TechTip: Night Lights

Short Answer: Supplement your LED masthead anchor light with reflective tape and sidewalk lights.

Long Story: When you live on a boat, you start to count every amp and erg and become quite resentful of energy hogging devices. In this category, the masthead anchor light is a surprising pig. By law and necessity, these lamps are very bright – at least 60 lumens for the average sail boat. An incandescent bulb will draw .8 to 2 amps per hour while an expensive LED variety will pull roughly .1 to .5 amps per hour. Translated, you'll burn through 8 to 20 amp hours a day with an incandescent anchor light or 1 to 5 with an LED. To put that into context, your average solar panel set up is only going to yield 8 to 13 amps an hour during the hottest part of the day. So the first and most obvious tip regarding the masthead anchor light is to switch to LED the next time you fly the mast. As a side note, this will probably take two trips: the first to figure out precisely what kind and size bulb you have, the second to install the new one.

But there are additional considerations when contemplating lighting your boat at night. First, can you find your boat by starlight amongst all the other similar white hulls? Second, will your lights go on automatically when it gets dark? Third, it is useful to know that pangueras do not look up. If your boat isn't lit at the water line, there's a good chance a panga will hit it.

We address all three concerns using very cheap, light-sensitive, solar-powered sidewalk lights. DrC installed mounts made of PVC and zipties on all four corners of the boat. As soon as we drop anchor, the girls drop the lights into their mounts. Our distinctive four orange points make Don Quixote easy to find and to see at night. They are so lightweight, we make a point of removing them while underway. They also do double duty as amber night lights on night passages as we stick them head down around the salon and heads.*

Another trick used by many Mexican cruisers including ourselves is to hang a high-powered LED light from the mid-boom. The law in many anchorages south of the border is not quite as strict regarding the use of an anchor light. Low power, high lumen lights closer to the deck replace high power mast lights on many boats. A little extra money and you can find solar-powered, light-sensitive models. Just don't forget to take these boom lights down before you put up the sail. And remember, you can't use them exclusively as anchor lights in the States or some highly trafficked international ports.

A final suggestion from the Don Quixote files is reflective tape. DrC placed highly reflective, silver tape strips just below the toe rails, on the transom steps, and at intervals up the mast. You can't really see the strips against the white hull and aluminum mast during the day. However, at night you need only sweep a small head lamp or flashlight in our direction and the shape of the whole boat lights up. We've repeated the treatment with our dinghy on the notion that you can never be too visible at night to passing traffic.

Evening in El Burro
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Note: It appears that West Marine now has a little solar sidewalk light complete with rail mount for which you will pay $49.99/each. Don't do it. Just get out your saw blade, some zip ties, and a length of PVC, and go to town.

Leash Your Pet

Considering My Options
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Mera leaps out of the van, hot on the trail of Dulcinea who zipped out at the first crack of the sliding door. Or more accurately, hot on the trail of Dulcinea's leash. Yes, I said leash. Because folding three young children, my six foot husband, my mother, myself and everything we own into our Chevy wasn't enough of a burden, we decided to bring the cat.

We started with an unleashed cat. This worked through Baja, across Arizona, and into New Mexico. However, at a KOA in Albuquerque, Dulcinea slipped out one night and over a gulch, managing to trap herself on the other side when the local water authority released flood waters upstream. For a horrible 24 hours, we thought she was gone forever. After hearing her plaintiff merows and sending the man of the house swimming across the muddy gulch to rescue her, the family resolved to leash Dulcinea forever more.

So now Dulci wears a harness, and we clip her to a 20 foot long leash every time she ventures out of the van. This slows her down hardly at all. She loves to prowl and explore. She chases lizards, birds, and insects. With great dignity, she does her personal business – as long as the ground is not too rocky. With a child, DrC, or Grandma Sue in tow, Dulci wanders our campgrounds, attempts to investigate the cars and tents of our fellow campers, and even takes an occasional detour up a hardy tree.

