mullerb's musings

After 2 seasons of cruising the Intercoastal Waterway and the Bahamas, we decided to sell Carina. She's a fine boat and could take us pretty much anywhere in the world. But she's too nice a boat to let sit for a year while we pursue land-based adventures this upcoming winter. While this chapter of our cruising log comes to an end, it won't be the last. We'll no doubt live on a boat again in the near future. The next one will either be bigger, so we can comfortably have crew on board for long passages. Or maybe a catamaran for super comfy live aboarding. Or maybe something a bit smaller and less expensive that we would be more comfortable storing for a year or two without worrying about it losing value.  For lots of pics and posts, check out #sailingsvcarina . Our journeys: November 2021 - May 2022 (We didn't log out first 2 weeks from Annapolis to Beaufort SC) October 2022 - May 2023

With covid putting a crimp on international travel for late 2021, we opted for Plan B: spend the winter living on a boat. So we squeezed a year’s worth of boat buying into a couple of months and sailed off from Annapolis, Maryland on November 29 on SV Carina, a 2005 Island Packet 370. ( #sailingsvcarina ) She’s a beast for 37’ with a cutter rig and and a full keel. The motion of the ocean is where she’s happy and safe. We spent December and January heading south on the Intercoastal Waterway with a few coastal passages, getting aligned with Carina and getting her into cruising mode. By mid-February we replaced most of the aging equipment in need, added some solar and got our new foresails. A hop across the Gulf Stream brought us to Bimini and the Bahamas. We’ll keep working at refining this cruising lifestyle while exploring these islands this spring. Then back to Florida to put her on the hard for the summer and hurricane season while we go back to the mountains for some solid earth ad

Here's a 7-day gravel ride we rode in early August, 2021. Yet another fine escape from the crowds! Stout climbs, smooth gravel, diverse ecosystems, undeveloped camping for all but one night.  We started and ended in Shell, Wyoming, parking on a side street after getting the OK by the cook at the Trapper Creek Lodge to leave our van there. The route took us all the way around the Cloud Peak Wilderness in the Big Horn Mountains. This mountain range is surrounded by fairly dry, high desert sage country. We yo-yoed up and down, into and out of the dry sage to the piney alpine three times over the 250 odd miles. Big, stout climbs and long, steep descents!  75+% of the route is on hard-pack dirt and gravel. There's a short 6 miles or so of more rugged riding past Medicine Lodge Lake on Forest Service Road 344, which is more of a motorcycle/ATV trail. And a mile or so of sandy single track just before dropping into Medicine Lodge Archaeological State Park. Both of these stretches were

Back in 2006, when I first started getting a bit more serious about biking, I bought an all carbon Giant TCR2 . That thing was soooo smooth and fast and light relative to anything I ever put under my butt. I enjoyed countless lunch rides and long Saturday loops up to the Peak to Peak. But then I discovered gravel riding back in 2012 and bought a steel Salsa Vaya for a trip to Patagonia. That Vaya changed how I wanted to spend my time building up lactic acid. Instead of fast and smooth pavement, I wanted bumpy and steep gravel paths and dirt roads. The TCR started spending way more time hanging from its front wheel in the back of the garage. For a couple of years, I don't think it even made it out once. It's still a great ride, though. And it did get some updated shifters and a cassette for the 2017 Ride the Rockies. But mostly, it's been neglected and sitting idle.  This past weekend, I did a nice loop up Sunshine Canyon to the Peak to Peak and Brainard Lake then down Left

Easy climbing machine. Nice and light. Decent downhill bomber. Should be awesome for exploring the trails around Durango. And makes for a decent bike packing platform.

