Blog Neglect

Nothing sadder, says my friend Moni, than a neglected blog.  Actually, I've been writing, just not here. Struggling with ongoing format issues for my blog at the Capital (if you've noticed, my last few posts there have no paragraphs at all, just a single run-on jumble.)  So here's what I've been up to:

Living aboard together in a very small space is, in some ways, just amazing.  We're totally in sync with each other's moods, and rarely need to finish sentences to know what each other is thinking.  Here in our little winter cocoon of white plastic, we're cozy and happy.  At the same time, I explained in a piece for Women and Cruising, (my first!) we have some tricks to keep from getting on each other's nerves and maintain our

Balance of Power ... Afloat


The other wonderful project I've been involved in is the launch of a new website, The Monkey's Fist: Collect Cruisers' Perspectives.  It's a collection of blog posts about particular topics related to the cruising/liveaboard life.  My first one was a glorious batch of stories from both new and established writers about what went through their heads as they moved aboard.

Moving Aboard: Transitions

No Cardboard Aboard!

“Cardboardophobia” probably isn’t a real word, but when you live on a boat … it should be. Nothing – nothing – made of cardboard comes aboard. We know folks who take new purchases out of cardboard packaging on the dock before coming aboard or getting into the dinghy.  (And doing so gives you a very real understanding of just how much waste our packaging generates, oh my!)  So why are boaters so weird about this?  Roaches can live in corrugated cardboard and eat the glue and lay their eggs; once you bring these little hitchhikers aboard they just love to hang out in the dark moist bilges.  This is a concern especially in warmer climates, which of course is where most of our boating takes place.  Isn’t being warm the whole point? Even if you’re not in a warm area, cardboard doesn’t do much to protect food in the humid boat environment; instead of keeping water out it’s more of a moisture magnet. Soggy crackers and moldy pasta just don’t work for me.  Yuck.

Since moving aboard I’ve become obsessed with canisters and containers.  No cardboard aboard due to bugs and sogginess, so food once purchased needs to be transferred to something else.  But what?  Glass?  Better not, it could break in rough seas.  How about metal?  Nope, it’ll rust.  That leaves … plastic.  My e-friend Diane Sullivan is moving aboard and transitioning from a land-based kitchen to a cruising boat’s galley. She posted on Facebook recently, “Looking into things we'll need on the boat. Dehumidifiers, more line (rope) for the anchors, plastic storage bins, etc. All things plastic and polyester? Who woulda' thunk it? Me? Ms. Natural everything? How things change.” [slightly edited by me for clarity since I’ve taken her slightly out of context] Yes, Diane, we liveaboards and cruisers really do get into lengthy conversations at happy hour about the relative merits of zip-loc bags versus vacuum sealers and Snapware versus Lock-N-Lock or Rubbermaid or Tupperware or Pyrex.  Welcome to our world!

But once we’ve decided on plastic, there are still so many choices!  We invariably like square containers better than round when we have the option – less wasted space when lining up squares or rectangles on a shelf.  Some of our containers are purchased and others are reused packages from things we buy a lot of.  The purchased ones have the advantage of nesting to store compactly when not in use.  The recycled ones may lack that efficiency, they take up as much space empty as full, but make up for it by being free.  Selecting items in the grocery store can be as much about whether we can reuse the package it comes in, as it is about our choice of brands.  Ziplock bags with the air squeezed out, or vacuum sealed packages, have the advantage of taking up no space at all besides the volume of the contents … but if you’re unfortunate enough to get pests, they can eat right through the thin plastic!  

Sometimes I feel like a little kid playing house as I shuffle the contents from one canister to another as we use down the contents, trying to maximize space efficiency.  What gets me the most is somewhat funny, though.  By the time I’ve run out of something that has been carefully de-cardboarded and stored, I forget what the package looked like, necessitating a weird scavenger hunt at the grocery store.

After we ate all the wild rice or salted peanuts that these once held, they are now on their second (or tenth!) lifetime storing dried beans or couscous. Don't they look cozy in there?

For a while these big gallon containers held our main stock of pantry staples in an out-of-the-way locker, and we used them to replenish a smaller “day-use” jar in a more convenient location to save space.  This arrangement sounded great in theory, we thought we were really clever, until one went buggy and contaminated our entire 10-lb supply.  Now we break everything up into smaller quantities so if one package goes bad we don’t lose it all.  

