All those pithy aphorisms about boats and expenses really are true. I expect this with new nautical gizmology, of course – loading ‘er up with NavNet 3D, communication, and NMEA 2000 goodies involves enough money to buy another sailboat – but even the pedestrian stuff involves one gotcha after another. Take plumbing, for example. Not…

I’ve been posting weekly to my “live page” with random noodlings about how to proceed with system integration, and lately it’s been clear that once a course is set, I should move the narrative over here. After all, a blog is archived, RSS-able, prettier, and even generates occasional clickage. Friends remind me that we are…

Now that Nomadness is parked in a yacht club slip for the winter (with a Spring deadline to vacate since I’m on the reciprocal dock), there is a kind of clarity that is unfamiliar around here: an actual deadline. Specifically, I have about 4-5 months to do whatever I need to do that requires dockside…

If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble. If it happens to be an auxiliary cruising boat, it is…

A lot has happened since my last posting, in which I had reluctantly concluded that the trimaran was for sale. Among other things, she has indeed been sold… and just completed an inaugural voyage with her new Canadian owner (ironically, right back to Desolation Sound via Cowichan Bay, Pender Harbour, and Nanaimo). I write now…

Long-time readers of this blog know why I haven’t posted in a while… it’s annoying to archive months of hand-wringing and analysis over what to next. I’ve spent a few months juggling the trade-offs of a variety of facilities including a row of shipping containers, modified semi-trailers, a thorough revamping of my moldy lab in…

I was just sitting here thinking of some kind of simple logging application to help provide an objective external record of my progress toward nomadness, when it dawned on me (duh) that it’s already right here. I have historically viewed blogs as a sort of upgraded tool for publishing static content, but it will be…

It is astounding, how long one can spend in the strategic planning stages of a complex undertaking, gathering goodies, fleshing out ambitious documents, and researching… all while managing to avoid actually venturing out in the cold and clambering painfully across slippery fiberglass. But first, a general comment. Once every year or so, I get a…

A huge transition has just occurred… Nomadness is now perched on her new FE trailer in my front yard, quite dwarfing NEWT, the truck that hauled her all the way from the harbor in Blaine. The mast is the same length as my house. The next step is to find someone to do a bit…