The summer of covid, the summer of people avoidance. Thus we spent July riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) from Boulder to Helena, Montana. Here's the route we took: (view the route details on RideWithGPS) It was super fun to start from home and catch a bus up to Nederland to kick off the ride. From there, a big ride up Rollins Pass and a day of dirt roads heading west from Winter Park brought us to the GMBDR near Ute Pass. A mellow pace, 1,152 miles and 82,373ft of elevation gain got us to Helena over 28 days. We spotted bears, moose, golden and bald eagles, a couple of badgers and a couple dozen fellow GDMBR riders along the way (all heading the opposite direction, north to south). And loads of wildflowers everywhere! We're so very privileged to have so much open space and beautiful landscapes to explore - and the time and health to make it happen. Here's my gear list: Bike Salsa Fargo Apex 1, 2020 edition ( details ) 1x32 with 11-42 in rear for me and 1

With the world closed off by corona, it's a good year to stick to the Rocky Mountains and ride the Divide. So we bought a pair of matching Salsa Fargo's to handle the dirt riding. Should be a good replacement for the old Vaya for future world travels. Wish I would have had it for Patagonia.

Two years later...I finally got a solar panel permanently installed on the roof of the Sprinter. Our house battery system is pretty small with a 92AH battery and only a few LED lights, phone chargers and a Dometic CFX 40W fridge. Until it died a few months ago, I had a bluetooth CTEK Battery Sensor for tracking battery health. Rarely did the battery go below 70% charge when we were on the road and using the fridge. When on a road trip, driving between trailheads was usually enough to keep it charged. For times when we would park it for several days, I picked a up a small 50W solar panel to prop on the dash and plug into the CTEK charge controller. It did the job of keeping the battery topped off on sunny days. But it's a bit of a hassle to set it up and take it down. A permanent solution would be much better. A lot of the work was already done through getting that 50W portable system set up. I already added a SAE plug ( Amazon link ) with a fuse to the charge controller an

I've always looked at power outlets as magic. How do those electrons do their thing? It took a bit of research and consulting to get my head around the details of loads, wire gauges, amp hours, AGM vs flooded batteries, and on and on. I have to give lots of kudos to a neighbor who recently added wiring to his van. He steered me in the right direction and gave me a tour of his system. As with the rest of our build, simple is the theme. Our power needs are low: we want to charge phones, laptop, run a few LED lights and a low-power fridge. Where to start...well, figuring out how much juice you need for those items comes first so that you can figure out how big a battery is called for. Once you know that, you can: figure out how big a house battery you need and how much room you need for it; how to connect the house battery to the alternator in order to charge it; whether you want or need solar to keep it charged; how many circuits you need to wire and what size fuses they need;

You gotta have fresh air to be happy and healthy. Our beast has some nice big side windows behind the driver's side and on the sliding door. But they don't open. So we opted for some windows that open. And a fan for cooking inside on rainy days and cooling things off on hot nights. I'm always happy to play with new tools and try new things but I just couldn't get myself psyched up to cut into such expensive sheet metal. Happy to have the pros do it. We had Tourig, a really top notch conversion shop in Golden, Colorado, install a Maxxair 6200 fan in the rear and two 10"x30" bunk windows for the rear quarter panels. Waiting for us to pick her up, post-op, at Tourig. The bunk windows. Should be nice for waking up to views. The fan is awesome: it's got a really cool design that allows it to be open in the rain and while driving. Didn't need to get fancy with a remote and electronic opening; just plain manual controls and no finicky rain sensor.

Van insulation seems to be a hot topic of debate among converters. Lots of opinions, most of which are not grounded in any scientific data other than to avoid fiberglass (yucky for lungs and skin if you get exposed to its dust). I did find some really helpful postings, with Sprinter Van USA being one of the best; they list and compare a heap of options .  After a bit of research, I visited a couple of local conversion shops to see what the pros do. Both local shops I visited use a bit of sound dampener on large metal panels, a thin layer with reflective properties, topped off by automotive grade Thinsulate. I opted to do the same and used: Noico 80mil butyl sound dampener, 36 sqft This stuff is primarily used by the folks that install kick butt stereo systems in their cars and trucks. When applied to a large metal surface, it prevents it from acting like a drum and instead dampens audio waves as they transfer their energy to the metal surface. If 30-50% of a large, unifo