Fumbling in the dark

There is nothing quite like boating in the dark. When the landscape is stripped of its color and shapes, leaving only lights behind, the darkness also strips all the noise out of the navigation task. You're no longer going to be wondering about the shape of that point or whether or not you recognize a certain ridge on land - instead you will see only what you need to make your way safely where you're going. Some people find this lack of sensory input boring. I find it serene. Waiting for the next light to appear while basking in the ghostly glow from phosphorescent plankton takes me out of this world, to a secure bubble into which only the elements and the journey itself may intrude.

When I decided to take Jonas home last night, this was only partially on my mind. The greater part of my mind was preoccupied with getting home in a hurry. I had been socializing with Goffe, and as I'd stayed well stuck into his sofa until he proclaimed it was bedtime, the clock was nearing midnight as I walked into downtown Moss. From the canal bridge, the walk home takes over an hour, whereas the boat ride takes about twenty minutes. It seemed like an easy choice to use Jonas, and for the first five minutes I regretted nothing.

Gliding slowly out of Moss, running the engine up to temperature while leaving the arc lights of the city behind and approaching the moonlit landscape ahead, I was quickly transported to my favorite bubble. It burst with a resounding crash when I hit the first ice floe, a heavy piece which kept rotating in my wake. I should have been able to see that, even with the moon behind me, so I stood up and started taking notice. I could see other lumps ahead, but I kept running into thin ice sheets which were impossible to spot on the calm surface. After a while I was running through an unbroken layer of thin ice, invisibly transisting into thicker patches which jarred the little boat, sometimes striking hard enough to knock the screw into neutral.

It was around this time that I started thinking seriously about finding my anchor point on the ice. I'd actually thought about this when I left the gear behind, reasoning that I would probably find it if I took good notice of where it was in relation to the surrounding landmarks. Now that I found myself looking for a blue rope on the ice in the darkness while blinded by the lights on the FK wharf, I suddenly wasn't so sure any more. There is no shred of serenity to be found in a boat at night if you don't know exactly where you're going, and it only took a few minutes for me to start doubting that I was going to find the anchor at all.

I had taken down a detailed, mental image of the position of my mooring point, related to the features of the landscape south of FK. Thus, I knew when I was getting close, I knew pretty much exactly when I was abreast of it, and I knew when I had passed it. Still there was nothing to be seen, save for ever undulating shades of gray across the ice sheet. I kept going north after I realized I had passed my point, knowing that my only hope was that I would recognize something as it glided through the reflection of the moon, which extended in a stripe to the SW. Just as I was about to turn back, not knowing what to do next, I saw a dark shape in the moonlight stripe.

It might have been anything, but I had a pretty definite idea that there was nothing on that patch of ice except for my mooring gear, so I turned back. I don't know what I would have done if the lump turned out to be sleeping swans, but luckily it was the fender I had used to buoy the anchor in case it melts through. Such a fantastic release of tension! In the blink of an eye I went from uncertainty to security, from staring into the murky darkness with my heart racing to trudging happily home across the ice, and a little while later I slept like a baby.

So what did I learn from this? Nothing significant. Others might have gleaned any number of valuable lessons, but I'm too stubborn to go that way. Thus, this story hasn't earned a Lessons Learned tag. However, I did come away with a tiny piece of wisdom: If you're planning to return to a specific location along the edge of an ice floe in the dark, leave a stake with a reflector on it. That is all.

Slow Spring

I just noticed that the annual thaw has started. I think it was when I forgot to install the redneck insulation back in the door of the wheel house, without feeling it immediately when I woke up the next morning. Or maybe it was when I realized that the break along land has opened up for real, without freezing back up. At any rate, I suddenly sat up yesterday and saw that spring is coming. In a spontaneous fit of premature celebration, I stripped out the rest of the temporary insulation (which was easy) and went on to fire up the main in an attempt to create a break to open water (which was impossible).