Walking a cat is nothing like walking a dog. For one thing, a dog enjoys the time you spend with him. Your cat pretends you don't exist. Generally, you can encourage a dog to head down a trail or path; Your cat simply heads out across country and assumes you will follow in her wake. Dogs pee on everything. Somehow a dog always has a bit of extra piss for that special bush of tree. A cat pees once, gets the entire smell business covered instantly, and then stalks away head and tail held high despite the indignity of the experience. When done walking, you can coax your dog back to camp with promises of “cookies.” Your cat is never done walking. Never. When she tires, she will twist her leash around a dozen branches and then hide under the prickliest object in the vicinity. Extracting her from the wilderness to put her back in the vehicle requires dexterity and the willingness to sacrifice several inches of skin. It is a thankless job, so we make the children do it.

At road stops, DrC often walks the cat. Sometimes Dulci agrees to go potty. Sometimes she sits down in a shady spot and stares at him like he has taken complete leave of his senses. On one memorable stop at Hoover Dam, Dulci didn't like the heat and dove between, through, and under the rocks piled high by the side of the road. Quicker than I could stop her, she'd twined herself down into the boulders a good ten feet on her own personal, feline spelunking tour. It took me a half hour prone on the rocks in the blazing sun to coax, pull, yank, and plead for her to emerge. We both came out of the experience scratching, biting, and hissing.

Can I Pee Over the Cliff?
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

All the rules regarding pets are about dogs. Pick up pet poo. Keep pet on six foot leash. Do not let pet make noise after 10PM. Don't let pet bark at the wild life. Ducli basically ignores the rules. She buries her poo six inches deep, sleeps after 10 pm, likes her leashes to be a minimum of 20 feet so she can successfully catch the wildlife, and would not bark if her life depended on it... though she does make an interesting mur-grr-chirp when hunting. She attracts comment and visitors wherever we go, though she allows no one to pet her. And each night she settles more or less resignedly into the van with Aeron and Mera safe from bears, coyotes, and stray chihauhaus.

Traveling with a cat on a leash turns out to be relatively easy. Just start young and prepare to be walked by your pet across hill, over dale, and through the shrubbery.

Cooking Tip: Use the Sun

Baked Children
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

In a comment on my last cooking tip, a cruiser-to-be noted that she was considering investing in a solar oven for her boat. I don't want to discourage such investments – if you've got room, the money and the inclination, go for it. We've been lucky enough to taste the output from s/v Totem, and it's a fine addition to any boat cruising south of San Diego. On the other hand, the sun is so intense down here, there are a great many options for solar cooking even without adding a dedicated oven to your lockers.

Sun Tea -- The most obvious thing you can do with the sun is make tea. Add two to four tea bags to a soda bottle full of water. Toss it on the tramp in the morning. Put it in the fridge in the evening. Drink chilled tea all the next day. I recommend using 2 liter green soda bottles for this purpose as the darker color takes up more heat. Any mint, black, or green tea works. Some folks profess to like the fruit teas. I'm not one of them. You can add sugar or honey as a sweetener when you set up the brewing, and it will dissolve into your tea. However, this shortens the useful life of your soda bottle. Since it's not really possible to clean the bottoms and sides of a soda bottle very easily, we get maybe a dozen batches before we give up and drink more Fresca.

Sun Coffee -- Believe it or not, you can use the exact same method to brew a decent batch of iced coffee. Add the grounds directly to the bottle then decant in the evening into a second bottle through a drip coffee filter. The only real challenge is getting the last of the grounds out of your brewing bottle.

Yogurt -- The problem with using a sun-soaked spot on the boat to make yogurt is that it gets too hot. If you've never made yogurt before, it's really easy. Don't panic. Fill a jug, jar, or pot with milk heated to 110 to 120 Fahrenheit. Drop in a big spoonful of active yogurt, usually the last bit from your previous batch or a scoop from a commercial, unsweetened, active brand. Maintain the milk at 110 to 120 degrees for several hours until it gels up. We keep ours under the helm where it is out of the sun but trapped in a hot spot under the bimini.

Heat Bread -- If you have a dark cookie sheet, you can do a really nice job heating and reheating breads, pastries, and tortillas. Put them on paper towels, plates, or napkins in a sunny spot on the deck. Lay the cookie sheet on top. Wait an hour. If you're willing to wait two hours, you can use this same technique to make quesdillas.