These both hold about 5 pounds of flour.  Sometimes it is worth paying for the space-efficient square one, other times, being eco-conscious (and free!) is more important.  We've done both.

Now what do I do with all this stuff?  Transfer it to bug- and moisture-proof containers, for one thing!

Hibernating

December is the darkest month, so we have to make our own light and warmth.  And I love love LOVE the madcap swirl of holiday parties, sparkle and lights, reconnecting with friends that we let slip a bit, good cheer and the relaxed mood at the office.  Looking at our December calendar, there aren't very many days here that don't have something to do written on them!

And for us the party season continues through early January, with our anniversary on New Year's Eve and Dan's birthday on the 9th.  But now, even I've had enough.  Time to slow down the pace, hunker down with just the two of us, and hibernate.  

I'm looking forward to the (relative) quiet.  

We're staying in Annapolis for the first winter we'll experience since 2008.  And the first question people ask us when they learn we live on a boat and will live on it through the winter is what do we do about heat.  Um, the same thing you do - we turn up the thermostat.  Sort of.  When we're at the dock, our primary heat/cooling is a heat pump.  When it's in "heat" mode, it sucks water in, extracts some of the heat that's in the water to warm the room air, and then discharges that water, chemically unchanged but 5-10 degrees colder than it was when it came in.  Well, guess what?  If the water coming in is only 40 degrees (as it was at Thomas Point buoy yesterday) and it discharges 5-10 degrees colder, we could be trying to discharge ice cubes.  That isn't going to work, obviously, so our heat pump is shut down for the season.  Instead, we use electric space heaters (those oil-filled things that look like an old-fashioned radiator) and the built-in diesel heater that we generally use at anchor.  Besides, as the previous owners pointed out as they were explaining some of the features of the boat, "The heat pump is really meant primarily for air conditioning and to take the chill off an occasional morning, not to run full-time heat all winter long.  What would you rather put the wear and tear on and have to replace sooner - the $1000 marine-grade built-in heat pump, or a $20 electric space heater from Home Depot?" In addition, our boat does not have an insulating liner so it could get c-c-c-cold in here and the system have to work even harder.

Living on the water is a humid environment to start with.  Put two people aboard, breathing and taking showers, and we're adding humidity to the air.  One of our favorite hunker-down activities, cooking soups and stews, adds even more humidity.  And we can't open the hatches to let out the moist air - it's cold out there!  So to avoid living in a chilly rain forest we've added a room-size dehumidifier.  Bonus - it produces waste heat which helps keep us both warmer and drier.

Our biggest winter concern of course is getting a load of snow on the deck.  We've also had to prepare the boat in a way that we haven't for several years.  The heat leaking through the uninsulated deck could melt that snow, then let it refreeze to ice, or sit on the deck for long enough to leak through the fittings into our living space below.  So we've encased the boat in a bubble of white plastic shrink wrap.  It will help shed snow and keep us just a little warmer.  On sunny days the little insulating bubble soaks up solar gain and makes almost an extra room outdoors, mitigating our tendency to get cabin fever cooped up below for months.  What I find niftiest of all, though, is the way the boat looks in the shrinkwrap - exactly like a cocoon, perfectly in accord with my "hibernation" theme for the month.  

All tucked in for the winter.  This isn't our boat; it belongs to a dock -neighbor.
Due to the orientation of our slip, I couldn't get an uncluttered photo of ours, but we're using the same plastic.
Ours has a bit more visibility at the stern, clear plastic there in the cockpit.  Note the zipper flap "door."

Raft UP: "Alike" and "Equal" are Two Different Things

Our first trip down the ICW we traveled with the best cruising mentors anyone could ever have had.  Every evening we’d anchor near each other, and dinghy over to gather in one or the other cockpit for some rum and some laughs.  And every morning at the agreed-on “hooks up” time, we’d look over and one of them would be at the bow raising their anchor as Dan and I were raising ours.  It was fascinating to watch because they alternated duties – literally.  One day, he’d be at the helm while she operated the windlass and washed off the anchor chain coming aboard; the next day it was her turn to helm and his turn to wash.  Underway, they’d take 1-hour watches, while one of them was at the helm steering down the ICW, the other one would be below “doing their own thing” – reading, baking bread (they were both quite good cooks), playing on the computer, whatever.  The next hour, they’d switch.  If you hailed them on the VHF you never knew who you were going to get, you had a 50-50 chance, because both took turns.  In a cruising community where the stereotype so often is the reality, the guy is the sailor and the boat is his and the wife is just along for the ride, (especially in that age bracket just a little bit older than we are), I can’t communicate how unusual this absolute interchangeability of skills seemed.