I succeded in getting unstuck this morning, after running astern for half an hour in order to loosen up the ice ahead. However, the ice is still thick enough that moving forward required running the engine at its maximum intermittent rating. While that is not an insurmountable problem on its own, doing so requires burning quite a lot of DFO. With the two forward tanks empty, I only have the twenty litres in the day tank, plus whatever I can extract from Nemi. In other words, freedom will continue to elude me until I have some warmer weather to soften things up a bit more. The over all ice thickness is still around half a foot, so there's plenty of room for improvement.

I spent last night with Lisette, as physical isolation poses some challenges which cannot be solved over the phone. On my way there, I stopped by the canal to have a look at Jonas. He has been stranded there since the ice came while Lisette and I were enjoying our cruise, and all the while he has been gnawing at the back of my mind. He's a brave little boat, and it'll take a bit more than ice in the bilges to threaten his well-being, but this time I did find a serious problem. Someone has stolen the swim ladder I had lashed to the docks so that he wouldn't get trapped underneath on a low tide. With the tidal variations being especially great these days, I decided to move him immediately.

Having kept Jonas on the public pontoon overnight, I took him home this morning. It wasn't until I was cutting through the day-old ice sheet, accompanied by the thud of the Sabb and the tinkle of bits of ice skipping across the surface, that I realized how much I've missed boating. Of course ther was no question of taking Jonas all the way to the other boats, as ice too thick to break economically with Nemi is solid enough to support the full weight (2.5t) of Jonas. In the end, I mashed enough of a notch in the ice to get his bow into, and fastened him with an anchor in the floe at the end of 50m 14mm PP. Øystein dropped by with a few books for me (Thanks, pal!), and he laughed his ass off when he saw the rig. I must admit that poor Jonas does look abandoned this way, but I truly felt like I was abandoning him in the canal. This way, at least he is getting used every day.

...

I've been trying to channel my writing into fiction lately, but it is SO difficult! I keep producing highly worked, tantalizing little fragments of text which add up to nothing. My creative output is a bit like cancerous growth; It can be vivid and copious, but there is little structure to what's going on, and ultimately it serves no purpose.

I'm re-reading Stephen King's On Writing. Mom saw it for sale, and luckily she realized that there must be something for me in there. It must be over ten years now since I first read it, and I hardly remember anything. Still, now that I'm going through it again, it is striking how much it has influenced me. Nearly everything I've been saying about writing (but failing to implement), like my one-page-a-day philosophy, I have from Stephen King. Even the way I shape my text, with archaic constructs and copious adjective use, echoes his work.

Regarding Jørgen's suggestion: I would love to, but I'm in no position to pass judgement over Røkke. How great a percentage of his income does this yacht represent? I spend well over 100% of my income on boating. Of course it is sickening to see a yacht that size, knowing it will probably see little use, but if I were to crystalize my puke into text, it would carry with it the bitter taint of envy. If I want to be respected for my decision not to amass resources, then I must respect Røkkes decision to do so, and also his right to distribute them however he wants. Also, while it's a big yacht and all, there are more spectacular examples of resource squandering in yachting. How about the recent trend for The Nice People to have a supply vessel follow their megayachts around? That kind of says it all to me: Your 200 foot monstrosity doesn't have the necessary space and facilities, so you get a second ship to haul all your cars, boats and misc gear around with you.

Chinese Made Generators: Two Very Different Impressions of Quality

After yesterday's midday battery charge, my Kellen DG3600 generator shut down with an ugly, metallic rattle. I immediately assumed that to be the sound of its death, given my previous experience with the type. Luckily, this time it was only the exhaust muffler which had broken off at the weld. Thus, the set is still functional, but unbearably loud at full load. It is a good thing, then, that I never dare to run it for any length of time above 40% of its continuous rating.

The Kellen diesel generator isn't just my sole source of electricity, but also my greatest source of frustration. Ever since I picked it up from Smart Club in February (I think it was), I have been regretting my choice. Let's start with the name. Am I stupid for thinking that it would be a 3.6 kW set? Apparently, because when I took a look at the front page of the manual, it said "Diesel Generator 3.3 kW". Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time someone named a product for its peak rating, I thought. Then I looked inside the manual, where it said "Max continuous power 2.8 kW". WTF?!

