Trying to Keep a Few Conveniences

As anyone who has done it will tell you, going cruising is not without a lot of sacrifices.  Among those sacrifices are a lot of modern conveniences.  Just the other day we were chatting with a couple who arrived at the marina after a year-long cruise with their kids, and the wife mentioned that she was really looking forward to having a dishwasher again.  So, with all that we give up I've tried to bend a bit when I think it makes sense.  One of the conveniences we have been considering making room for on the boat is a clothes washer.  In fact, I posted about this topic a couple months back.

While I had noted a variety of options for washing clothes, the limited amount of space we have really only leaves the smaller counter top portable washers as a possible option.  I have a few places on the boat that would prefer lighter things be stored there and what essentially equates to a motorized bucket could find a home there...if it worked.

And, really, while the washing function could be handy, the bit we are really interested in is the spin dry feature.  A number of these machines have, or are, a small tub that spins fast and can extract water out of clothes without requiring heat (the more costly part of the typical dryers operation).  Living in more humid locations now, the idea of waiting all day...or two...for clothes to line dry or the added damage of hand-wringing clothes just isn't all that appealing.  The spin dryers were reported to extract enough water out of washed clothes that they would finish drying in just a couple hours...even in humid environments.

So when we were at Camping World looking at a folding bike the other day and stumbled upon a portable washer that included the spin dry function all in a single chamber unit, we decided that for $100 it would be a great solution for a boat.  Needless to say we picked one up and brought it home to give it a try.  I had actually seen these units when I wrote the earlier post, but they were always 220 volt models, so was I happy to see one setup for U.S. 110 volts.

The Base Camp Portable Washing Machine is supposed to be a counter top unit...but it is pretty tall for the average counter at almost 22 inches, the top is about shoulder height when sitting on the galley counter.  Its width and depth are both around 14.5" so it will sit on the counter.  This is a good thing since the drain is gravity fed through a hose on the bottom of the unit. Its wash function uses most of that space, while the spin dryer utilizes a smaller basket that snaps onto the agitator at the bottom of the tub...reducing the drying capacity to half the wash capacity.

Washing machine with spin dry basket installed

We did two loads of laundry with it as a test.  The first load consisted of one pair of shorts and 5 tee shirts.  The second was about 6 pairs of socks and about the same number of panties.  Instead of hooking up the water inlet hose (just a simple tube you can hook up to your sink faucet), we just poured water in with a pitcher or bucket. You regulate the water temperature yourself, so you get whatever you put into it.  To start each load we put in about an inch of water in the bottom, then added less than 1/4 the amount of detergent recommended for the typical washing machine "small load".  We then added clothes until they were just a bit under the max fill line, and topped off with water until the max fill line was reached.

We turned the switch to wash and set the timer for about 3~4 minutes.  The machine seems to agitate the clothes fairly well, although the action can sometimes ball them up in a bit of a knot.  After the first wash cycle completed, we let the clothes soak for another 3~4 minutes and then repeated the procedure 2 more times.  The result was about 9 minutes of active washing and 6 minutes of soaking in between.

After washing, we unhooked the drain hose and dropped it into the galley sink to drain.  This, of course, leaves some pretty wet clothes in the bottom of the washer.  So, I picked them up and squeezed a bit of the excess water out before starting the rinse cycle.  Rinsing consists of adding fresh water to the machine and running it in wash mode again.  And once the rinse cycle was complete, we again drained the water.

Now it was time for the spin dry cycle.  This required I remove all the clothes from the washer, so I squeezed a bit more water out of them and placed them in a bucket.  I then installed the spin dry basket and carefully placed a couple items in the basket, along with the cover.  You are only supposed to run the spin cycle for at most 3 minutes, so that is what I did.  I turned on the machine and quickly realized I didn't yet have the knack for loading the basket, as it shook quite a bit while attempting to spin.  I stopped the machine and repositioned the clothes in the basket, removing one of the items.  This time it seemed happier and only wobbled a little bit.

