The house is in full packing mode now, with decent progress being made on all quarters. Trying to condense the house to one storage unit and move onto the boat. It’s finally happening.

We’ve been splitting the days into boats days or home days, Rachel compared it to “leg day/arm day”. The home projects really propel us forward, but the boat projects are the future so they’re more fun.

Over three “boats” days we’ve disgorged all the contents of the V-Berth, then the main cabin, and finally the lazarette. Every spare part has been catagorized, entered in the inventory and then tucked away in a location suitable for its frequency of use, resistance to moisture, and perhaps some other criteria. Every time was scrutinized for purpose and removed if deemed unnecessary. Organizational niceties have been added when possible, like additional hooks in the head, hooks in the lazarette for lines, many custom sewed bags, baskets, organizational caddies. The net result is that all the main cabinets and closets, as well as a bunch of drawers are free for everyday living, guest storage, clothes, toiletries and more. It’s really turning into a well tuned living space now.

Meanwhile, projects have been getting completed in all corners of the boat. I’ve made a lot of wiring optimizations and improvements including improving our AIS display capability by switching to NMEA 2000, getting the VHF on the same GPS as the AIS instead of its own GPS, and adding an exhaust temp alarm for the engine.

This little unit is connected to our exhaust temp via a strap and monitors the exhaust for an overheat condition. When I was studying diesel engines about five years ago, our teacher, a wise salt with decades of experience, was really keen on these devices to save irreversible engine damage. Unfortunately, with his experience on big ships and Washington State Ferries, he didn’t offer any practical solutions for a small boat, and so it’s languished on the project list as a _really_ nice to have but too hard project to pull off. That is, until this year’s boat show, Mike Beemer & Matt Mardesich from Cruisers College (https://cruiserscollege.org/instructors/) dropped a little hint that Aqualarm makes a handy little device that makes the job doable for a small ship (https://aqualarm.net/exhaust-engine-monitorssensors-c-5/20245-exhaust-alarm-kit-single-engine-p-11.html) you can imagine my joy.

Now, instead of the engine overheating and then the dash alarm going off when it could very well be too late, we are actively monitoring the temperature of the exhaust, just downstream from the exhaust elbow in the engine room. We will hear an alarm _before_ the engine overheats, allowing us precious minutes to catch an overheat condition before it’s too late. Brilliant. Oh yeah, and also I got to 3D print a nice housing for the unit. I wired it into the start circuit (fused with a 1amp fuse as well), so this will be on anytime the engine is on (and off when not).

Good times. And now back to packing the house.