More April 2021

After shoveling and sweeping and swabbing, things were coming together.  Since I had been carried off by thieves I could pretty much start fresh.  

First I did some electrical renovation, added a couple of extra marine batteries and a solar panel with a proper controller, all according to the advised methods, a practice foreign to a guy who mostly just wires things in a random mess and hopes for the best.  I thought I would get enough power by just moving the panel around on the deck, trying to follow the sun.  That did not work out for the best.  

I figured a Sawyer water filter would supply my water needs if I just fed it with a pump to speed the process.  This was not a total disappointment, just a substantial one at best.  The flow increased but the battery drain over the yet slow filter process soon required a new design.

I was never totally trustful of filtering lake water for drinking.  I tried bleach and purification tablets, but these did not suit my taste buds.  After improving my filtration process I settled on boiling my water to eliminate viruses.  This may well be an unnecessary step, but I feel better about it after observing some of the things I see in the water.  Norris is a very clean lake by most standards, and God knows how much lake water I have swallowed unintentionally in my life, but I have seen scores of boat people pee off their boat, not to mention the tons of fish shit that gets deposited every day.

Jettisoning some useless equipment along with the general cleaning, then adding or rearranging a few more things, I thought I had a pretty good setup.  Little did I know about living on a boat . . . 

A little time for rest and a little luck fishing and I added to the food stock.  Fish and boiled potatoes can be combined in several ways, all mostly good.

  Things were shaping up:

 

Still moored at the dock beside my abandoned derelict neighbor, I watched the sunset that last evening before the adventure began.  Things were on the cusp of getting really 'inerstin'.