Unlike these friends, Dan and I aren’t alike in our skills.  Each of us can do each one of the tasks that the boat requires, after a fashion.  But that doesn’t mean that we’re both equally good at, or both interested in, the same things.  We both acknowledge that Dan’s the better sail trimmer, he can eke an extra quarter of a knot out of any configuration, and he loves to tweak and try.  I can adjust the sails well enough to get us going where we’re going, although it may not be as fast or comfortable as when he does it, and frankly, I’m not very motivated – as long as we’re moving smoothly in the right direction, that’s good enough for me.   When it matters, he’s got the expertise to pick the best way to accomplish the task.  Similarly, I’m the better navigator, quicker to read the charts and geekier with the chartplotter. He can do it, but it isn’t fun for him, while I love the mathematical elegance.  Some tasks we divide along traditional gender lines; I’ve had the sole responsibility to plan the provisions for our last long cruise, and he’s always held the unenviable duty of rebuilding the head.  Sometimes, we reverse traditional roles.   When we come into a dock I’m generally at the helm, more often perceived as the position of power and a guy job.  But it more practical for us to switch; either of us can command the 40 horses that move this boat with a touch of the wheel and a bit of finesse, but should we need to fend off at the bow, Dan has the greater upper body strength to do it. 

There always seems to me more than a hint of a power imbalance when jobs are divided up along traditional gender lines, with the husband in charge of the boat and its mechanical items, and generally being the skipper and commander while the wife is in charge of support duties like cooking and provisioning.  All the tasks necessary to keep our boat running smoothly and safely and keep the crew comfortable are just that – necessary – and I rebel against the implication that some are more important than others.  Yet the traditionally female (“pink”) jobs just uniformly don’t get the kind of respect that the “blue” jobs do and seem to be viewed as less worthy, important, desirable.  But really, which is more unpleasant – spending the afternoon shopping for 3 months’ worth of groceries, or spending the afternoon playing with the inlet valve for the holding tank?

So in a cruising community that often defaults to sorting and ranking tasks by gender, what does it take to make a relationship equal?  Back to our good friends and mentors that I described earlier. They both had their captain’s licenses and their skills were almost exactly alike – what seemed the foundation of a perfectly egalitarian cruising relationship, which in fact they had.  And yet, having skills that are “alike” is neither necessary nor sufficient to create a relationship that is “equal.”  I think their relationship was equal because they lived that way on land or afloat; and would have treated each other that way regardless of whether their skills were identical, or even at comparable levels or not.  I believe Dan and I are equal in in power terms in our relationship, but our skills are not at all alike.  They are complementary rather than similar in the way our friends’ are.  What I’m good at, Dan is less good at, and vice-versa; together we cover the full spectrum of what we need to stay afloat metaphorically and nautically.  “Alike” and “equal” are two different things.

* This month’s RaftUp topic is “Pink Jobs and Blue Jobs.”  I inadvertently jumped the gun on my Raft-UP blogging colleagues; I wrote about that last autumn when I learned to work onthe outboard engine.  Other RaftUp contributions are linked in the sidebar to the left.

Click on the monkey's fist to read others bloggers on this topic.

A Rant: Generalizations About Liveaboards

May I vent, please?

So, someone has bought a boat, and rented a marina slip, and they’re limited in the number of nights they can sleep aboard their own boat in their own marina slip because the marina doesn’t allow living aboard?  Whazzup wi’ that?

Some marinas, like ours, welcome liveaboards.  Others forbid it.  I don’t mind if a marina wants to ban living aboard at their facility; they’re a private organization that can associate with whoever they choose, or not associate.  There are all sorts of completely logical and impartial reasons to restrict living aboard at a particular marina. For example, there may not be sufficient infrastructure (electricity or parking spaces, say, or accommodations for winter conditions) to support a fulltime population.  Or, more nebulous but still reasoned, the owners may be trying to create a particular ambiance welcoming to transient boats and cruising travelers.  These owners might be concerned about creating a vibe that long term liveaboards on a dock would perceive as a tight-knit community, but that transient newcomers would perceive as cliquishness.