I could see water being slung out of the basket and against the clear blue walls of the wash tub, so it was working.  But, it didn't seem to be spinning all that fast.  I know some of the spin dryers spin at rates up to 3200 RPM, but this one didn't seem to go near that fast.  The unit doesn't document the speed and so I tried to determine the speed, but didn't have much luck either counting or using a sound based application for my smartphone.  Best I can guess, I think it was spinning somewhere between 500 and 700 RPM.  In any case, the result was that the clothes were less wet, but not nearly as dry as I had hoped.  In fact, we could hand wring additional water out of the clothes and it took almost a full 24 hours for the clothes that were washed to dry (after hand wringing them).

One other test I ran was to see if the unit would function when using my inverter (I have an older Xantrex and it is modified sine wave).  When running on the inverter, I noticed the motor would buzz a bit more, but it did work. I also noticed that the spin function is supposed to be limited (by you) to 3 minutes and after the 3 minutes the area around the motor was a little warm.  There was also the smell of plastic...but I assume that was just the result of the machine being new (since it smelled that way out of the box) and not anything related to the motor overheating.

Overall the washer seemed to do a fair job of washing the clothes we tried. Both wash and spin modes were pretty quiet as you can tell from the video, with the biggest noise problem stemming from the balance (or lack thereof) of the clothes in the spin basket. Unfortunately, the spin drying function, the most important function in our opinion, was a disappointment and left the clothes too wet.  We didn't feel this unit provided enough of an advantage over a bucket, plunger, and hand-wringing to justify its place on the boat, and so we decided to return the unit and continue the search.

House Calls for the Pups

People from my generation have probably heard the term "house call" but have never actually seen or had one.  It is a throwback to a time when we all weren't in such a big hurry and and there was a nod to the fact that customer service could be good for the bottom line.  I don't think I ever actually had a doctor come visit me at home, and I doubt a generation or two younger than I (at least here in the U.S.) even believe that there was a time when a doctor ever would come to your home.

Well, that may not exist for our medical industry, but today my dogs got to experience a house call.  My friend and former boat broker Pete told us of a veterinarian in St. Augustine that does most (all?) of his work as house calls.  While we currently have a car and can easily take our furry kids anywhere, there will be a time when that is not the case.  Knowing that we can have a vet come to us is a great thing.

Reason for the vet visit was two fold.  First, we wanted to make sure we had the dogs on the right preventative medications.  In Colorado we have ticks and mosquitoes that can carry a few diseases, but things like fleas aren't a problem.  In more humid environments where it just doesn't go below freezing that often (that is one of the reasons we wanted to do this after all), we could imagine that there are all sorts of new maladies that could befall our unsuspecting furry crew members. The second reason is that our older dog seemed a bit stressed during the trip and we wanted to make sure everything was OK since she has had some ongoing medical issues.

The vet arrived on time for our 1 pm appointment (Ok, he was a few minutes late, but I attribute that to the over zealous new security guards they've hired here at the resort).  He came right out to the boat and we talked for a bit about the dogs history while sitting in the cockpit.  Then he gave each dog a physical and we talked more about nutrition, preventative medications for the areas where we wanted to travel, dealing with high heat, protecting doggy eyes from the sun, and other issues.  All in all I think the vet spent over two hours with us...I think the longest vet consultation we've ever had and we've gone to some very good vets in the past.

The vet seemed very knowledgeable about a variety of general veterinary topics and gave us a lot of good information to keep our kids healthy.  He was also able to prescribe the needed medications and supply them right from his mobile "office".  As he even noted, we "are pretty savvy pet owners" so I think we are pretty good at telling when we've found a top notch vet...and I think we have.

Cost wise, especially for a house call and the amount of time he spent with us, we thought it was very reasonable.  There was a $55 (U.S.) "office visit" charge, the physicals were about $50 each, and the medications were inline with prices we found on the internet for the same medications. This is only a few dollars more than the vets back home would charge when we took them into the office for what was often a very brief encounter with the actual vet.

