Alternative to a Circular Saw

Circular saws are awesome! When you need to chop something into smaller pieces, these machines will slice and dice until the wood is smaller and more manageable to carry out. The only problem with circular saws is they tend to run on electricity, and what if you can’t connect to the local power grid? Now what? 

While dissassembling our plywood cabinets in the head, I ran into just this very issue. The solution was to get an axe and chop it up into smaller pieces! This may sound ridiculous and barbaric, but it did work very well. I managed to chop my way through a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood! Now, in a boat is not the place to begin swinging an axe around! No, no. The trick to using an axe safely inside a boat is to set the axe where you want to chop and then strike it with a heavy hammer! 

This will ensure that the axe doesn’t smash into something else and cause damage, or miss the mark and begin chopping out small pieces of wood. By placing the axe and then striking it, the blade will simply work its way through the wood in a very controlled manner. There is no wondering swings of an axe in the boat, and no dangers of putting a sharp blade into your interior joinery either! Just a lumbering old sledge hammer to power the axe, and it can be controlled with small and short (but powerful) strokes.

An axe may seem out of place in a yacht refit, but if you need a specific tool and don’t have access to it, then it may be time to get creative with different tools that might meet your needs as well. 

A Simpler Time, Now

We often feel like the olden days were a simpler time. The world seems more complicated as the features that were supposed to make our lives easier seem to have made our lives a chaotic cacophony! Technology that was supposed to make life flow more seamlessly always needs attention and allows us to pack so much into our day that we can’t seem to spare any time. When these “conveniences” fail us, we then are inundated with stress as we try to sort out the technical issue while still maintaining our insane self-imposed schedule. Why isn’t the simpler time now? 

We don’t have radar, we don’t have electronic autopilots, or watermakers, or bow thrusters, or most any gadget that they try to shove down your throat at a boat show. Instead, we have a simple setup of sails and a hull. We carry a lot of water and collect the rain that falls from the sky. We eat foods that are easy to keep, and we eat them before they go bad. We plan our day based on what feels right and what seems easy enough, instead of following a set schedule that we created long before we knew what we were getting ourselves into. We went back to that simpler time of sailing, and found ourselves in this simpler time of land. 

Here, a farmer sits on a seat as he milks his cow by hand. Behind him is a splendid waterfall and lush foliage over the foreboding cliff. No milking machine, no hormones, no complicated setups. He has a cow, the cow eats the grass in the field, and he milks the cow.  

Life doesn’t have to be complicated, and the simpler time can be now. Uncomplicate your life so that you can begin living it! 

Altered Reality

Camera phones are impressive machines. I came to the realization that my smart phone is the “do it all gadget” from older sci-fi movies. It has a flashlight, location information, maps, camera, voice recorder, video recorder, encyclopedia, and it can make phone calls too! 

The panoramic feature is fun to play with. It will compile a series of photographs into one long and wide photograph. Much like a multiple exposure photograph from the days of film cameras, the digital camera in the phone will stitch together multiple photos to create a panoramic image. But what if the image changes while the panoramic image is being taken? 

It gives a pretty cool effect! Maddie started taking the panoramic image with me standing on the left, and as she panned right, I moved along for the show. It gives a pretty cool rendering of the future that we once invisioned we would be living. We don’t have flying cars or immortality, but we do have Batman’s utility belt in the palm of our hands.

Red Right Returning

The old phrase to help you remember how to work with buoy navigation lights doesn’t always work! 

The concept is simple, red buoys on your right as you return to port, Red Right Returning. 

Red Right Returning Shirt

The problem is, not all countries work this way, and the opposite setup can also be found.  

Portugal is one such country we have found to use the opposite method. Here, the idea is that the lights to aid navigation are to match your own running lights as you return to port. So your starboard light which is green will match up to the green light on your starboard. Red light on your port. 

It pays to look at the charts before you get into new waters so that you don’t get confused and run aground, misled by the very lights that were intended to keep you safe.  

If you are cruising only in the United States, enjoy the mnemonic of Red Right Returning to keep your aids to navigation in order! 

Poço Ribeiras do Ferreiro, Again!

These waterfalls are considered to be the most gorgeous waterfalls in all of the Azores, and there are a lot of waterfalls on these islands! 

A few days ago, we saw them for the first time and were in awe at their beauty. Today, the weather was clearer and bits of blue sky were poking through the clouds. We decided to see them again, in the morning sunlight. 

Sometimes, when you see something amazing and then go away, your mind can manipulate your memory and exaggerate what you thought you saw. Upon returning to see it again, you might become disappointed because it is a far cry from what you thought was there. Reality can hurt like that sometimes. 

These falls did not disappoint! It had been a few days since we last saw them and they were, honestly, more spectacular the second time around! Instead of filming and recording everything we do when we first got there for our YouTube channel, we just sat there and took it in.  

Sitting on a small boulder that is jutting up out of the ground as you gaze upon the power of the waterfall will clear your mind and make you realize that no matter how hard you struggle, time will flow on, and it will work itself out in the end.  

The water that was calmly flowing through the river suddenly comes to a cliff and freefalls several hundred feet. Wind will push it one way or another trying to pull it in untold directions as the water falls. In the end, the water will reach the bottom and continue flowing on as it once was, with the chaos of the fall a distant memory in its long journey of life.