Bean Dip -- The kids invented Solar Bean Dip a few weeks ago. In a pan, layer refried beans, minced onions, shredded cheese, and olives. Sit in the sun from about noon till it's time to visit a fellow boat for the cocktail hour. Top with fresh chopped tomatoes, cilantro, salsa, and sour cream. Serve with tortilla chips or tostas.

Drying Fish Jerky
Originally uploaded by behang.

Slow Cooking -- Combine the hyper efficiency of your pressure cooker with the insane intensity of the sun to slow cook soups, pot roasts, stews, and bean dishes. Pre-soak beans the night before. Then prepare a soup or stew in the morning. For example, the recipe may call for browning the meat and onions. Put all the ingredients in your pressure cooker and bring to pressure for at least five minutes. Without opening the pot, stick it out on the deck in a sunny spot. At dinner time, you can retrieve your pot and serve. We've averaged between 140 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit for dishes prepared in this fashion indicating that the contents of the pot were slow cooking throughout the day. In other words, the pot never drops below the routine temperature maintained by a crock pot. To date, I've used this technique to make pot roast, chowders of both vegies and meats, chili, and bean soup.

Pizza Box Oven -- If you have kids, don't buy an oven; Have them make one. These things work super well if you start with Bobolli or sliced bollo and build from there, but they do also bake raw dough. The girls recommend that you put your pizza in the “real oven” for the last 5 minutes just to get a browner, drier crust. The pizza box oven is another way to do tasty quesidillas.

* * *

Solar cooking is as much about creativity as it is about harnessing the power of the sun to cook. I have to admit, though, as I swing in the water on a line strung between the hulls trying desperately to stay cool, my real problem is figuring out why you'd want hot food to begin with.

Grahamcracker and Chocobit

Grahamcracker and Chocobit
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

DrC glances at me as squeals and giggles pour out of the shower. In the interest of saving water and money, my mother and my youngest child are sharing a six minute shower at the campground bathrooms. I shrug, Whaddaya gonna do? They're having fun.

Aeron and Grandmother Sue have become inseparable during this long road trip. They sit together in the center passenger seat of the van as we travel, Aeron chattering endlessly and my mother occasionally attempting to stem the tide with a comment, pat or imprecation. At camp, they read side-by-side on a park table, work together cleaning dishes, or wander off to brush their teeth. When DrC, Jaime, Mera and I head out to tackle strenuous hikes into the Grand Canyon or scale Zion's cliffs, the “buddies” strike off on their own. They meander down river trails or share a hamburger in the lodge.

It's an odd friendship, really. My daughter so nimble and full of energy hand in hand with my loving but endlessly clutsy mother. Mom wasn't encouraged to athleticism in her youth, only discovering the pleasures of walking, hiking, and exercise in her forties. The unfortunate result for that entire generation of women is that their health and active interest in seeing the world is not backed up by spry, coordinated bodies. She is strong, but she'll strip over her feet on a paved trail with hand rails. Aeron, on the other hand, is a wild boat child absent boundaries and a blessed with a bottomless storehouse of energy. She can dance across a wet deck in choppy three foot seas bearing hot cocoa and a book. Yet here, with her beloved Grahamcracker, Aeron pleads fatigue when the hike goes too long. She tells us solemnly that she's afraid of heights and not strong enough to tackle hikes beyond a limit she has divined will challenge my mother but not stress her unduly.

Aeron's Fairy House
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Sue in turn has taken little Chocobit in hand. Aeron's hair has never been so well brushed, her skin so well creamed. They debate hair cuts and argue over whether Aeron's pants have passed the point of no return and require burning. Aeron roasts Grandma Sue marshmallows; Grandma Sue keeps a sharp eye on Aeron's water bottle.

It is memories these two are building. In the evenings by the light of the campfire, DrC and I quietly reminisce about our childhood camping trips while Grahamcracker and Chocobit giggle softly in the dark licking melted chocolate off their fingers and arguing about where they last saw the toothbrushes.