So, if you have pets in need of a veterinarian and happen to be somewhere in the St. Augustine FL. area, you might want to give Vilano Mobile Vet a try.  Oh, and our dogs...they are doing just fine.  I think they are enjoying the fact we are around more and will take them to fun places like the beach...which the doctor recommended we do often (so I think Madison and Tucker recommend the vet too).

Two is Better Than One

While living the bachelor lifestyle for the most part the past year had a couple perks, it is definitely nice having my wife (and the dogs) on board.  Sure, there was no consensus to be had when deciding what to do for dinner, but sharing this lifestyle definitely makes it better.

Right now one big benefit is having a helping hand with all the projects that have been on hold since I couldn't complete them by myself.  Today the big task was making one of the large storage areas a dry storage area.  The Leopard 38 has a big storage area at the front of each hull, above the watertight buoyancy compartment.  And with no openings to weather, it should make a large and dry storage area.

Of course, on my boat, it hasn't been all that dry.  A pulpit rail mount and the pulpit seat mount have both been leaking a bit.  The result is some water made its way into this compartment, and that doesn't make for a nice storage location.  And the reason I haven't fixed it yet...you may have guessed...is because I need two people.  Both of these mounts go entirely through the hull (thus the ability to leak) and so I needed someone in the compartment to turn a wrench on the nut while someone else was outside keeping the bolt from turning.  Since I don't have an arm that is 20+ foot long with several elbows, it is not something I could do myself.  So, like so much of the hardware on this boat, a helper is needed to loosen and tighten the bolts.

With a helper, it was a simple task to remove the bolts, clean the mounting surfaces, apply some butyl tape (an excellent option for re-bedding through-bolted hardware), and re-mount the hardware. Given my previous experience with the tape, I have confidence that these two leak locations are now resolved and shouldn't give me trouble for a long time.  Unless I missed a leak, I think we now have one more large storage area at our disposal...which will come in handy right now.  Now we just need to repeat the process in the other hold.

In other news, if you find yourself moving on a boat and another boater is moving off, hopefully you have made friends with them.  In my case, my friends Gary and Joan have not only beefed up our provisions but also had these mini milk crates that may help me get my refrigerator organized (the details of organizing a top-loading refrigerator are deserving of its own post).  Thanks guys and good luck with your future endeavors!

Organization-less

We've been back at the boat about a week now.  Found a couple systems that will need repair before we leave, but the biggest problem we seem to be having at the moment is getting the boat organized. For some reason we are really struggling with getting things in reasonable places.

We've been slowly getting stuff moved from the Prius to the boat, but after a week the Prius still isn't empty.  It is getting there, but a few items just haven't found their way on board.  And the settee table and surrounding area still has stuff piled on it that has yet to find a home on the boat.

It seems most of the last couple days have been running to the local Dollar Tree and Target looking for storage containers that will fit in the various holds on the boat as well as fit the things we need to store in them.  I hate having all these plastic boxes...but without them, the larger holds in the boat would undoubtedly resemble one of those toddler play ball pits, only with all our stuff piled in it.

The only thing I think we are doing right at the moment is inventorying everything as we store it.  I have a giant provisioning spreadsheet that will not only track what food is aboard, but also all the other items too.  In addition to recording what is on board, it also tells me where on board it is.  It tracks the quantity of any given item based on the amount stored in each of 24 different storage locations on the boat.  Hopefully this will at least help me remember what I have on board and, as importantly, where it is on board...and save me hours of digging through holds looking for something "I just know we have somewhere".

Now if all this stuff would go find it's own home and just let me know...I'd be set.  Guess we had better get this done soon, as we are running out of time before we need to head north for the dreaded "H" season...and I do have a few items to attend to before we cast off.