After swallowing the disappointment of the blatant naming swindle, I started using the generator. It didn't even make it to its first oil change before it started developing interesting personality traits. The troubles began with starting difficulties in cold weather, which quickly developed into starting difficulties in any weather combined with black smoke at 50% load. Then the injection pump completely stopped responding to load changes, resulting in the frequency dropping past 45Hz @ 4 Amps, making the set near unusable. However, the logistics of organizing a warranty replacement were so staggering that I kept using it (only for battery charging @ 300W) until it shut down with a horrible screech and seized solid, around the 200 hour mark.

This brings us nicely around to the only positive thing I have to say about this generator: Smart Club were really nice about replacing it with a new one, no questions asked. Also, the replacement has held up much better, and is now past 100 hours without any major breakdowns. Except for the exhasut breaking off yesterday, of course. Plus the circuit breaker won't trip - if I subject it to an 8 kW load peak, the motor just loses rpm until the voltage regulator loses control. Oh, and the starter motor fell off both generators around the 30 hour mark, due to the bolts vibrating loose. And neither of them would start with the supplied batteries if it was colder than +10 centigrade, forcing me to hook up a proper car battery. And the 12V charging hasn't worked on either of them, but at this point I'm nitpicking.

In short, the Kellen DG3600 is a festering pile of poo, which can not be sweetened by any amount of niceness from the warranty department at Smart Club. I will forever regret my decision to buy it. So how could this happen? I have, after all, endured endless hours of Lisette's ranting about the all eclipsing shittiness of Chinese made scooters and ATVs. A thinking person would assume that the same applies to Chinese made generators, no? Well, once upon a time I actually did, but then the Firman SPG2500 came along and shattered my preconceptions.

It was in the spring of 2008, when I was moving out here to the buoy with Nemi, that I found myself in dire need of a source of electricity. I picked up the Firman from Jula, reasoning that it should at least give me a couple hundred hours of battery charging and coffee brewing. I didn't really expect it to last through the summer, but figured that I could just pick up a new one under warranty when it broke, and the 2k NOK price didn't seem much to pay for an immediate if temporary solution to my problem. In the end, it didn't just last through the summer, but kept running until this winter. At that point it had endured several thousand hours of horrifying abuse, with only two oil changes and a top-up when it went into low oil shutdown.

In the end I was aware that it was a lot less efficient than when it was new, but I kept beating it to death, amazed and curious how far it would go. I won't go into too much detail, as I'm planning a video autopsy to document how internally messed up one of these Honda pattern engines will get before it quits. Of course all things must end, and the honorable Firman is sitting abandoned and unloved on the aft deck of Nemi. It shall never be forgotten, though, as it forever destroyed my bombastic views of Chinese build quality. If there is a Hall of Fame for generator sets which went above and beyond the call of duty, then this little guy has earned his place, right between a 25 ton Bickerton & Day and a million hour Fairbanks Morse.

P.S: One might surmise that since I abused the Firman, I did the same with the Kellen. That is not so - I stopped taking care of the Firman when it got past the point where I expected it to quit. Its outstanding endurance led me to believe that Chinese generators can indeed last for a long time, so I fully expected the Kellen to last a couple thousand hours if I followed the maintenance steps in the manual. Thus I fed it only the best fuel and lubricants, did everything at the prescribed intervals, but to no avail. To paraphrase Lawrence Block: "I think there is a lesson in here, and it probably wouldn't be lost on a martial arts master, but I'm not quite grasping it."

P:P:S: I dropped by Smart Club. They sourced me a new muffler on the spot, without asking for a receipt. At least they take responsibility for the crap they sell, which is more than you can say for some.

P.P.P.S: The engine in the Firman is called SPE160E and is manufactured by Sumec. The engine in the Kellen is an UD178, made by the United Power Equipment Company.

