Living on a boat with Jane. And her shoes.

I must start by saying that I love Jane very much, and that living aboard with her is a real joy.  But there are compromises.  Compromises which I joyfully make, I might add.

Jane likes shoes.

A lot.

A recent count put the number of pairs of shoes she has onboard at somewhere north of 13, and that is only the Winter Collection.  There is also a Summer Collection, which is apparently languishing off somewhere in storage.

Now I can only speculate here, but apparently there are shoes for rainy days, shoes for sunny days (but only Tuesdays), shoes for shopping at Fred Meyer, shoes for shopping at Safeway.  There are shoes for black dresses, shoes for black pants, and shoes for black shorts.  There are shoes for brown clothing, shoes for red clothing.  I am uncertain if there are shoes for grey clothing.  And tho this is the Winter Collection, the other day when we had to walk down the dock to shore in 6" of slush, Jane had no shoes which were suitable.

On those few occasions when I have been unwise enough to broach the subject of stowage devoted to shoes, I have been reminded of the number of tools I have aboard.  This is when I pontificate on the need to be able to fix just about anything while underway, and the fact that a #1 Phillips screwdriver can in no way substitute for a #2 Phillips screwdriver.  Then I reflect that the collection of wires and hose ends occupying the stowage behind the dinette seating has real value - after all, it once got us into Everett.  Jane, on the other hand, feels that just about any tool-needing situation can be faced bravely with... a chopstick.  (I must admit that on one occasion, a chopstick was the perfect tool, tho I can't quite remember what that occasion was.)

And so after 40 years of marriage, there is compromise.  I do not (too often) draw attention to the size of Jane's abundant shoe collection, and she does not (too often) threaten to pitch my meager tool and spares collection over the side.

And we keep a supply of chopsticks aboard.

Living on a boat with Jane. And her shoes.

Tiny heat pump, with benefits

I've blathered on about our heat pump enough that by now all of you should know how they work:  They use electrical energy to move heat.  Of course, this means that there has to be a heat source.  Eolian's heat pump extracts heat from sea water.  And household heat pumps typically extract heat from the outside air.

But here's a heat source you may not have thought of:  condensing water.  A dehumidifier removes moisture from the air by condensing it.  Annnnd... condensing water releases  970 BTU/lb, 1010 BTU/pint.  So is that a lot of heat?

Dehumidifier capacity is typically rated in pints/day.  Ours is a small one, rated at 25 pints/day, or a little better than 1 pint/hr.  Using the numbers above, our little heat pump will deliver 1052 BTU/hr.  It does that while drawing 1.6 amps - that energy (about 600 BTU/hr) also gets delivered into the boat.

So let me put all that into clear perspective for you:

Our little tiny dehumidifier, which draws only 1.6 amps, is the equivalent of an 484 watt electric space heater.

We keep the dehumidifier in the head; this explains why it gets so warm in there when we take a shower.

Of course, these numbers assume that the dehumidifier is working at capacity, and that only happens when the air is very humid, like it is in the head when someone is showering.  At other times, the heat output will be less.  But like all heat pumps, the efficiency will never fall below 100%.

So think of that dehumifier as a tiny heat pump with these side benefits:

• It keeps the boat interior dry
• It provides an apparently never-ending onboard source of distilled water

I consider ours to be one of the best $125 we've ever spent.

Tiny heat pump, with benefits

Meta blog

Blogging is an interesting task.

I know that some people are able to sit down at the keyboard, do a stream-of-consciousness dump, and get something that is not only coherent but funny too.

I can't do that.

If I have a subject in hand, my biggest problem is to hold the post to a reasonable  size (and to hold the number of parenthetical phrases to a minimum).  Ah, but the subjects.  They are the *gold* for me, and I am not all that good at inventing them.  And I am not comfortable unless I have a long list of potential post subjects "in the bank".

In point of fact, blogging here on Eolian is a team task.  An example:  A couple of nights ago - it was one of those cold, rainy Seattle nights which cries for comfort food - we were sitting on an old leather couch at the Hales brewpub in Ballard drinking a pint and eating meat loaf sandwiches.  And I mentioned that my post subject bank was running very low.  Jane immediately spun off 20 new topics!

Including this one.

Meta blog

The loom

Those of you in snow country know what I am going to talk about.

When it snows heavily at night, the sky actually lights up.  Because the air is filled with white snowflakes any light present at the ground is reflected back from the sky... it literally makes it look like the sky is glowing.

Post apocalyptic?

I took this Tuesday nite when it was snowing heavily in Seattle.  You'll have to trust me that it was snowing; the long exposure blurred out the flakes.  So use your imagination to fill the air with snowflakes - but I did get the loom.  It is tinted reddish because the lites up in the parking lot (a quarter mile away...) are sodium vapor lites that have that nasty orange tint that does so much for your healthy skin tone.

Since we already have your imagination running, add the hiss of snowflakes on the deck above.  Too bad those Christmas lites are all put away...

The loom