The Blue View - When Blue does Pink

When we divided up the various boat chores, some were arbitrarily assigned as blue or pink while others just naturally fell into one of the categories. Just because a job is labeled pink doesn't mean I'm not allowed to do it, however, it's just that it is usually Marcie's bailiwick. A case in point is the laundry, which on Nine of Cups is definitely a pink job. Now that Marcie has been back in the States for a few weeks, I'd re-worn my underwear about as much as I could get away with, and the laundry bag was full. My choices were to go buy more or do the laundry. Now, it isn't as if I've never done my own laundry. I was a bachelor several decades ago, and if memory serves, I did wash my clothes back then. How hard could it be?

I asked around about where the laundromat was and whether anyone could give me a lift. Gillian, a friend of a friend stopped by, and said she'd be happy to give me a ride.

Gillian is a pretty big gal, about 6 feet, 200 pounds, and works as a shipwright at a boatyard a few miles away. I suspect she is probably big and tough enough not to take much guff from her co-workers. We seemed an odd pair as she went off to look for boat parts while I was washing the clothes. We climbed into her 3/4 ton 4WD pickup and headed over to the laundromat. She said she'd be back in an hour or so, which would be perfect.

I separated the light clothes from the dark, added the appropriate amount of soap, inserted my coins, started the wash, and read my Kindle for a half an hour. Other than a colossal waste of time, this didn't seem too difficult.

Once the wash was done, I loaded it into the dryer, set it to high (cotton) and resumed reading my Kindle. I checked on it about 10 minutes later. There was an odd smell in the air. The clothes were extremely hot. I couldn't even handle them. So hot, in fact, that two of Marcie's panties had literally melted to the sides of the dryer. I was pretty sure this wasn't normal. I turned the temperature down to medium and when I checked again in five minutes, the clothes were only slightly warm. So the blue in me kicked in and I then ran it on hot for two minutes, then on medium for two minutes and so on until they were dry.

Other than that, there was only one other slight problem. Apparently something with ink must have previously been in the dryer (or maybe it was the molten panties), because several of our t-shirts now had what appeared to be small blue ink spots on them. I checked all the pockets and didn't find anything that could have caused it, and I was careful to put the dark and red clothes in a separate washer from the light colors. It remains a mystery to me.

So now Marcie is low on panties and we're both low on tee's. I am convinced that these were mishaps that could have happened to anyone and one shouldn't lose one's job over something so minor. On the other hand, if I let Marcie think I'm inept at laundry, she'll probably never let me do it again. That's a blue thought, ain't it?

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The Blue View - Microbrewery Nine of Cups

 

A couple of years ago in Fiji, we were invited aboard another sailboat for sundowners. The skipper had brewed his own beer aboard and was eager to share some with us. That was the nastiest, foulest beer I can remember tasting, and after politely nursing it for an hour or so, I finally managed to down it all. So when we were aboard our good friends' sailboat Fifth Season in Sydney a year ago and were offered some homebrew, I was a bit reluctant to try it.

I needn't be. His brew was outstanding. He had brewed several varieties and it was like visiting a microbrewery. He had purchased a brewing kit and had been brewing beer for a year or more. I asked lots of questions and got a lot of good information and suggestions.

Beer here in Australia is quite expensive by U.S. standards. Brewing your own beer, on the other hand, is quite inexpensive. As a result, there is rarely a town in OZ that doesn't have a brew supply store. Even the local Kmart and groceries carry the basics.

I found a DIY brew-kit made by Coopers, an Australian brewery, that included everything I needed to brew my first batch. Fermenter, hydrometer, bottles, brew mix... everything was there. In addition, it came with a short video with all the instructions. The average sailor could do this. In fact a high IQ chimpanzee could manage it. Just the thing for me.

The results were outstanding. So far I've made several lagers, several varieties of Pale Ales, a cider, and an English Bitter. Each batch makes 23 liters or about six gallons, and costs roughly $20-$25 a batch. That's roughly 35 cents for a 12 ounce bottle or 42 cents a pint. Not bad.