Defining Monstrosity

No Norwegians can possibly have avoided noticing that a new entity has made its appearance in the media: The Monster Pylons. The general sentiment seems to be that they are a bad thing, but still it looks like they are getting built, and people are screaming bloody murder. Especially local politicians and environmentalists have latched onto the subject with a vengeance, but a whole bunch of other politicians are following in their wake, sensing the scent of blood and publicity. My question to them all is: Why?

The debate has been raging for a while now, and I thought it had lost its power, but then it popped back up on the TV when I was sitting with friends last night. Since I haven't really understood why people are so pissed off by The Monster Pylons, I asked the room, and my friends demonstrated what seemed like an encyclopedic knowlege about the subject, or at least about the complaints being made. Some people say they are going to kill all the birds in the area. Others seem to think they will create unsurmountable problems for local air traffic. Hidden deep in the Grade-A Concentrate of BS, there was the one argument which cannot easily be shot dead by logic, so it is also the one I shall address. It was Lars who put it like this: "They ain't exactly pretty."

Now that I can relate to. It happens every so often that I see traces of human activity, either on TV or with my own eyes, which piss me off deeply and permanently. Such as the recent Natonal Geographic documentary on illegal gold mining in the Amazon rain forest. It transpires that it doesn't just lead to the predictable large-scale defoliation, but also to the annual dumping of some sixty tons of mercury into the river. That shit is going to kill EVERYTHING and it's going to stick around for thousands of years. It's making my skin crawl, but strangely it is not the stuff with which to incite a crowd.

How about the creation of deserts, then? We are doing it in a lot of places, at a high rate of acerage. It is pretty much a permanent process, as most experts agree that once an area is thoroughly parched and devoid of sediment, it won't re-foliate until we have another ice age. What's more, deserts are pure ugliness. If you disagree, it's either because you grew up in one, or because you've never seen one at all. Still, I see people yawning in the back as I say this.

Okay, I've gotta try something else, then. How about my pet peeve: Our use of HDPE. High Density Polyethylene is a fantastic material. It has reasonable tensile strength, high resistance to chemicals, it's unbelieveably tough and it simply won't degrade unless you expose it to UV radiation. Add a couple percent of carbon black, and it will even live (be functional) for thousands of years with limited sunlight exposure. You can use HDPE for damn near anything: Water mains, sewage pipes, wear pads, shipping pallets, automotive parts... the list just goes on and on. Now take a guess what the most common usage is? It turns out that nearly one third of the annual global production of HDPE (about 8 million tons in 2007) is used for disposable packaging.

Of course, most of this is responsibly dumped at a landfill, where it may rest in peace for ever. However, a sizeable percentage is dropped in the oceans, where it joins thousands of acres of PVC tarps, Polypropylene lines and nets, Polystyrene food packaging.... the depressing truth is that we do not know how much plastic is presently either floating on the surface or crowding beaches around the world, but we do know that the amount is rapidly increasing. And there you have it: My prime example of the ugliness of the human impact on nature. It may not be the ugliest example out there, but it is something I have seen with my own eyes, and it makes me very, very sad. Still, it sometimes feels like I'm the only one who cares. I'm sure I didn't move you now, did I?

But you sure as hell are moved by the Monster Pylons. Back when I was having this discussion with my friends, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was sailing up the Hardanger fjord and unexpectedly came across a power line of monstrous proportions. Can you guess what I felt? Nothing much. Maybe a touch of admiration for the audacity of the human spirit. Sure, the huge pylons are expressions of engineering rather than art, so they're not exactly pretty. Still, the big, spindly things reaching for the sky don't seem nearly as ugly as some deliberate acts of architecture.

Have you ever seen an aerial view of a big city? It looks like an oozing sore growing on the earth's crust. Given that we somehow decide that our creation of "permanent" structures is a serious environmental/aesthetic issue which we need to solve, then cities is the place to start. If you abandoned a big city today, the scar in the landscape would be visible a thousand years from now. Not so with the Monster Pylons; If we in the future decide that they're too ugly to live with but lack the resources to tear them down, they're still just a five hundred year "problem" when we walk away from them.

