Hi All!
WOW! Our first SLEET SQUALL in Over Easy!
What an interesting sound to wake up to!
Currently we are being pelted with heavy sleet. The sound of which is what it must sound like inside a popcorn popper! It can get loud! But then the squalls pass and the silence returns. The ambient temperature outside is 38F so the accumulation on deck and dock won’t last but is interesting to watch as it bounces and ricochets about. Inside our snug and comfortable Over Easy we are at a comfortable 76F.
The temperatures are now regularly in the mid-to-high 40s during the days and mid-to-low 30s at night. We finally up-sized our heating to a 900-to-1500 watt Pelonis oscillation ceramic heater this week but have only run it at roughly 50% via the built in thermostat. (The little 350watt wall plugin unit was struggling and being that our wall plus are at mid height was stratofying the cabin {hot heads and cold feet}.)
The weather has been interesting to experience on the waters of Lake Champlain living aboard Over Easy. Bright warm 🌬breezy sunny
days and cold
wet blasting
rainy ⛈ days. Most all the remaining waterfowl
have followed the geese South for the winter as we are soon to somewhat reluctantly do ourselves. We have very much come to like - enjoy - appreciate the wonder and beauty that Lake Champlain has shared with us.
Our Journey started in Beaufort SC in bright sunshine with temperatures in the mid-high 90s and humidity in the same percentages. Traveling north the conditions were virtually the same which made us appreciate having installed our Air Conditioning system to Over Easy as we very much enjoyed sleeping in the campgrounds we stopped at with the cool dry air that it provided.
Our arrival at Lake Champlain the last week of August was fortuitous in that it afforded us to enjoy the end of summer season and boating community in our first marina. What wonderful considerate people and staff! Our little Mac26X was dwarfed by the various cruisers and sailboats. We felt we could have been used an auxiliary to some of them!
We found everyone friendly and curious about our mastless “sailboatcruiser” with a miniature
poodle and a house
cat.
We made several very nice friends upon the large cruisers from all walks
, educations, experiences and stages of life. It was fun sharing our boats in a safe socially responsible manner. Open hatches, decks and masks when appropriate. Everyone we met in the marina had been fully vaccinated. Vermonters have taken the lead in percentage of population vaccinated and the people are very rational and supportive about it. It is refreshing to again mingle safely with cognizant and responsible people.
Everyone was deeply appreciative of the vaccine and those multiple individuals who worked so tirelessly and valiantly to create and distribute it. All those we met shared the deep sorrow for the nearly countless lives lost to this pandemic both here in the United States and worldwide.
We listened to the stories of life, work, children, boats and a shared love of the water and their appreciation of what Lake Champlain offered them. Many have spent decades here enjoying and exploring the Lake and shared their favorite cruising routes, mooring spots and locales. There is also so much history here just about anywhere one goes.
While we only visited a few other marinas, all the marinas we visited were very nice.
All had a no open fire rule on board which made us glad we had chose to plan on an induction cooktop as our primary cook surface (we did bring a nice foldout dual burner propane unit for mooring out but never actually needed it as yet
).
LESSONS LEARNED
Electrical
We have done nicely with just the one induction cooktop but are thinking that it would be nice to have a small microwave and/or toaster oven to reheat and/or bake with. It something to consider when we add a proper AC electrical system to Over Easy this winter.
Our marina experiences (South & North) have demonstrated to us that it is a LOT easier to pull into a slip than it is to back in (a series of experiences left for another time
). As the electrical and water hook-ups are on the primary piers rather than on the slip fingers we are seriously considering adding our primary shore connections on the bow and a secondary electrical connection at the stern for when we add a generator. That way we can have as much shore cable available and an easy connect/disconnect location on the bow while having a short cable for the generator connect. So far we have made do with a 50 ft power cord run back from the bow to cabin entry but it isn’t our ideal. We have a plug in 15 Amp breaker strip that allows us to plug in the battery charger, phone/lap top charger, our Coleman Thermonic Cooler, and room heater or induction cooktop. We limit our wattage use to below 1500 watts which equates to about 13 Amps at 115VAC.
Going to a proper 210 VAC 30 Amp service with standard shore power connections would provide us with two separate 115 VAC 15 Amp circuits. We will be using 10 gauge or larger diameter stranded marine grade wires and components where ever possible and applying mitigation’s where not. We’ve had the opportunity to see first hand on other boats the false economy of not doing it right the first time (corrosion, overheating outlets, and related damage etc…).
One GFIC protected circuit will be dedicated for the A/C, heating and house/start battery charger aspects.
One GFIC protected circuit will be for onboard appliances, cooktop, phone and laptop chargers.
There will be an isolating selector lockout switch to ensure that the independent supply lines for Shore Power and Generator remain separated and isolated from each other.
