Still looking for a boat

On and off due to constraints to my time I am looking for a boat.  the ones that come to mind are Catalina 30 diesel, Pearson 303 and Pearson 28-2.

The Catalina 30 has a lot of room below but is low on fuel/water tankage at 10/20 gallons.  Plus the lift pump seems to be a failure area and with no bilge to speak of it is sort of iffy except for coastal day-sailing in good weather.  However, it would suit us just fine as a live aboard for the winter season.

I sort of like the layout of the 28-2 but everyone I have seen has leaks around the Stbd side portlight aft by the nav station.  It seems suspicious that all would have these leaks.

All-in-all it seems like the Pearson 303 (pictured) may be the keeper in this whole deal but it is the most expensive.So I guess I just cannot win them all and have to choose the lesser of three evils.  This vessel has the most tankage of them all and for some reason this is important to me.

The big re-shuffle

That time finally came to clean out my little corner of the Family Room.  The impetus initially came from my sister who called and said "Come and get the grandfather's desk we have been storing for

you".  Ok, fair enough so SAM & I went over and loaded it up and brought it home to the up north house.  It really looks nice in the selected spot.

Since I was on a roll, the next project was to clean up the work station area.  I consolidated the work station, a monster Dell Precision with 32Gb RAM & two Xeon Quad core 3 Gig processors, and a backup quad core used in emergencies.  I put it together as an extended desktop on the Monster and robbed the speaker system from another system.  This allowed me to remove a

table and put it into the newly completed Technical Room.

So now I will show you a bad picture of the work station area.  The Family Room now looks a lot better but the dark paneling has to be lightened up.  Enter SAM into the equation, SAM likes to paint so spent the entire afternoon putting paint sample is various areas to check the colors. 

We may have this place ready for who knows what in the near future.  We were thinking of an AirBnB to supplement our sailing habit.  Certain people I know use only AirBnB for their travel lodging.  Thanks for reading:  Moore later.

Surviving the mass extinction event

According to some we are in the beginning of the 6th mass extinction.  I think most cruising sailors will find this subject fascinating and have time to read books.  This post is about such a book & before today I had never heard of this person but watching one Youtube about the subject of Futurism immediately lead me to her interview.  The person, book and a 20 minute Youtube will tell you all you want to know and if you buy the book keep it and keep it as a Lender. The name of the person is Annalee Newitz and the book is Scatter, Adapt, and Remember. This is a smart lady. I am going to purchase this book as soon as I read the other 5 hardcopy books I have sitting at my nightstand.

When ur hot ur hot

Sailing the World

There are quite a few sailors going around the world these days.  There is also Patreon.  I sponsor a couple.  They used to be rare but each day the list is growing.  I support s/v Delos and Sailing La Vagabonde at a fairly low level so I can probably afford to contribute to one or two more.  The videos coming from these guys is pretty good and their skill is growing with each video.  What I find interesting is the fact that some of the better known Patreon Adventurers are supporting sailing newcomers into the Patreon World.

Hot & Sleep

It has been in the low 90's for the past 3 days.  This is unusual up here in the North Country.  The situation is expected to persist for several more days.  For the bigger cities there is an ozone action with the appropriate warnings. I included the chart so as to give you and idea of what is going on.

Here is what the Weather Forecast says:

Dangerous heat and humidity in the central U.S. this week; spreading to the East Coast by the weekend

Hot and very humid conditions will push the heat index to well over 100 degrees across a large portion of the central U.S. this week. Excessive Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories are in effect for much of the Plains, Miss. Valley, Midwest and southern states. The heat will spread eastward by this weekend. Be very cautious if you must do outdoor activities here during the afternoon and evening.

After two days on the road which were sleep deprived, I finally got a goods night sleep.  All this was land based, of course, since I sleep on the water much better than on the land.  I surmise that this is the case because when the boat rocks it rolls the body and no pressure points develop on OLD joints. SMILING. However, all this said, I did take a 12 ML shot of Benedryl before going to bed and about 2330 hrs EST.

Allstar Node 43584

I have built my second Allstar node and it is running.  The first one, 42119,  works fine at a fixed base location with an antenna up on the tower and a power supply in the cabinet along with the Raspberry Pi 2 connected to the internet and a TYT-9000D running on low power.

The intent of the second one is to make it portable and connect to the internet via my smartphone. This one will use a Raspberry Pi 3 because it now has wifi capability to connect to the smartphone hot spot.  This works but not too well for listening but not as well as talking.  A better solution is to connect to a wifi that has consistent latency.  My home wifi system is quite good and I have absolutely no problem with the node at all.

The way it works is that a handheld radio is modified so that several signals are brought to the outside world and connected via a translator to a Raspberry Pi 3.  The Pi would normally be connected to the internet via a hardwire switch and this is how the signals get to another node.  In this case it is connected to the internet via a wifi signal to the smartphone and out to the internet.

When I want to talk with someone I connect to their node, which looks like the one above duplicated,  by typing the node number in to the key pad of the handheld radio with the orange screen. This radio talks to the modified radio and the above paragraph procedure is followed.  I know this seems a bit much to comprehend but to an Amateur radio guy, while not simple, it is easier to understand.  The software is loaded on to a micro Sd card and the machine is configured the first time you turn it on.

If you are interested in this concept, you must be a licensed amateur radio operator to use it.  So study for the test and become one of us.  Contact me for more information csjmooreatgmail.com