But when marinas ban living aboard because of incorrect generalizations about what people who choose to live aboard are like, and what problems liveaboards may cause or avert, then I have issues. There are numerous myths and assumptions about liveaboards, that they are all dropouts and losers (far from it – our liveaboard neighbors have included a District Court judge, a retired physicist, nurses, pilots, IT  and telecom professionals, a jeweler, several artists, writers, and Washington bureaucrats); or that liveaboards use resources without paying property taxes (um, no, we pay property taxes the way any other renter would, by subsidizing the landlord’s taxes on his property incorporated into the rent of an apartment or marina slip); or that this is the best they could do and they are one step away from being homeless (no, I’m houseless, not homeless, and I’ve chosen this liveaboard lifestyle that relies less on material consumption and more on being in touch with nature); or the generalization that’s irritating me today, that liveaboards are slobs with derelict boats that will ruin the image of the marina.

 I don’t accept “We don’t want liveaboards because they are all messy and all their boats are ill-kept floating junk,” as a valid reason for banning liveaboards.  Liveaboards are no different than any other group of people.  Some are good citizens, and some are a bit sketchy.

Not all liveaboard boats are messy, and not all messy boats are lived aboard.  If a marina business is concerned about appearances, they can ban liveaboards, but there’s a problem with this solution.  Banning liveaboards will keep out the messy liveaboards, those whose boats are unable to travel under their own power and are just floating very small condos, and those whose clutter expands to the deck of their boat, and then the surrounding finger pier and dock.  But that ban will also eliminate some good folks, like the liveaboards who provide security for the entire marina by noticing potential problems with neighboring boats, or people who don’t belong.  In addition, if a marina implements the “ban liveaboards” solution, some messiness will remain, from people who only visit their boats on weekends, are not invested in the community, and have messy boats because they are not there to see the boat very often and the condition of their boat is out of sight and out of mind.  If a marina is concerned about clutter, they could simply make an objective rule that nothing is allowed on docks or common areas – simpler to explain, measure and enforce, and more likely to achieve the desired result, than counting or restricting the number of nights owners can visit their boats.  Similarly, if they’re concerned about boats rotting at the docks, they can require that the boat leave its slip at least [once a month/once a season/ whenever] to prove that it’s seaworthy.

So, a modest challenge: can you spot the liveaboard boats in these photos?  All the pix were taken 28 December 2012, on our dock at our marina.

[Were you able to guess just by looking?  Numbers 1, 3, and 5 are permanent full-time liveaboards; numbers 2, 4, and 6 are occasionally visited by their owners on weekends.  The owner of one of the neatest of these boats, a retired physicist in his 70s, has lived aboard for many years; the owner of one of the messiest is a very congenial local doctor who is too busy to get to the boat as often as he would like.  So much for assumptions.]

If you’re concerned about something, have the honesty and courage to address it directly.  Don’t make generalizations about a group of people and assume that all members of that group have the characteristic you’re concerned about.  Okay, vent over; thanx.  And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Update: Not Quite So Bad

Fixed the main bilge pump - yay!  Now we can wait for a warmer day to work on the backup pumps.

And speaking of warm day ... The weather today had howling wind, sleet, a bit of snow and lots of rain.  When I had to drive to work I dreaded this kind of day, knowing that my 1 hour commute could easily turn into 3.  But I had been curious for some time how I'd react to wintry weather if I *didn't* have to travel.  This is the first time I've been exposed to winter since 2008, and my first opportunity to find out.

When viewed from the warm, dry boat, and there's no need to be in it if I don't want to, winter isn't that bad after all.  We stayed aboard and worked on the bilge pump, had a second pot of coffee, and hunkered down with some library books and a pot of mushroom-barley soup.  Not as much fun perhaps as snorkeling in the Bahamas like we did 3 years ago; or as educational as studying history in St Augustine like last year.  But staying put instead of snowbirding has returned my sense of living in sync with the rhythm of the seasons, and that is a lovely unexpected benefit.  (Ask me again in about a month, I may get tired of ice by then.)

GRRR ... and the Water System Gremlins Continue!

Yesterday, a glorious long hot shower, courtesy of our new hot water heater.  Sink drain clogged with hair and soap scum - no problem cleaning it out now by running hot-hot-hot water down it.

