Your top 3 favorite items for living aboard

[Junk Viking]

Washing in salt water

Two choices:

a) Regular soap / shampoo after short fresh water rinse or
b) Special soap and save the fresh water pre-rinse, example:

http://www.savondemer.com/

[Terrapin]

A comfortable mattress -- without decent sleep, you won't be enjoying either your cruising nor the time spent at the dock.

A Kindle, iPad, Nook or some other sort of e-reader. Start building a library now because there will be times when you aren't able to download books.

Inverter for charging electronics, laptops and CPAP batteries.

[xbillaroo]

1.autopilot 2.washing machine 3.coffee machine

[hobopacket]

1. Babes in bikinis.
2. Babes in hit sundresses.
3. Good shower for the babes.

[Hank Kivett]

The mattress is high on the list to be replaced...yes have inverter for puter, cell phone,etc....Have made a made a manual vac sealer to vac seal food. The kindle is a great idea...have auto pilot...and all lines lead to cockpit with the windless controls at the bow and at the helm...on a 30 footer storage space is a scarce..using milk crates to store food can hold a lot and they take up minimum space. Have brand new inflatable w/5 hp Nissan 2 stroke.

[sailjumanji]

Without ready thru all of the replies, wouldn't wife or significant other be tops on list!

[AKA-None]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

1) Beer

2) Some chick to watch while I am drinking 1)

3) Redundancy is v important on boats, so a second 2) in case the first 2) wears out.







.

Nice Mark real nice

[Sea Dreaming]

Originally Posted by AKA-None

Nice Mark real nice

But, his needs are low, very low! He requires nothing from a woman but to watch her. He doesn't even expect her to fetch the beer. This is a win in my books. Simple and uncomplicated. Not demanding.

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by Hank Kivett

I am watching this with great interest and I am finding it very helpful. I especially interested in those who have boats close or similar to mine in size. I have equip mine with most of what the majority indicates is required or necessary. The one thing most agree on is a water maker or some sort...the cost of these seems to be out of sight for a poor boy like myself. Is there one out there that is reasonable...I do have solar (200w) and just added a 2000w generator and i have cockpit enclosures both winter and summer. My goal is to go south in Nov of next year as its the last thing on my bucket list.

Better watch that "last thing on my bucket list" kind of talk, you might find something/one else!

It is a 30 ft. boat. You need to plumb salt water to the sink. Then (at the very least) pre-wash with salt water; it will save you heaps of fresh water. Or, dip a bucket, and fill the sink (plus a little detergent, for the pre-wash). After the stuff is clean, you have a choice, sacrifice dish towels, or use fresh water to rinse. It takes a lot of fresh water to completely rinse out salt water.

Water conservation is a good skill to learn; also do some searches on rain catchment for small boats, because some places, frequent rains will top off your tanks, if you set it up ahead of time. We always caught water when we could.

If you plan on 1/2 gallon per day per person of fresh water, plus a fair wee bit extra, that will get you from Cabo San Lucas to Atuona, with water to spare, if you have 50 gals. total, plus 5 in a sun shower for hygiene, and 5 in emergency reserve, you'll be fine, if conservative. Jim and I did it, without feeling deprived. Remember, you can bucket off with salt water, wash your hair in salt water, and then rinse off, and towel off quickly. If you've ever been backpacking or bushwalking, you will be able to figure this out.

Do forget shoreside water concepts, though, sailing long passages in a small water capacity boat means that you have to pay close attention. If you do that, you'll have sweet water to spare.

Ann

[boatpoker]

1000amp battery booster pack.

[GrowleyMonster]

Wow... only three? That's gonna be hard. But I'll give it a go.

1. Air conditioner. How could I not have one? REALLY.
2. Delonghi Magnifica superautomatic espresso machine. Gotta have my cappuccino.
3. electric programmable pressure cooker. Sweet.
4. induction hot plate. Well, it doesn't get hot, but it makes my skillet get hot.
5. blender. Oh, is a pattern developing here?
6. rooted and unlocked samsung note 3, the best phone ever made, running cyanogenmod cm12 instead of stock android, with OCPN installed. My personal ECDIS. I have four of them, for redundancy.
7. shower. I gave up my galley table and the forward half of the port side berths to build mine. I hate cockpit showers, especially in the winter.
8. oh... right. sorry. See? Told you this would be hard.

[Hank Kivett]

Thanks Ann....I do appreciate the info..food and water is my main concern. Now i do realize at some point i must pull into a marina to resupply, pump out an re-fuel but would like to make that as little as possible.

[JeffBurright]

To second what Ann said, we sailed a 30-ft boat along the coast of the E. Pacific with a 60-gal water capacity, and we had minimal troubles. We could go upwards of 3 weeks for two people before needing a refill, and we probably could have stretched longer as our conservation strategies improved. Water conservation gets to be a fun game once you embrace the limitation.

We did the saltwater line plumbed to the sink with a foot pump* for dishes, and one of my proudest achievements was a "shower", complete with washing my hair and a shave, on a single mug of fresh water. It helps to have microfiber towels to scrub your skin.

In dry season, we would sometimes have to fill water onshore, often where there was no marina handy. We had three 5-gal collapsible water jugs for this purpose and used a 2-hose siphon system for easy transfer. In rainy season, we simply put rolled-up t-shirts on deck directly downslope of our water deck fills to create a "dam" that directed deck water directly into the tanks (after a good scrub down first). In heavy rains we could fill our water tanks in an hour, and a capfull of bleach kept critters out of the tanks.

As far as food, we hung hammocks in the main cabin for all our fresh produce, and everything else fit under our settees and a "dry good locker" we made by shrinking our fridge area (95% of the time we didn't use the fridge anyway due to energy concerns). Snapware is your friend for food storage. We'd generally provision for ~2 weeks at a time between towns with stores or markets, but we could have gone longer if need be.


*Our setup was pretty janky, but for the saltwater pump we just ran the foot pump inlet hose down one of our cockpit drains. Worked like a charm and it was easy to take out and soak in bleach when it got overgrown with marine life.

[Polux]

Books, cds (and a good CD reader), shades, wine and solar panels. I know it was suppose to be only three but it is hard to live without any of those items