Hanging Artwork in a Sailboat

Homes need pictures hanging from the walls, but sailboats lean over frequently! How do you keep pictures and paintings from falling off the walls or always looking crooked? The answer is simple, poster putty.

I use a nail and hook to hang the picture or painting like any regular piece of art, but then I place a 1cm (1/2 inch) sized piece of poster putty on each lower corner. I hang the picture by the nail and center it so it looks straight, then firmly press it to the bulkhead. The poster putty will glue the picture to the wall, but allow intentional removal from the wall without leaving any marks. 

All of the artwork we hang on board Wisdom is done this way and we have sailed many miles heeled over without a single piece of art swinging free or falling off a wall.

Mildew

Condensation is a serious problem for liveaboards. It will form in places you would never think of and in a short period of time, puddles will form causing water damage to everything it touches. One of the common places this issue develops is under a mattress. 

When you lay in bed, your warmth comes through the mattress until it reaches the cold sides of the bed sole. At this junction of warm and cold, condensation will form; soaking the mattress and growing mildew everywhere!

To prevent mildew, you need to prevent moisture. To prevent moisture, you need to prevent condensation. To prevent condensation, you need airflow. How can you get airflow under a mattress? You need something to form an air space where it can freely ventilate the space under the mattress.

There are very expensive systems for sale that look like wafer tiles. These hollow tiles will lift the mattress up allowing airflow and provide enough strength to support the weight of people sleeping in the bed. This seems like a wonderful option until you calculate the cost. Dri-dek tiles from West Marine cost $6.29 per square foot. If your berth is 4 feet wide and 7 feet long, you have 28 square feet to cover, costing $176.12. This seems feasible, but it is still a significant cost compared to the alternative. 

They are staggered to not block the access holes to my water tanks under the V Berth.

I went to Home Depot and purchased a few wooden battens for $0.50 a batten. These battens lift the whole mattress up to provide airflow while also providing support for two adults to sleep on this berth all night, every night, without any problems. For the forward V berth, we used 9 battens arranged in rows promote the flow of air through and under the mattress, keeping it dry and mildew free for only $4.50

Our mattress is very thick, so we don't feel the battens through the mattress, but if you find it uncomfortable to sleep on the battens under the mattress, you can always lay some wooden or PVC trellis on top of the battens to further support the mattress while keeping the airspace open.

The results were dramatic and instant. We went from a full puddle under the mattress that would drip off the foam when the mattress was lifted to bone dry in one day! If you want to spend a lot of money on this project, Dri-dek tiles will work wonderfully, but for a minimal amount of funds, the same results can be achieved using the wooden battens.

Painting Aboard

Though I have a few odd jobs like substitute teaching and instructing Paint Nite, I earn most of my income through selling my paintings.  I do have a studio where I complete most of my larger commissioned work on my parents’ third floor.  It’s the classic artists’ studio where you enter and it looks like somebody grabbed paints, brushes, and canvases and danced around while tossing them everywhere.  Painting on the boat has to be a tad more organized since it’s our living space. 

I have a few fun tricks that I discovered for myself that help create less mess and accumulation of various items that would take up all the trash space.  I paint at the table in the salon.  To begin, I unload all of my brushes and paints onto the right side of the table, place my canvas in the center, and leave the left side for my pallet, rag/paper towel, and water cup.  I have one little glass Mason jar that I keep on the boat for brush cleaning.  

Instead of taking up room with a big wooden pallet or using wax paper that adds significantly to the trash, I cover a white plate with plastic wrap!  It works beautifully.  When I’m done, I peel it up and the plate’s still as pristine as before! 

If I’m working on a commission of someone’s boat or pet, I put the image up on my computer screen in front of me.  Printing out the image just wastes space and paper.  Sometimes I even use my phone. 

It all works out quite nicely since I have the boat to myself during the day.  Herby goes off to be a dentist while Morty and I hang out in the boat.  I either go to my parents’ house to work where I can dance around and play with my cat while paint dries, or I settle into my little station in the boat.  The boat is nice because when I finish a piece, I can walk it right over to one of the galleries up the street where I show my work!

If you’re interested in seeing some more of my paintings, visit my website: SocolarArts.com

For boat or pet commissions, email me at:
ArtisticEyeStudio@gmail.com

Multiple Watertanks when in a Marina

When you live aboard in a marina, you use a lot of water and have easy access to fill the tanks up frequently. This presents two obvious choices and one hidden choice. 

Fill all the tanks individually as you use them

Hook the boat up to shore pressure

Fill the highest tank and let it siphon into all the other tanks (The hidden choice)

Filling each tank individually as you use them sounds logical but it is rather time consuming and cumbersome. If your water tank fillers are on the deck, you can easily fill them all regularly without too much effort (unless it's really cold and you have to stand out there while filling the tanks, makes for a chilling time!). If your tanks don't have deck fillers, you have to fill the tank through the access ports.