Only to discover that there's a slow leak in the hot water system that needs to be fixed.  That led to a bit of fresh water in the bilge.  Which in turn led us to discover the main electric bilge pump isn't working.  No sweat, we have a backup.  Oops, the backup isn't working.  No sweat, we have a manual backup for the backup.  That's not working either!  WTF??

Guess I know what we'll be doing today.  Sigh.

(Not seawater coming in or danger of sinking.  Important, but not urgent.)

Oh, No, Not ANOTHER Water System Problem!

Got up this morning to start coffee and stepped in a puddle near the galley sink.  NOT good!  We take leaks really, really seriously, at least until we determine the source.  Is the bilge full?  Is this something that can sink us?  Dipping a fingertip and tasting confirmed that it was fresh water, not salt, so that was encouraging.  With some of the immediacy relaxed, we looked for drips from the newly-installed pressure tank or hot water heater.   Fairly quickly we were able to isolate it to s slow drip coming from the hose at the bottom of the faucet.  A leaky faucet - this could happen in a house, too.  Compared to our previous couple of water system fixes, this one is minor and straightforward, a "fixlet" rather than a "fix," we called it.  Still, this working on the water system stuff is getting old!  At least this project could wait until after our coffee - caffeine would definitely make the job go easier.

This same morning, found a wonderful post by one of our fellow Raft-UP bloggers with the somewhat scary title Boats Break; Living on Them is Stupid. Fortunately, their story was not about a near-death escape from a collision or sinking; it was a humorous take on an accumulation of minor maintenance projects not too different from ours, and a reminder of why life afloat really is worth it.

Downsizing Tips for Moving Aboard (and everyone else)

As long as I’m on the general subject of downsizing – and I’ve got to tell you, I was utterly over-the-moon blown away by the feedback I got on “Take It or Leave It;” thanx everyone – I thought I’d mention a few more strategies that got us through the transition.  Of course keeping our possessions from accumulating, and keeping them organized is an ongoing project as we evolve, and things that once were useful or spoke to us are no longer relevant.  We take on new interests and let go of old ones, we learn what we needed to from books and pass them on, and technology changes.  And no matter how logical we are, those pesky emotions and sentimental attachments to items sometimes just have to be respected.  These downsizing strategies worked for us in the extreme constraints of moving to a small sailboat; a looser interpretation would apply to downsizers on land as well.

On land, decluttering days were guided by British craftsman William Morris’ dictum: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” The equivalent guidance for selecting things to move onto the sailboat was given us by friend and fellow cruiser Linda Glaser: “First safety, then tools, then ‘everything else.’” Okaaaay, that puts it into perspective … Given that overarching principle, here are the tips we used.

Go “shopping at our house.”  Take everything – Every. Single. Thing. out of your kitchen cabinets and put them in the basement.  Then, live your normal life.  When you need something, go to the “store” downstairs and get it, use it, then put it away in the cabinet.  At the end of a month or so, you’ll have a kitchen (sparsely) filled with things you actually use, and a basement full of things to give away.  Repeat with clothing, tools, etc.

Break up sets. I can’t figure out why people, me included, have so much angst over doing this.  Honest, the karmic balance of the Universe will not decrease if you don’t keep sets together.  When we had our kitchen design/remodel company, we once helped build an Indian restaurant.  The owners gave us a thali set with platters, cups, and various-sized small dishes and bowls that filled two large boxes.  The problem when moving aboard, though, is that the set is really not very useful for serving meals other than an Indian feast, and takes a lot of space.  So if we kept the set together, we would be able to bring … nothing.  Instead, only six small shallow bowls came with us.  They are used almost every day as ingredient prep bowls, and remind us of the clients-who-became-friends every time they are used.  That single piece is just as effective a reminder as the whole set can would be.  Similarly, when we lived on land we had dinnerware to serve 14.  Here, we only have room to seat 4 at our table, so the excess flatware is just that – excess – and stayed behind.

Reimagine uses for ordinary things. You are not bound to use things as the manufacturer intended. We don’t like to fish, but there are several tackle boxes aboard.  One keeps nuts and bolts sorted, another holds my earrings and keeps them paired up.  A medicine-cabinet organizer from CVS sits on our nav station and holds pens, scissors, and small electronics and their cords.  And even though we don’t drink beer aboard, a foam beer cozy makes a nifty cover to protect the blades of our immersion blender.