Re-Organizing

The first couple days back at the boat and we hadn't even unpacked the car yet.  The Prius was still stuffed to the brim with everything we brought across the country.  At first it was understandable as we had to clean the boat, and bringing a bunch of stuff onto the boat before we got rid of the mold and mildew that accumulated after the dehumidifier malfunctioned during the rainy season was not a good idea.

Yesterday we finally got around to unpacking...and that lasted about two boxes worth.  We found places to stow some of the stuff and then realized we needed more containers.  You see we have two big storage holds under the forward berths, but they are loaded from the top only.  Piling stuff in there would result in a big pit of disorganized supplies, so containers for organization seemed in order.

Now we could have gone to Target and bought some containers.  Since it was the first sunny day since we arrived I also could have given the boat a much needed bath.  So, what did we decide to do...go to the beach with the dogs of course.

We had a nice walk along the beach.  Our older dog...who has been having some health issues lately...even seemed happy and for the first time in a long while played with her younger brother in the surf.  We definitely made the right decision...the washing and unpacking could wait another day. And apparently there is some truth that old saying that "The cure for anything is salt water"...at least for a while.

The following day it was again warm and sunny and we finally did get around to washing the boat and getting those containers.  Actually...warm is an understatement...it was hot and the high was 91 degrees Fahrenheit today (I heard it snowed back home a day or two ago...what a difference).  There were some rain storms in the evening, but it cleared up just in time for a nice sunset.

So, we are slowly settling in here at the boat.

On To The Boat

Waking up in Mobile, we were greeted with another overcast day.  But, since it wasn't raining...yet...we decided to make a quick detour to the gulf coast. We drove down to Dauphin Island to see the ocean...and to give our youngest dog, Tucker, his first taste of it.

He was a little unsure of the water and waves but seemed to be having fun overall.  We had a nice walk along the beach, then it was time to get back on the road.

The weather deteriorated throughout the day with more cloudiness and rain...just not the weather to do much sightseeing.  Since the weather was forecast to last several days, we made the decision to just make a run for the boat.  The hotel stays were getting expensive and annoying anyway, and I think the dog's "big car ride" was getting to be more car ride than even Madison liked (and she loves car rides).

We made it to Tallahassee, Florida, that evening.  We could have pushed and made it all the way to the boat by late that day...but I didn't want to arrive at the boat late in the evening and then have to clean it up and prep it for a stay that same night.  We stopped at a Sonny's BBQ for dinner and were surprised by the crowd that was still there at almost 9pm...until we found out that they were doing a tax day special.  I completely forgot it was tax day, and they were having a 2-for-1 rib special that was a nice treat after a long day on the road.

The next day we departed Tallahassee for the last leg of the drive.  It was mostly an uneventful trip, covering much of the same part of I-10 that I took the first time I made this drive.  The only thing of note is that I came up with a new axiom for driving across the U.S.  If you see a pickup truck with Texas plates and it is not in Texas, there is a 1 in 3 chance the driver is a jerk.  I don't know how many times I saw trucks weaving in and out of traffic, cutting people off (including semi trucks), and generally just being discourteous drivers, but in almost every case it was sporting a Texas license plate.

A Jerk that almost took my bumper off .

The truck pictured above apparently felt he was more important than the other cars trying to pass a semi and so he sped up in the right lane and then cut me off.  Guess he just couldn't wait the additional 3 seconds to be two cars behind me...where he would have been if he were courteous.

We made it to the boat around 3pm on Thursday.  I would have made this post then, but unfortunately when we arrived at the boat we found the dehumidifier had malfunctioned at some point.  Don't know how it came to the decision that the "tank was full" when the tank was bypassed with the hose that led directly to the sink drain...but it apparently shut itself off at some point.  The result was that the boat was a bit stale and musty smelling with a little mold starting to appear in spots on the walls.

So, the last couple days we've been on mold patrol.  Cleaning and re-running some laundry and generally drying out the interior of the boat. We also spent some time getting the systems back in operating order. It's good now, and the sun is even coming out for the first time since we arrived so it may be time to wash the outside of the boat...after a visit to the beach.

