Ephemerisle Houseboat Info

Here are scans of some of the houseboat info provided by the rentors at Paradide Point Marina. Things like the "Suggested items to bring" and the "Houseboat features" may be useful for planning, particularly if you're going to be using one of their houseboats.

Here are some notes from one of our Ephemerisle scouting expeditions.

Hi folks, The Seasteading folks kindly let me tag along on a scouting trip for the Ephemerisle location, and I thought I'd share some minor notes from the trip in the hopes they may be helpful. They are also working on notes, and I don't really want to preempt them, but at the same time I hope my observations may be useful.

Some things to bring

1. Bath towel
2. Pillow
3. Bedding or sleeping bag (sleeping bag may be too hot; an old fashioned flannel sleeping bag may be more comfortable, or a sheet and blanket)
4. Lots of water for everyone and each day
5. Flashlight
6. Sunscreen, hats, umbrellas, etc. Water may reflect sunlight better than desert.

Less essential

1. Spices for cooking
2. Walkie talkie, such as FRS or GMRS for coordinating houseboat maneuvering like weighing anchor.
3. Your own PFD (life vest) might be a good idea http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/Personal_safety_equipment
4. GPS can be useful, though we're not going very far
5. Gloves for handling anchor lines
6. Bungee cords or rope
7. Duct tape

Also, to add to the list

1. Citronelle candles or incense to keep bugs away
2. flying insect traps (sticky paper in boxes, etc.)
3. bug zapper (too noisy for night time?)
4. bug spray, etc.

1. Cell phone and electronics chargers.
2. Power strips
3. Solar panel
4. 12V sealed battery
5. Inverter/charge controller

Bug control

Fly paper is silent, effective and environmentally ok. Better form may be inside boxes with windows so people don't get stuck too.

There were many bugs that clustered to the houseboat interior and exterior lights after dark. Probably they were many hundreds. That was after we moved to the rocky levee shore instead of the reedy island side of the channel since James remembered there were lots of bugs by the reeds.

95% of the bugs were green meaning they probably eat plants. They did not bite us. There were very few mosquitoes, and I saw one housefly. Most of the bugs are probably harmless, but some of us found them annoying. Others largely ignored them. We did squish hundreds with paper towels inside the boat by the lights.

Note that insects are become inactive when the temperatures go down. Their activity will depend on the night time temperature.

When I switched on the light at night in the bathroom, I saw the bugs immediately attracted to the outside of window. So a major "failure mode" is probably opening the big sliding doors to the outside when the inside lights are on. The quick answer is: don't open the doors. All the doors and windows have bug screens. I thought they worked very well. Others didn't think so. Again, I believe the major way bugs got in was opening the big sliding glass doors. Don't open the doors at night. I kept the window by my bunk bed open at night with the screen on and lights off and curtain closed. I did not get "bugged". I did however get fresh cool air, which was nice.

Generator

The generator is quite noisy and ours wasn't very reliable. It quit several times. It won't be practical to run them at night unless it's really hot and we need the air conditioning. The delta is very quiet at night. All the lights run off 12V DC batteries of the houseboat. The generator is used for 120V AC to run the air conditioners, microwave oven, and AC outlets (for charging electronics, plugging in appliances, etc.)

The secret for getting the generator to start again was to hold down the "on" button for like 20 seconds before hitting the start button. That gets the gasoline line re-primed.

I'm bringing at least one solar panel, 12V battery, inverter and charge controller to charge electronics. It's a much more attractive alternative to the generator for running small electronics, recharging, etc.

Outboard Engines

The outboard engines are meant to run at a maximum 3000 rpm. We ran them much faster at first and one of them cavitated at high rpms:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation

Better to run them slower. (Cavitation is turning the props too fast so that they generate air pockets behind the blades. It's equivalent to stalling a wing where there's flow detachment on the back surface. Cavitation can actually damage the prop due to the repeated shock waves.)

Toilet

The toilet was somewhat smelly. We added the enzymes to try to knock down the odors, but it didn't help much. (The smell in part may be the enzymes working.) Recommendation: KEEP THE TOILET LID CLOSED AND OPEN THE WINDOW. The window has a screen. There is a can of air freshener included.

Also, use minimal toilet paper. Using a lot may clog the toilet. There's no plunger, but a brush can be used to clear it down.

Shower

Showers were nice and use river water. The gas water heater was fine, but may be smallish. So there's infinite cold water, but probably time-limited hot water. Good to run off the water when lathering up to save hot water. The kitchen sink has two taps, one for river water and one for potable water from the inboard tanks. Both run from 12v electric pumps that come on when water is used. Kinda noisy at night when people are trying to sleep.

(The greywater holding tank is 144 gallons, which is pretty big. It's another limiting factor on how much water can be used since the wastewater is all collected into it.)

Water

I would not drink the river water, but it's probably ok for cleaning using soap. I also plan not to drink the potable drinking water from the tanks. It's probably ok, but usually will have off flavors. I'm drinking bottled water. You'd probably want to wash dishes with the river water and soap, but rinse them with potable water. That's what people do with sailboats and saltwater.

Customer Support

The location we liked best is only a couple miles from the marina, so if there are houseboat equipment problems, the marina guys should be able to come over and help, BUT ONLY DURING BUSINESS HOURS. We got some after hours consulting from the emergency phone number about the generator.

Anchoring

The boats have common Danforth anchors that dig into the mud when pulled horizontally. To dislodge them from the mud, move the houseboat directly over one then lift the anchor line straight up. It will almost always release. Gloves may be nice for handling the wet, muddy anchors and lines.

Attach one anchor line at the rear right and run it along the right outside of the boat, and around the front cleat. This gives a short "rode" or free length of line (rope) to the anchor. This is fine because the delta is so shallow and the lines so long. Then reverse the boat slowly in the desired direction to set the anchor. The anchor will stop the boat when set.

Attach the other anchor line to the front left corner, run it along the outside of the boat to the rear cleat. Attach the anchor and drop it near the cleat. Keep the line away from the motor. You don't want the lines anywhere near the props where they can get caught. The rear anchor will set by itself due to the boat drifting down current.

The anchors may become unset due to tides and currents and may need to be reset occasionally. Ours stayed set during the one day we were there.

The anchors pick up vegetation (I call it seaweed, though I guess it's some kind of freshwater macroalgae and not technically seaweed; looks like seaweed to me), even on the rocky levee side. On the reedy side, Patri had to cut them off with a knife. On the rocky side, there were fewer and he just pulled them off by hand.

Oh yeah, stay away from the anchor lines. They can be under a lot of force and dangerous when moving. Never get your hands, legs feet, arms caught under them, especially when moving. We were able to move the boat by pulling the anchor lines, but make sure the engine is off or at least in neutral. In fact we weighed (unset) the rear anchor by pulling the line to move the boat over it, then lifting it straight up. It may be possible to do the front one that way also.

Remove the anchors in the opposite order of setting them. The one at the stern goes on last and comes off first to minimize the chance of fouling the prop with the anchor line (i.e. getting the rope tangled in the props), which could require cutting the line, replacing the prop, replacing a drive pin on the prop, etc.

• Front = "bow"
• Rear = "stern"
• Left = "port"
• Right = "starboard"

Walkie talkies were really useful for coordinating anchoring operations with the pilot from the back of the boat. It's a bit too far and noisy to shout.

James thinks we won't need to anchor, instead tieng up to the platform.

General Thoughts

It was definitely useful to get more time on the water in a very benign environment to start to get up to speed on some of the issues and generally get experience. Incrementalism, IOW.  :)

Cheers,

Jeff C.