Why, then, is it that the "environmentally and aesthetically conscious" politicians of this world are campaigning against the building of power lines, while at the same time completely ignoring the pressing issue of deleting all major cities? Okay, that was a stupid question, but I think I made my point. This has nothing to do with the aesthetics or environmental impact of building Monster Pylons, but it has everything to do with whoring your integrity for publicity. Incidentally, that seems to be the one thing you really need to be good at in order to succeed in politics. Which is why I never considered going that way.

EDIT: Finally, someone said something intelligent in this debate

Wow, there is nothing quite like a public denunciation of dignity...

...to trigger an outpouring of love and sympathy. Ever since I stopped pretending that everything was okay and started complaining like a little bitch, people have been showering me with care and attention. I've recieved food, visits and offers of accomodation elsewhere. Why is it that we love to hate the strong, but love the weak? I think that little bit of irrationality there has much to do with the explosive proliferation of humans across the globe. Although it is most definitely to my advantage at the moment, I kind of doubt that it is purely a good thing.

My good friend Lars treated me to a rock concert on Saturday. There was this spare ticket for Motorpsycho laying around, and in vein with the latest trend of being nice to Henning, it was given to me free of charge. Not just that, but he and Goffe acted like I was doing them a favour by staying sober and driving (like I could afford to get drunk), and kept buying me soft drinks throughout the evening. Yep, everyone is laying it on thick, but as I have no shame, I am also unable to cringe. Good times.

Motorpsycho were... fucking amazing. I don't think I can put it a lot more eloquently than that. They're one of those bands who don't really do a lot for me when played on the stereo, but who come together to demonstrate their worth in a live concert. Playing a 15/16 beat, mixing it up with a few bars of 17/16, throwing in some asynchronous tempo changes... that doesn't impress so much on a record as when you are witness to how they do it in real time, no second takes and tight as a drum. The crowd was also pretty amazing. Motorpsycho are the type of band who scare away all the hipsters, but retain a hardcore following of people who apreciate them for what they do best. It was by no means a get-up-and-jump type of concert, but with Rockefeller sold out to deeply involved fans there was a strong mood in the room. At the end of it, I was beat up, drained and blissed out.

We went in an hour early, so that we could catch a glimpse of the prize ceremony for the FIS World Championship. Or so we thought. I wouldn't have gone on my own, but I defer to my friends, especially when they bring me to concerts. We started hitting the outskirts of the crowd at the central station, but it was loosely packed enough that we could move around until we followed Karl Johan to Stortinget. From that point, the crowd was dense, unfriendly and outright nasty, most of the way across to the royal castle. There was a lot of active elbow use, as fathers were desperately trying to drag their families to the front. The scene was like something from a movie shipwreck, only with less anguished wailing and more forced cheering. Luckily, nobody has mastered the passive elbow quite like myself, so I got through it all in one piece. We never caught a glimpse of the stage, though.

There has been little boating going on lately, mostly due to my economic predicament. I've been trying to produce some boating related text, but it is not coming so easy. While my piece on the SS Norway has been one of the least popular in my entire blogging history, the positive feedback I've been getting on it has come from some highly rated sources, including people who worked there. Thus, I decided to make a similar piece on the Bourbon Dolphin accident. It should have been easy. The SS Norway thing just dropped out of me in a couple of hours, and the accident report didn't piss me off nearly as much as the one on Bourbon Dolphin. However, once I picked up the report for a quick re-read before I started writing, the process ground to a screeching halt. The report is teeming with troubling issues, and at 132 pages it is not very long, but once you start reading it, you'll realize that it's a high-density brick. That has got to be why it never got the media attention it deserved.

