Boat life is not always easy so finding hacks, shortcuts, systems that work is essential. Over the past 9 months, we have found these 12 boat hacks/purchases to make a huge difference for our live aboard experience. We wanted to share them with you as they might make a difference for your life too!
NEW TO OUR CHANNEL? We are Eileen and Brown Councill. Welcome to our channel and a glimpse into our life adventure! 2020 was a year of uncertainty and change (for all of us, right?), but we overcame the challenges and decided it was time to chase our dream, to sail around the world! Did I mention that we had very NO sailing experience? Before leaving Qingdao, China, our home of 4 years, we sold almost all of our earthly possessions and started our international search to find the right sailboat that we would call "home." After 5 months of unanticipated twists and turns, we found what we were looking for, a used Leopard 44' Catamaran located in St. Lucia.
So, here begins our journey, filled with unmatched excitement and honestly, a bit of trepidation as well. We have much to learn as we travel the world on our floating home and we intend to document that journey and share it with you. We are so glad you have decided to join us, and we hope that you will find our story so compelling that it will inspire you to chase your dreams too!
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Hey guys, thanks for watching our video today. We are excited to share with you
some things that we've learned over the past nine months, some boat
hacks and some new purchases that we think really make a huge difference in
our boat and our life on the water. So hopefully some of these will help you
and we hope you enjoy this video. Let me start with boat diapers. First
of all, these are super absorbent pads that we place anywhere that we might
have a leak or might be concerned about leakage.
And these will go in each of the engine bays as well as under our bed
where there are our lithium batteries and our inverter and this will sop up
anything liquid that is spilled in a location where you don't want it.
This is the Frohli system. The Frohli system goes underneath your mattress
and provides an extra cushion for your mattress but it also prevents
mold from growing underneath the mattress as well.
This is for a bed that has a lot of flex. This is a firmer mattress for the third
one and they recommend these red pieces to be placed into the Frohli system
for lumbar support so they go down your spine. They create more of a stiff
system. It keeps this from flexing as much. So that's been a huge change on
our bed that we have loved. The basket system is one that I developed
just to keep things orderly. When you have people on board you tend to have
stuff everywhere. So cameras and phones and phone cords, sun lotion,
hats, sunglasses. If everyone puts it all over the salon it becomes a mess.
To keep things orderly when we have a guest on board we assign each person
a basket and they can drop everything they need in that basket. We can even
give them a dry bag and they're able to put the dry bag in the basket as well.
This way everything is in one place. They know where it is and if things are
laying around and we know whose they are we just drop it in the baskets.
This is what we woke up to every morning after sleeping. Sheets that would not
stay on the mattress and it was really frustrating. So we have a new system
of suspenders and they work brilliantly. This is the first time we have had our
sheets actually stay on the bed for a long period of time. Actually I'm taking
them off for the first time. There it is. So it creates this triangle effect
and that holds the sheet onto the mattress which is amazing.
We sleep with the hatch open and if it starts to rain it's so convenient to
just grab this hatch pull so that you don't have to actually sit up in bed.
If it rains really hard then you of course have to lock the hatch but until that point
it's convenient just to be able to pull it shut. Also if there's an intruder on board
it's an opportunity to close the hatch so that it's the first step of protecting
yourself within the boat. One of the worst possible things to happen on a boat is to
have one of your seacocks fail and so we have these tools called bungs. They are these wooden
pieces here that get shoved into the seacock to stop the water. That would be the ideal situation
so you've got different sizes and so I am drilling holes through them right now so that
we can connect a group together of different sizes and put them in the hole so that they are
there in the event of emergency because if you have a seacock fail you don't have time to go
run around and try and find your bungs. So having your bungs handy is really really important.
Done. So the bungs are now tied which is great and gives us the opportunity to
grab them if we need them. We have an 85 pound mantis anchor and oftentimes especially in mud
it will get stuck and the windlass is not strong enough to pull it out of the mud so we use the
power of the boat moving forward to pull the anchor out of the mud. The most important step
is to make sure the windlass is not taking on any of the weight. I use a line of Dyneema and I put
it through one of the links in the chain which I then lower and wrap on our cleat in the locker.
This takes the pressure off of the windlass and then it is truly only the boat's motion pulling
on this line that will pull the anchor out of the mud and it doesn't hurt my windlass in any way.
Hanging laundry is a part of being on a sailboat and an important part of hanging laundry is
the clips that you use. Are you tired of old clips that fall off or that rust? Well these
are absolutely amazing. They are 100% plastic and as you can see they also have some serious
grip on the end of them to grab the clothing which is great but another really cool feature
is you can push them down and they actually connect and tighten on your safety line which
means that you're not going to lose your clothes in a really windy environment. As you can see the
water is flat but I would just clip it on and I wouldn't push it down over the safety line. We have
used these clips in 40 plus knot winds and we have not had anything fly off the boat which is amazing.
Ratchet straps are amazing. These are ours from Rhino and we use them to secure the dinghy so
that there is very little motion of the dinghy as we're underway. It strengthens the davit system
so this is pulled tight. We have one going diagonal this way and then diagonal the other way.
It holds this so if there is motion as we're underway it keeps the davit system together
which is really really important. We do put a layer between the ratchet and the stainless to
keep it padded and we also put a towel to minimize the rubbing of the stainless on the dinghy.
In the event that something goes wrong on your boat and you are not on it, it is really important
for whomever gets on your boat to contact you so we leave our phone number on the helm station
on the outside of the electronics so that we can be called in the event of an emergency.
Notice that we tied down the mainsail here with a line that comes around the mast. The other place
we tie the main halyard and run a line over to our
lazy bag and that keeps the main halyard from slapping against the mast constantly.
This is one of our greatest purchases, a dehumidifier which just makes a huge difference
in the heat and humidity and pulls the moisture out of the air. We hope you enjoyed this video
and if you learned something we'd love to hear about it. Feel free to comment below
and also to subscribe, like the video, and share it with your friends.
