A summary of our March adventures, including more bimini drama, violent weather, camping in our VW bus at a Hippie Fest, and celebrity  bartending!

March was a quiet, boring month. Kyle bought a new solar controller for our solar panels which boosted the output by about 50% (the old controller was so crappy that it was really eating into our power generation!). He also got a power meter so he’s been doing a power audit to figure out the draw of the freezer/fridge/etc. to help estimate how long we can live off-grid with no sun or wind. The freezer hasn’t been freezing very well lately, likely due to the increased ambient temps, although it’s never had a good seal on it so we’ve been supplementing the insulation with towels and dive weights.

We had a frank discussion about the bimini. It’s going to be a massive job and it’s not going to be fun. We want to replace the bimini with a hard top, put more solar on the hard top, then at the same time we’ve got to figure out how we want to add extra sunshades, cockpit lighting and a cockpit enclosure. Kyle has been talking about buying industrial-sized solar panels off the used market, which will be a small cost savings, easier wiring, and bigger power output. But it also comes with logistical problems, like how do we get a massive solar panel down half a mile of dock and onto the boat?

The wind was howling out of the north this weekend, which means calm water inside the marina but outside – it was intense! Especially when the current was against the wind, a huge swell kicked up down the river. We were taking heavy water over the east-west dock, which made the trip up to the clubhouse a gauntlet of saltwater spray. We also found out what a king tide is this month when we were on our way to work and found the parking lot slightly flooded. Fortunately there was another entrance to the docks that was dry, but that was the first time we’ve seen the parking lot flood.

One weekend we had plans to go to an oyster roast, but we arrived at our friend’s house shortly after their 2-year-old crunched her fingers in a car door and she was inconsolable and they were debating whether anything was broken. We ended up hanging out on their back porch instead, which was a perfectly great way to spend the evening. To make up for striking out on our Saturday plans, we met up with them on Sunday to go to the aquarium (using our park passes!) and then out for lunch.

Sunday afternoon we decided it was time to do more downsizing. Obviously we downsized heavily when we moved aboard, which means the things we’re still holding onto are things we’re holding for emotional reasons, not necessarily practical ones. I think I halved my shoe collection, finally acknowledging that even though I love my boots they are just going to deteriorate onboard a boat. The glasses that are associated with memories of brewery events are getting donated to friends who collect that sort of thing. A couple items that I inherited are sticking with us, but they can’t stay on the boat, so they’re getting moved to the bus for storage.

We’re also cleaning out the embarrassing things, like the aloe gel and neosporin that expired years ago, as well as the threadbare sheets that we’ve been using. All that needs to get replaced!

I still have a large plastic tote of old photos that I don’t know what to do with. I feel like I should pare them down to maybe 50 of my favorites and dump the rest, but what if I regret dumping all my photos fifty years from now? I know the smart move would be to scan them and save them digitally, but I feel like that’s how I ensure that they’re absolutely never seen again. How would you deal with old photos?

Kyle and I didn’t really have St Paddy’s Day plans, so when a coworker suggested we take our bus to Hippie Fest, I decided to register for the car show and then see how our weekend played out. However, when I registered, they started rolling out the red carpet – free camping, free entry, etc. Owning a VW bus has its perks!

As soon as we left work on Friday, we headed up to Lake City, SC to a little field in the middle of nowhere and set up camp with the Hippie Fest vendors. We found ourselves a campfire, some cold beers, and some new friends.

On Saturday we moved the bus over to the car show area and packed away all our camping gear – no small feat, even with decent storage space. The hippies were out en masse, clad in outfits ranging from genuine-Woodstock to Pinterest-hippie. People-watching is a lot of fun, especially some of the cirque performers like the aerial silk artists.

There was a bubble area which was mostly for children, but occasionally this guy would get out his fishing net and really make some bubbles!

By Saturday night things were starting to get sloppy, and rather than hang out for the chaos we drove home. We had chores that still needed to get done, so we did the responsible thing and left as soon as they handed us a trophy (it was really more of a participation award).

We stopped in to pay rent mid-month, we had to make special effort to make it back to the marina before the manager went home. However, it was worth it because this is the first inkling we’ve been given that they’ll work with our timeline rather than kick us out. (This is an unusual marina, most marinas would never kick out paying customers, even on the transient dock, but this marina is owned by the local Parks and Rec Dept and they have to prioritize new boats for funding reasons. So, if they are booked up and it’s between us and a new arrival, they will choose the new arrival and we’ll have to go somewhere else.) We’re not opposed to going somewhere else, but this marina is easily the cheapest, plus coordinating a move might require us to take time off work, depending on how fast we’ve got to go. Also it’s been a wee bit stressful going in the pay rent every month and hoping they say “yes, you can stay another month” instead of “sorry, please pack up your pineapples and find a different marina.”

We took down the bimini this week. We’ve found ourselves in the slightly hilarious situation where the bimini leaked terribly, so Kyle added rainproofing to the bimini, which in turn broke the bimini mount when gallons of water pooled up during the first big rain. We had forecasts for heavy rain this week and we didn’t want to break the other side or do any further damage. So now our cockpit is bare!

A couple weeks later we threw a couple 2x4s in there for extra support. It’s not pretty, but it’s functional enough as a temporary solution.

Kyle got a call to celebrity bartend this week, so Friday night I hung out drinking beers while he served up some local brew. While we were there we met up with some friends who invited us to spend Easter weekend at their new beach house, so now we have Easter plans! Bartending money is our “fun money,” we don’t go out too often but we use our fun money to try out local breweries.

We went to Pawley’s Island Brewing on Saturday to spend a little of that bar money and enjoy the nice weather. Plus we both had intense workouts earlier that day so we earned that beer!

So that wraps up a pretty boring month. The only remarkable thing is that so far this year, we’ve gone camping in the bus every month. I think that’s a new record, I was concerned that after we bought the boat we wouldn’t have time or ambition to use the bus very much, considering living on the boat feels a lot like camping.