Roots of a Voyage
Part Seven: The Do-It-Yourself Plan

by Dave and Jaja

Near the end of the summer we hauled DRIVER out of the water at SailCraft Boat Yard in Oriental, North Carolina. We put her on a truck, drove her three miles out of town, then propped her up next to the wood shop belonging to our friend Alan Arnfast. We had decided to completely rebuild DRIVER's interior.

The rental agreement Al and I struck was easy enough; in exchange for the hard stand space and use of his shop tools, I would "donate" eight hours of my own time each month to make improvements to the workshop. I was also working full time for his business, Backyard Boat Works, doing finish wood working and fiberglass boat repair. Al liked the idea of me ripping DRIVER to pieces on his property. He saw it as a guarantee toward my longevity as his employee. I was planning to do all the work myself. When I told Al we were leaving in a year he clapped me on the back as if to say: Poor, Innocent Dreamer.

Oh well.

DRIVER's interior was actually very easy to remove because I used a five-pound sledge hammer and a SawsAll. On the principal of scientific interest I weighed each hunk of wood on a bathroom scale before tossing it "overboard" onto the burn pile. Most notably, the 1-3/4-inch thick main bulkhead weighed 175 pounds, and the head door and v-berth door (which were made from solid iroko) weighed 55 pounds each. In the end, I removed 3,000 pounds of butchered rain forest from DRIVER's interior.

In the galley we wanted a deep double sink, lots of counter space, headroom, and easily accessible storage for often used items such as coffee, spices, condiments, and cutlery. Another requirement was a way to store bulk fruits and vegetables; we designed two ventilated drawers capable of holding 150 pounds of fresh supplies. Under the drawers we made a substantially strong, pull-out style table suitable as a workbench, a chart table, or just extra counter space.

We chose not to install refrigeration on DRIVER, or even an simple ice box, because of left-over attitudes we'd preserved from our days aboard DIRECTION. On a small boat, a well insulated ice box devours valuable space better allocated to water and food storage. Although our previous cruising grounds had been in the tropics, we'd learned to lead a well adjusted existence without suffering ice addiction or refrigeration mania. By keeping in mind what a reliable chilling system can cost, we decided we could buy cold drinks in restaurants for the rest of our lives. On hot days, when we longed for something cold, we just imagined we had refrigeration then pretended it was already broken.

Even on a boat with ample space, refrigeration is a luxury that can become a power consumption nightmare. If an alternator is used to charge the twelve volt batteries, refrigeration can eat the life out of an engine. Wind and solar powered alternatives often look good on paper but they can prove unpredictable for constant high energy demands, such as refrigeration. A refer or deep-freeze full of perishables is a great way to improve quality of life at sea, or in remote anchorages, but perpetuating battery life can become a choking responsibility.

Years before, we had been anchored in a remote bay when a fellow cruiser came around with a bucket of half-frozen meat. His refrigerator/freezer system had conked out, and without any chance of getting it fixed, he was distributing prizes to all the cruisers who would except the meat as gifts - better to give it away than let it spoil. We accepted two pounds of hamburger and a pound of bacon then put them on deck in the shade to defrost. We were excited. We had not tasted red meat in weeks and our mouths watered in anticipation of the feast we would soon be enjoying.

When we returned from a trip to shore, shortly before dinner time, we discovered that hungry seagulls had eaten every scrap of our defrosted meat. We shook our heads angrily.

Refrigeration is for the birds.