Technology is your ally.  We scanned photos, stored music on an iPod, and turned cookbooks into tidy computer files.  Some reference books are still paper, but our recreational reading is almost all on Nook, Kindle, and iPad.  Now I joke that my entire library and all our family photos fit in my pocket, and won’t ever get moldy.  We keep everything backed up to an external hard drive, with a second copy ashore.

Wherever possible, make your things do double duty.  That specialized multi-wire gizmo to slice hard-boiled eggs?  Mmm, no.  Good kitchen knife that slices hard-boiled eggs and many other things?  Yes.   The pillows and bolsters on our settees are really stuff sacks that hold guest linens and off-season clothing.  Every shirt goes with at least two different pairs of pants, and every pair of pants goes with at least two different shirts – so if one piece gets dirty you can still use the other.

Before it comes aboard, figure out where it’s going to live.  Everything needs to be stored somewhere where it won’t go flying when you’re underway, or drive you claustrophobic in port.  If it won’t fit in one of your lockers, you probably shouldn’t bring it.

Finally, pay attention to scale.  Things look smaller in the store than they do when you bring them on board.  A fair number of cute baskets ended up being given away as they totally dwarfed the space I had envisioned them in once I got them home.

Staying organized on a boat is a different issue. It’s not one that I plan to write about because, honestly, I’m not qualified – I’m not organized!  Things don’t necessarily end up in locations that land-based logic would dictate.  On land, you learn to store like things with like, and store things near the place they’re used.  On the boat, sure, it’s nice to put kitchen-y things in the galley, but other characteristics of lockers may triumph over location.  Some lockers are dry and others more subject to temperature swings and moisture.  So the dry lockers – wherever they’re located – are prioritized for sensitive electronics, papers that could grow moldy (passports and ships papers), medicine.  Lockers closer to the centerline of the boat and low down are good for heavy things like tools, to minimize their effect on the sailing characteristics of the boat.  (Heavy things, high up, could heel us over more).  Wine also loves to be below the water line where the temperature is relatively constant.  And there’s the matter of shape; we have relatively few big open lockers that could hold larger items, and lots of places to tuck smaller things.  The combination of shape and size and dryness can lead to some interesting organizational challenges.  So, some kitchen tools are in the galley and my bread bowl, too big for any of the lockers in the galley, is behind the settee on the other side of the boat, while a nice, very dry locker in the galley is full of screwdrivers and wire cutters and our handheld VHF radio and chartplotter, and a bit of prime storage real estate in what looks like it should be the top dresser drawer instead filled with first-aid equipment easily accessed in case of an emergency.   (This is why many cruisers keep lists and spreadsheets of where things are located.  Not me, though; I’m fine at making those lists, but not so good at keeping them updated.  I’ve tried a couple of times and failed, and came to the conclusion that that’s just a bit too anal for me.)

Ahhh ...

Just a quick update - we have hot water again, after a detour that for a while involved no pressure water at all.   This morning I was able to take a hot shower on the boat instead of walking to the bathhouse to shower.   I hate that.  Our marina bathhouse is really quite nice, but what I hate about showering there isn't the walking there carrying my soap and shampoo and towel and comb, or the shower itself, what I hate is walking back with chilly wet hair.  Ugh, doing that feels so much like camping out.  Such a simple thing, but when the comfort bar had been lowered by our recent weeks without, being able to shower aboard had all the relaxing effects of going to the spa.

Here's the story in photos:

For a while, we had no pressure water at all.  So we used this (new, clean) garden sprayer.  We took water from the dock faucet and heated it up on the stove.  The hassle factor inspired us to be conservative.

Dan showing off our slick new tank, about the size of an office water carboy 

He played varsity football in high school; here he is ready to "tackle" the project. 

Like many boat projects, installation involved squirming into tight spaces, like this spot under the nav station to access the back of the hot water heater and the locker it will reside in.

Then later in the project, Dan was in the cockpit locker connecting up the hoses at the front of the hot water heater  that allow the engine coolant to cycle through the tank, simultaneously cooling the engine and heating up our water underway when there's no shore power to plug into.  While he was in this locker, I was under the nav station like he was in the photo above, reinstalling the panel from the back.

Ahhh ... wonderful hot water!