Lest you think the rule that “nothing is ever easy aboard a boat” doesn't apply here, there are a couple of catches with brewing aboard a sailboat. The first catch is that we have to be anchored or berthed somewhere for a couple of weeks. Unless I can figure out how to gimbal a 6 gallon container of fermenting beer, we can't go sailing without the risk of turning the bilge into our fermentation vessel. We missed a weather window once because the brew wasn't ready to bottle. And since it requires a large amount of water for washing and sterilizing everything as well as for the beer itself, it's best done somewhere that we have access to water ashore.

So while Nine of Cups is berthed here in a quiet marina with plenty of water, I'll brew up a couple of batches. Of course, with that comes the necessity of frequent taste tests to maintain proper quality control.

Our youngest son was interested in trying his hand at homebrewing, so I checked to see what was available in the States. It turns out that Coopers markets the same brew kit via Amazon in the U.S. I highly recommend it.

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The Blue View - Refrigeration Redo pt. 2

Well, I've now removed the old refrigerator innards, leaving a big cavern and I've been prepping the inside of the cavern before installing the insulation. It involves lining the inside with two layers of epoxy impregnated glass cloth, then a layer of foil, followed by a layer of plastic to act as a vapor barrier.

This process requires copious amounts of epoxy. I'm not talking about those little tubes of epoxy you buy at the hardware store and mix with a toothpick. I'm talking about the better part of a gallon of the stuff. You start the process by carefully measuring and mixing the correct ratio of resin and hardener. If you mix too small an amount, you lose efficiency. If you mix too much, it will start to “kick” before you have a chance to use it all, at which point, within a few seconds, it turns into a very hot, solid blob. Once mixed, it has the consistency of corn syrup, and is about the same stickiness.

I know it will be messy, so I wear latex gloves and an old long sleeved shirt. I put waxed paper on the floor around the area I'm working in. Alcohol is a benign solvent for epoxy, so I pour some into a container and set it nearby in case of a spill. After placing a couple of rags in strategic locations and cutting the glass cloth, I begin.

I paint a coat of the epoxy onto the walls of the cavern and apply the glass cloth, followed by another coat of epoxy. This is repeated for the second layer of glass cloth. The aluminum foil is epoxied onto the cloth, and finally the plastic is epoxied to the foil. Sounds easy, and it actually isn't all that difficult. If this were a segment on This Old House, that's exactly how it would go, and the camera would now pan out, and the workers would be cracking open a cold brew.

In my world, it doesn't go exactly like this. To begin with, it's been hot, and I'm in a long sleeved t-shirt sweating like a pig. I'm applying the epoxy to vertical surfaces and the underside of a cabinet, so the epoxy has a tendency to run down the brush and onto my gloves. The wet glass cloth needs adjusting to get the wrinkles out and I use my hands to do that. Before long my gloves are coated with sticky epoxy. As I reach down into the cavern to apply epoxy, my sleeves brush against the epoxy-coated walls, and begin to get a bit sticky. Then I inadvertently rest my hand for a second on the teak shelf above, then my arm touches the adjoining wall. My glasses keep slipping down my sweaty nose and I push them back up. I smack my head on the bottom of the cabinet above, and as I'm dancing around swearing, I realize my hair is sticking to my glove as I rub the sore spot.

By now, I've dripped a bit of epoxy on the waxed paper, and the paper is sticking quite well to the bottoms of my shoes. As I'm trying to lift my foot without taking all the paper with it, I manage to knock over the container of alcohol. Not a big deal - I can wipe it up with one of those rags I had ready. I set the container of epoxy on the top of the cavern and kneel down to wipe up the epoxy just as a big powerboat is inconsiderate enough to pick that moment to depart the marina. Before I can grab it, about a cup of epoxy spills on the floor. Fortunately, the spilled alcohol and rags are right there, so I'm able to get most of the epoxy off the floor.

Did I mention this is a project best done while Marcie is away?

After five or six hours of this, I have quite an even distribution of epoxy on the galley cabinets ,and walls not to mention the floor. Parts of my sleeves are bonded to the hair on my arms, and most of the few remaining hairs on my head are semi-permanently epoxied to my scalp. But the cavern looks great, and hey – I was thinking that as long as Marcie's away, it might be a good time to refinish the galley cabinets and floor...

There's more, but give me a day or two to recover.

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