Filling tanks through the access ports may sound extremely cumbersome, but there are advantages. You will visually inspect each tank as you fill it. If you see cloudy water or debris in the tank, you will likely address the problem before it gets too serious. Also, a loose deck fill plate can mean salt water contamination to your fresh water supply, which is a serious concern! The advantages of not having deck fill plates for each water tank will quickly be forgotten when you have to open every locker or berth to gain access to the tanks hidden under it. This will then push you into the temptation of hooking up to shore pressure.

Shore pressure is wonderful for showering, doing laundry, or doing the dishes. Imagine an endless supply of fast flowing high pressure water! Long showers are no longer a concern because you won't run out of water before you rinse the soap out of your hair. Laundry is quicker since the laundry machine will fill faster. Dishes are easier to rinse with a strong steady stream of water flowing over them.

This endless supply of water can also spell disaster for your yacht. Think about the increased water pressure on all of your hose clamps. If just one hose slips off of its fitting, you will have an endless supply of high pressure and fast flowing water pouring into your boat. Your bilge pump will try to slow the rise of the water, but at some point the endless flow of water will win and your boat will sink in its slip! If you do connect to city pressure, be sure it is only for a short moment when you actually need the flow of water. After you finish, disconnect the hose to ensure your yachts safety.

So now you sit in your cockpit, envious of all the other boats in the marina with one or two very larger tanks wondering what you could do. The solution is right in front of you! Open all the tanks and treat the whole water system as one large tank. If all the water lines from the tanks to the pump are primed, the water pump will draw on all the tanks at the same time. The other way to look at this is all the water tanks are also connected via siphons! If the water level in one tank were to drop suddenly, the other tanks would deplete as they back fill into the lower tank. Eventually the tanks will all equalize their water levels in response to the other tanks.

What this means for you is you only have to fill one tank and keep it relatively full. If you let the tanks deplete themselves, you will have to reprime the whole system to bleed the air out of all the water lines. We are able to fill our tanks once per week without risking breaking the siphon. Simply watch how quickly you deplete your water supply to decide if you need to figure out how often you need to fill your tanks. 

Now you can keep all of your multiple tanks topped off with the greatest of ease by simply filling one single tank regularly.

Water Tanks for Ocean Sailing

Fresh water is the most valuable resource on board a boat! Without it, you will die in as short as 3 days, while some have managed to survive as long as 8 to 10 days without fresh water. This is why deciding how your fresh water is stored is so important.

Some boats have one large water tank which holds all of their available fresh water. This makes filling up easier, as it is only one tank to manage and maintain. This also fits the old saying "Putting all of your eggs in one basket" to the tee. If that tank were to break or get contaminated, you now have lost all of your water!

The alternate option is to break the water stored into various tanks, this way if a tank gets damaged or contaminated, it only affects that one tank and not the entire water supply. 

The disadvantages of multiple tanks are:

You now have many tanks to maintain and keep full.

The advantages of multiple tanks are:

Evenly distribute the weight around the vessel
If one tank is damaged or contaminated, it only affects a portion of the total water supply
It is easier to monitor how fast you are consuming your water
It is easier to ration your water

On board Wisdom, we have 8 water tanks, totaling up to 160 gallons of fresh water. 

Tank 1 is 15 gallons, 120 pounds
Tank 2 is 15 gallons, 120 pounds
Tank 3 is 30 gallons, 240 pounds
Tank 4 is 20 gallons, 160 pounds
Tank 5 is 20 gallons,160 pounds
Tank 6 is 30 gallons, 240 pounds
Tank 7 is 15 gallons, 120 pounds
Tank 8 is 15 gallons, 120 pounds

This may sound confusing to manage, but it works out well. We can easily ration our water by only using one tank at a time. We have an idea of how long we want each tank to last, and if we burn through the water too fast, we are made very aware of it when it runs dry. 

The act of opening a new tank also lets us keep a mental picture of how we are consuming our water. When we did our summer trip, we started off with Tank 1 open, and it lasted us almost a week. This made us a bit more relaxed about our water usage (which translates into more frequent showers). We keep Tank 6 (30 gallons) as a backup tank while cruising. If we ran out of water while off shore, Tank 6 would be able to provide us enough drinking water for 28 days (based on 2 people drinking 2L of water per day).

The final advantage of multiple tanks is that the weight can be spread throughout the vessel. 160 gallons weighs 1280 pounds! If we had that all weight in one place, it would seriously affect the trim of the vessel as it ranges between full and empty. By spreading the weight around, the weight is also evenly distributed and we are able to drain the tanks in a controlled fashion, which also evenly distributes the weight decrease.