Posts Tagged “Gear We Like”
We bought a Loutytuo travel kettle back in 2021 as part of the kit for our month-long road trip across the country from Charleston, SC to Seattle. We’re usually up before 5am and enjoy a hot beverage right away. The kettle allowed us to make coffee or tea at will in the various hotel rooms…
Osprey Straitjacket Compression Sacks are a wonderful piece of gear that dramatically reduce the size of packed items. We can carry much more than we normally could in the same space, and keep everything well-organized. Their rectangular shape also allows for more efficient loading and stacking. Unlike designs that use zippers for both closure and…
Sonos Roam is a pint-sized and lightweight outdoor portable smart speaker with impressive sound quality. We recently added one to our travel kit and are loving being able to play our music wherever we go. The speaker is ruggedly built of shock-absorbent materials, is drop-resistant, and has an IP67 dust and water resistance rating. We…
One of the customizations we considered when building Dirona was a built-in gasoline storage area. We wanted to be able to carry on the order of 50 gallons (227 L), and didn’t want to manage a large number of individual jerry cans. We couldn’t find a place for built-in storage, however, and instead opted for…
Living aboard while travelling the world often involves opportunistic shopping. If we see something we want or need, it’s best to just buy it on the spot. We never know if we’ll return to the same store, or if that product will still be available when we do. One way we make this work is…
A few year back, we picked up a FLIR ONE Thermal Camera from Amazon. It’s only $200 and operates as an extension to an Android phone (IOS also supported on similar hardware) with an on-phone application. Every 6 months we use the camera to do a full scan of the breaker cabinet, the DC cabinet,…
In the decade we spent travelling the world in Dirona, we typically returned to Seattle two-three times a year. And on every one of those trips (when international), we brought back a lot of boat parts and spares in checked luggage. The gear usually weighed at least 200 lbs (90kg) in aggregate, and sometimes as…
This installation of “Gear We Like” covers the Nikon Forestry Pro Laser Rangefinder. This tool allows us to quickly and accurately measure a bridge clearance and other vertical or horizontal distances. We first discovered a need for this device in East London, South Africa, where we stopped to ride out a storm en route from…
This installment of the “Gear We Like” series features the Klien NCVT-2 non-contact voltage detector. This inexpensive tool makes it super-easy to ensure that power actually is available at the shore power pedestal before plugging in. There are many ways to check for power at a pedestal, but none faster than using a non-contact sensor….
In the past twenty years, we’ve run a combined 16,400 engine hours and traveled over 120,000 miles on the two boats we’ve owned. On our first boat we spent a decade extensively exploring the Pacific Northwest and researching the material for our guide, Cruising the Secret Coast: Anchorages on British Columbia’s Inside Passage. In our…
While in Brisbane, Australia in 2014 we installed a Heatstrip patio heater and just love it. A key advantage of the Heatstrip is a nice, even warmth with no red glow. You can’t tell it’s on and it doesn’t change the lighting at night. Spitfire appreciates the heater too, and usually finds a spot underneath…
Frequent readers of this blog know we have become very dependent upon satellite communications. In fact, we have three different satellite technologies on board Dirona, as described in Communications at Sea. Here, we complete a quick survey of the satellite systems on Dirona, our experience with them, and why we upgraded to the KVH V7-HTS system four months ago. Our…
When we go to sea in Dirona there are usually only two people on the boat. That means automation and reliability are super important to us, and we want early warning of problems or unusual conditions. Maretron N2kView is a good-value display system that has worked very well for us and allowed us to incrementally expand what…