Unlike my first marathon trip that took just over 3 days, this one took 6 days and just over 2100 miles.  It was a much more pleasant trip than the first one. Too bad we had to skip a few of the things we wanted to see along the way...but with the boat we should be able to check them out at some point if we want to. And the house is under contract too.  Things are finally coming together.

Cell Service: My First Month With A Low Cost Carrier

In recent posts I described my goals for finding a new cell phone service and took a look at a few interesting providers.  The service provider I decided to try was Ting.  They have had some favorable reviews, the rates for our estimated usage should be under half of what we are currently paying, and supporting both CDMA and GSM networks (on separate handsets) we should theoretically have increased coverage by having a handset that works on each network.

ting

Before the final decision, I contacted Ting once by phone and once using their online chat help system.  I wanted to see if being a discount provider meant there would be very limited support.  While they didn't quite meet their goal of "always have a real person to answer the phone and never put you on hold", their response times were no worse than I've experienced from Verizon or T-Mobile.  I guess that Sprint changed some policies regarding activation of handsets that has driven up recent support call volume (at least that is the excuse they are providing for "breaking their no hold promise"), so their response times might improve.  But they seemed good enough to give a try.

I've heard stories about varying ease or difficulty when porting over an existing cell phone number to a new service.  It is typically supposed to happen within 24 hours (longer if the phone number was a land line number).  In our case we were porting over two numbers from T-Mobile to Ting, one was being switched to a CDMA device while the other would be assigned to a new SIM card for an existing GSM device.  After the new device and SIM card arrived in the mail, we initiated the port.  Requesting the port was a pretty easy process of just filling out a form on the Ting web site.  The hardest part was that I needed to call T-Mobile to get a pin number to allow the port and, naturally, T-Mobile wanted to try to keep me as a customer (although to their credit, they didn't push nearly as hard as Dish Network did).

The port of the GSM phone number to the new SIM card went off without a hitch.  We initiated the port about 8pm one evening, and by the next morning my wife's phone was up and running with the new SIM card installed.  The port of my number from my old GSM device to the new Ting CDMA device didn't go as well.  That next morning my port was still showing as "pending" on the Ting site.  And that didn't change by the afternoon.  Finally, as we were reaching the 24 hour point, I gave Ting a call.  They informed me that there was a "glitch" in the porting system the night we submitted the requests and some of them didn't go through.  The tech support person then cancelled and re-initiated the port request.  Sometime around midnight I received the email that the port was successful.  When I tried activating my phone the following morning, it still wouldn't complete the activation.

This may have been my fault though.  You see, while I was waiting for the initial activation, I decided I would go ahead and configure the phone the way I wanted it.  I ignored the messages about the phone failing to register with the network, and connected the device to my WiFi.  I then downloaded the apps I wanted installed, changed the ring tone and wallpaper, etc.  In order to get the phone to complete the activation, I had to do a factory reset of the phone.  I lost all of the configuration that I had done, but the device completed activation just fine after that.  Unfortunately, the phone also started updating all of it's pre-installed software (the Google browser, mail, and other OS bits) before I could get it attached back to my WiFi...and ran up my data usage 14MB.  Oh well, at least it was connected.

Performance of the phones so far seems fine.  My wife's phone is the GSM phone and, since Ting's GSM service uses T-Mobile, I didn't expect there would be any change.  My wife reports that service might be just slightly improved, with her phone no longer dropping calls at one point in her commute that usually had that problem...but I'm betting it has as much to do with atmospheric conditions so I think I'll call performance "the same".  Since I was working at the house, I didn't have as much experience with the Sprint service.  The phone only reports one bar out of five in the house, but the phone still seems to be able to make and receive calls just fine.  On this trip to the east coast, I haven't found any areas where I didn't have voice coverage (I am using very little data, but LTE was there when I tried using it) although again I rarely see full bars on the signal strength meter.  Sound quality isn't the best on the new phone (it is a bit tinny sounding), but that is caused by the handset and not the service (and was one thing the reviews noted about this phone...but being water-resistant I went with it anyway).

