfect circumnavigation um that's the word i'm saying circumnavigation we're not going to do that yeah but sailing potentially around the world yes but in that perfect line i don't know i don't know so we're sailing far yes further than maine further than yes much further than maine okay last question for today is from jim overall at this point time great decision or kind of sort of maybe miss the rv a little bit more than you thought and that is a good question and a fair question is one we've gotten a lot of which is better rving or boating and do you miss the rv and do you feel like you've made a mistake or has it all been worth it that's a good question come on let's go you stay in here cleo okay camera or beer don't die honey come on singa one thing that's been a little difficult to adjust to especially while we're at a marina is the fact that it's difficult to stretch our legs okay i'm gonna get singa you take that okay it's not it's not difficult um it's just that whenever we were in the rv we were usually at like state park national park or we were out wild camping which means you're in nature so you walk right outside your door and you're in it you can go clear your mind take a moment see something beautiful and being at a marina is it's not terrible i mean it's still an interesting place and you're surrounded by interesting things i suppose but it's not nature as far as the question of do we miss the rv i would have to say yeah of course we miss a little bit about the rv but there's so much more to explore so many places that we want to go by sailboat that we couldn't get to by rv so sure we're always going to miss parts of that i mean it was a huge part of our life for the past six years uh you know missing the rv maybe not the rv specifically but the road tripping aspect i guess so uh but sailing we're just a hundred percent we're super excited to be out here and to be exploring i don't know the world broaden our horizons i feel like the the options opened up tremendously and i keep saying something about going to another grocery store and finding a fruit that i've never heard of before i don't know why that sticks in my head is that's going to be really awesome because your stomach rules your life oh yeah i'm always eating or drinking so what new vegetable what new fruit have i not seen or eaten the opportunities are endless okay so that's the end of our q a if you liked this let us know in the comment box below and maybe we'll do some more of them and if not sorry you suffered through that uh i will make sure and link to some of the products we talked about and such in the post along with anything else you may have forgotten and i think that's it so thanks for joining us and see you next time