Water
As mentioned previously, we deliberately held off on incorporation of fresh and waste water systems to see what we would really need. We have been using bottled (Smart) water for cooking and drinking. The 24 oz. size units have worked out nicely and we can easily store 10 of these units in one of our Galley bins. An additional 20 units fit nicely in one of our Hefty tote boxes we keep in the aft berth. This has provided us with easily accessed drinking water without having to content with the various flavor taste aspects of shore based water supplies.
Cooking Clean-up has generally been at the on shore marina facilities or with boiled shore water on the boat (collected and drained at shore facilities) in the cockpit in wash bins.
Personal Clean up has been at the on shore marina facilities.
They have all been nice and with plenty of hot water.
We have liked the aspect of our interior galley space/surface being uncluttered with a sink and drain tank but think we may have come up with a means to add it without taking up too much additional space. We still have to do some homework and sketches on it but the idea is to make a fiberglass grey water tank amidship accessed via the aft dinette bench which would level out that spaces to the top of the ballast water transfer tube. It would incorporate a separate deck mounted pump out fitting as well as a fresh water flush line (with check valve) and an air pressure flush out (with a low 5 psi pressure limit relief valve) so that it could be emptied and dried out at home.
The fresh water storage is something that we could accomplish in a similar manner except with a removable formed tank inside the port bench along side the galley. Water fill would be from a deck fitting with a float valve overboard dump to preclude overfilling. Water transfer would be via an “on-demand” tap switch to the sink.
The sink would be a relatively shallow 3” deep SST or Anodized Turkey Roaster Pan that would fold-up against the wall. The water tap would be hidden by the pan in the stowed position. The drain would be via gravity and flexible off to a lower wall side corner of the pan. This should provide an acceptable useable accessible but generally out of the way solution.
Sanitary
The Portalet seems to last about 5 days with two adults before it has to be emptied. Currently this has required careful removal and transfer to shore facilities for emptying. Not really a problem but still a chore. We like the flexibility the canister system provides to empty at the marina or at home. There does not seem to be a readily available compromise system that allows for both hand carry or in-situ pump-out so we are considering making an adaptation to accomplish that using the existing Portalet. We have to do some checking of the regulations and checking of geometry for available space but it would make life a bit easier if this could be accomplished…. TBD….
Interior Lighting
While the existing interior lighting (two original factory 12VDC units) works it leaves something to be desired. We added several AAA battery surface variable LED lights early on. These help but after our time on the water we would like to improve on this. A set of interior perimeter variable 12VDC LED rope lights is looking promising especially for the Vee and Aft Berth areas.
Exterior Lighting
We added a pole type stern running light in addition to the factory external lighting. Night motoring without a mast up feels a lot safer with this addition. It also makes for a nice cockpit light when moored or in our slip. Some low level variable LED cockpit floor lighting would be helpful though. We have added two solar charged LED path lights to the cabin roof lifeline standards (as was thoughtfully suggested by our POs). These are good but currently only last about 3 hours after sunset. I’ll have to modify them to increase the battery capacity and light longevity. Additionally we would like to add additional external courtesy lighting and underwater lighting. There are several commercial systems available that we are looking into.
We have a very nice “Q-Beam” hand held search light that our POs provided us. This has come in beneficial many times over! Thank-You K9Kampers!!!
We would like to expand upon this with a remote movable LED bow rail spot light controllable from the helm station. We would also like to add fixed close-in bow/side/stern spot lights to aid in night operations and navigation. We are going to have to look at several boat salvage yards in the coming months to see what we can find and adapt as our budget is rather limited and new units are a bit pricey!
Note: Any suggestions or pointing in the right directions would be gratefully appreciated!!!
I need to wrap this up for today as daily chores still need to be done as well as those in preparation for our haul out and departure this coming Friday.
We are the very last boat afloat (except for the Emergency Services Vessels who stay in until ice forms on the Lake) in the two marinas adjacent to us.
We have REALLY enjoyed our extended stay here these past 10 weeks on Lake Champlain.
Sort of glad (practical side) and at the same time sort of sad (emotional side) we are hauling out this Friday.
WE HAVE REALLY REALLY REALLY ENJOYED THIS JOURNEY TO LAKE CHAMPLAIN VT!!
The Journey Continues…….
Best Regards,
Over Easy
PS: We will be posting pictures tomorrow…
K9kampers for your excellent suggestion!).
days and cold 
wet blasting 
rainy ⛈ days. Most all the remaining waterfowl 
have followed the geese South for the winter as we are soon to somewhat reluctantly do ourselves. We have very much come to like - enjoy - appreciate the wonder and beauty that Lake Champlain has shared with us.
.
SNOW 
.
light bulbs!