Today: A mixed bag of very little

I went into town to visit friends last night, and I chose the route across the ice to Rosneset, since it is a bit shorter and considerably flatter than climbing up to the road on land. In the end I didn't save any time, because the ice was really bad. Not only did I have to wade through several inches of slush, wich of course slowed me down a bit, but I constantly had to stop, re-evaluate and re-route due to patches of bad ice. After I passed point Kjellandsneset, the fog thickened so that I didn't really have another clear sighting of land until I made it to Rosneset. Walking into zero visibility in flat terrain gives me the strangest feeling - like driving a boat, only not.

I ended up spending the night with Lisette at her dad's. I've said this before, but I'll labour the point some more: Those of you who have the opportunity to sleep every night with your wife, cannot possible know how lucky you are. At least I didn't until I couldn't, and now our time together carries the bitter sweet taint of its limited duration. I'm starting to think that as humans we are unable to appreciate conditions, either good or bad, but rather respond only to changes.

Nimo is back from his last post-op checkup at the vet's, and since everything is looking fine, he was allowed to move back in with me here. That's a very positive change for me. I like a lot about my surroundings, but they do get depressingly lonely at times. It is amazing how much of a difference it can make to have some sort of companion animal, and as companions go, Nimo is the best. He seems pretty much unaffected by having a toe removed, although it does look ridiculous.

Meanwhile, Social Security came through for me. They called me a couple of days ago, expressing both their concern for my problems and their consternation that the Unemployment people are refusing to help me out. They really don't like being stuck with the bill, and have repeatedly suggested that I register an address on land in order to solve the problem. However, according to the legal department of NAV, I should be entitled to unemployment pay as long as I have a PO box. I have a big problem with cheating to circumvent a system that seeks to unload its burden on a neighbouring department by means of dishonesty while claiming incompetence, so I'd rather just raise hell and file my complaint. The sad part is that the people who must foot the bill in the meantime, are the only people in the whole of NAV who have ever shown a will to help me.

Where was I going with this? Oh right, I just found out that they paid over six thousand kroner into my account, which is actually a whole lot of money. It's supposed to last for a month, but it is at least five times what I've had to spend for the past month. Thus I'm leaving for a grocery shopping spree, right this moment.

Quitting cigarettes: The cheap and easy way

First, let me make the point that nicotine is horribly addictive, for those of you who may still be in doubt about that. I once knew a guy by the name of Kato, who quit heroin a while before I met him. He did this on his own, going cold turkey with no outside motivation, not even his family nagging him along. Although I'm sure his story is not unique, I haven't heard of anyone else accomplishing the same. He told me that once he realized the immediate, destructive impact the drug was making on his life, he found the motivation necessary to get rid of it. Now the interesting thing is, Kato was never able to quit smoking, even though he tried. His personal take was that the addictive properties of Nicotine and Heroin were very similar, but the knowlege that smoking was taking ten years off the end of his life wasn't nearly enough to spur him on.

So we've got a guy saying that cigarette addiction can be as strong as Heroin addiction, and he's got the experience to back it up. That doesn't mean that it is impossible to quit cigarettes. I would know, as I have done so a number of times (please quit laughing). It usually lasts for about six months, until I'm completely rid of the physical addiction and start feeling like I'm back in control of my pet beast. At that point the temptation to play with it just a little overcomes me, and I go back to being a sometimes smoker for a few weeks. After that I'm back to twenty a day, every time.

This pattern of behaviour has puzzled me for a long time. Why would I exhibit signs of psychological addiction to such a shitty drug? Let's take a look at it: Cigarettes capture you in a horrible physical addiction, and immediately start impacting your health to the point where you notice if you're being honest with yourself. Over time the effects get steadily worse, up until the point where it kills you. Meanwhile you've got to deal with a reduced sense of smell and a considerable social stigma. And what do you get for all this? The most pathetic little trip in the whole drug book. It is insignificant the first few times you use it, then it loses its effects entirely.

Thinking about this, I had a eureka moment. What if the thing we like about Nicotine is the addiction itself? Look at it this way: Twenty times a day, you get to desperately crave something and then give it to yourself by simply taking it out of the pack and lighting it. It's almost like being desperately hungry and then treating yourself to a big meal - there are few things quite like it. Can you name any other context in which it is so easy to gratify such a desperate need with such frequency? I can't. In that context, the immediately visible cost of four kroner a pop doesn't seem so awful.