Since we are now on a plan that charges based on usage, we've been kind of playing a game similar to when we bought the Prius.  Instead of seeing who could get the best gas mileage, it is now a game to see how low we can keep our first months bill while still using our devices.  I've found a number of tips that can cut down data usage on an Android device (shutting down or reducing update frequencies on all those programs that like to notify you of things...like the current weather, who just posted on Facebook, etc.).  I even installed a toolbar that will let me shut down the cell data connection (LTE) so the things that can't be easily configured to stop polling the internet would be denied access when the phone is not in use. For our trip, I installed a turn by turn navigation program called Navmii that allows you to download maps and navigation data and then use those items when you are without a data connection (or in my case, download them on WiFi and then turn off the data connection so we aren't constantly pulling map data on the cell data network).

I've been watching our various usages over the course of the month.  Most everything came in at or below where we expected it would (based on previous usage).  I did note a strange billing item on my wife's phone where it was showing calls forwarded from her number to voicemail.  I called Ting to inquire, and the support person claimed that they charge for calls to voicemail.  This seemed bizarre to me, but since it was only happening on my wife's line and not on mine, I did a bit more digging.  The Ting web site says "Calls that you don't answer, including ones that go to voicemail, are not considered billable airtime".  Technically their GSM support is still in Beta, so I guess I may have found a bug...and I think this tech support guy just wanted me off the phone. When I contacted them again, they clarified with me that they don't charge for calls to voicemail and this was indeed a glitch in their system that they are working on correcting and I should see it corrected before I am billed.

At the end of the month, here is how it compared.  On T-Mobile our bill was running just over $114 per month ($100 per month plus taxes and fees).  This month with Ting, we had the two lines of service ($12) and fell into the Medium minutes bucket ($9), Small text messages bucket ($3), and Small data bucket ($3). That is only $27 for the base charge for BOTH phones this month.  Including taxes, the total came to $31.97.  So, this first month, we saved $82.03 and I'm very happy with that.

To be fair, we did try to cut our usage some.  So, if we took our usage from our last T-Mobile bill, we would have been in the Large Minutes bucket ($18), Small text message bucket ($3), and Medium data bucket ($12) and that comes to $45 per month for both phones (I'm guessing that will be around $50 after taxes).  Still less than half what we were paying.

So, looking back at my original criteria...

• They have to be reasonably priced.  My T-Mobile bill was $114/month for two phones ($100 + taxes, fees, pain and suffering) and it had to be at or below that.

$27, or even $45 is far better than $100, so we nailed that one.

• They have to have decent coverage in the U.S.  T-Mobile wasn't that bad, except in Deltaville, but I did want better if I could get it.

One phone is on T-Mobile's network and the other one is on Sprint with voice roaming to Verizon, so this should be better as well...but we won't know for sure until we are back in the Chesapeake.  A tentative Yes.

• They have to support GSM phones (since CDMA is only used in the US and I think Japan and I would like the option to use any phone I buy elsewhere).

My wife's unlocked GSM phone was ported over.  That's a check.

• They need to have the ability to suspend service without disconnecting the number for times I am out of the country and don't want to use that service.

You don't actually have to suspend anything since you are charged by the bucket.  If you use no minutes, texts, or data in a month, all you have is the base $6 line charge and people can still leave you messages.  That should work nicely as an automatic suspension when we are out of cell phone range for a while.

There have been a couple glitches, but overall I'm happy with the service.  If you want to give them a try, I can even help you out a bit.  If you use the following link, you should get a $25 credit with them as well.

$25 credit towards new Ting cell phone service

Disclaimer: The link above will not only give you the $25 credit, but it gives me a credit too.  This doesn't change my opinion of the company, but I thought you should know.