There are many ways to quit smoking, and I've tried a few of them. There's the cheap and hard way - going cold turkey on your own. Then there's the harder way, to go cold turkey for your friends and family. You've got the various schemes for stepping down your usage over time, which soften the blow somewhat, but which require even more willpower. There's the easy and expensive way, namely prescription drugs such as Zyban. Now I'm about to try the cheap and easy way: Having no money. I'm down to my last three Lucky Strikes, and I just turned down Lisette who stubbornly keeps offering to buy me more. I've thought long and hard about it, and the truth is that there are other eighty kroner a day habits which will give me much more pleasure. Increased inside temperatures, larger dinner rations, or perhaps even the spare diesel to go places. Such luxuries are hard to imagine now, but through a little abstinence, they are there for my taking.

...

Other side of the night: Wow, that was sooo easy to say yesterday, when I still had three cigarettes. Now I have none, and I CRAVE! It's times like these when being isolated from humanity is a good thing.

Ellen's painting

It's a while now since Ellen finished her painting of Nemi. I think it's a beautiful picture, of how she should have lived rather than how I let her go to waste. Ellen is turning into quite a productive painter, and while most of her work relfects a sense of stark realism, this painting is more of a foray into the abstract. Despite the sad realities it will forever make me remember, I'm in love with it.

The word is that once Ellen is done with her service with the royal guards, she might accept commissions for more of the same. Or something entierely different; I think she is starting to show that she can deliver pretty much whatever you ask.

How to give the DNV guy bad dreams

I was tempted to title this post "Jury Rig of the Century", but that would have been to ignore the proud traditions of the American Redneck. While this is not up there with some of the worse AC installations I have seen, it has got to rank as the worst fix I have ever made myself. These are desperate times, and they have been ripe for desperate measures for a while now. Previously, I have kept warm by burning copious amounts of "odorless" paraffin indoors. When I got tired of the 40 NOK / Liter price of the stuff, not to mention the inevitable fuggienss resulting from releasing so much water vapour and CO2 indoors, I cut back to burning very little of the same stuff to keep warm. While a couple of oil lamps will keep temperatures above freezing, it is hardly sufficient to maintain a cozy atmosphere, so when I got tired of freezing my ass off, I resorted to running the electric space heater.

Now that's idiocy in its purest form. While the heater itself is 100% efficient, the overall adiabatic efficiency coefficient of the generator I've been using is around 0.25, probably less. In plain English, that means that less than a quarter of the heat content of the diesel going in gets turned into electricity, while the rest goes towards heating up the great outdoors. While that's not the sort of thing I should be doing, considering my present economic predicament, it is a prime examples of the power of apathy. Yesterday I finally pulled myself out of the mire, so without further ado, here's my how-to guide for giving your insurance inspector and/or classing agent a hissy fit:

Take one diesel fired pot burner, set it on the floor next to a window, and fasten with screws. Install one short length of stove pipe. Next, remove said window and replace with a piece of plywood or other, unsuitable material. Fit a short length of flexible, PVC-coated aluminium ducting over the stove pipe, crimp in place with a hose clamp. Run the duct through a hole in the plywood sheet. Finally, run a fuel pipe from the engine room, through the shaft space to the burner, and secure with zip ties. Not enough hose clamps? Don't worry, it's just a fuel line adjacent to a heat source. What could go wrong?

Aside from the horrid looks of the "installation", the obvious fire hazards and my much too detailed knowlege of the combustion by-products of PVC, I'm reasonably happy with the results. With the thermostat turned up, the stove gets red hot, but nothing seemed to want to catch fire. With the thermostat turned down low, the temperature levels out above where it used to be while running the electric heater at 1250 watts, and I haven't yet seen a noticable level change in the day tank. This project is teaching me all the wrong lessons, but at least I'm staying warm.