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Hello and welcome back to "The Winter Build."
I just woke up.
It is 8:30 on Saturday.
Lou got up at 6:00 in the morning,
and I was so sleepy that he was like,
"Oh no, no, I'll just wake you up in half an hour."
And yes, I went back to bed
and enjoyed my Saturday morning.
We are going to head to the boat today.
It's a little gross out.
I think it's supposed to rain all day,
but we have to keep going on this kitchen
because it has not had a lot of progress
in the last two weeks,
and I feel like we've got to kickstart
this winter build once again.
Hi, I'm Dana, and that's my husband Lou.
For the past five years,
we've been on a mission to live creatively.
It all started when we quit our jobs in New York,
moved abroad, bought a rusty old van named Odie,
fixed him up in the mountains in Spain,
drove through most of Europe, wrote a book,
sold the van, and bought a sailboat.
Our next goal is to circumnavigate the earth
in our 1976 Rasmus 35,
but first we need to prepare Penelope
for the voyage of a lifetime.
So welcome to "The Winter Build" series.
We're gonna have far less activities today
and far more boat building.
That's our plan for the next two days
is just try to make a lot of progress.
So we'll see how that goes.
I'm gonna meditate, work out,
take a shower, all very quickly.
I don't think I'll do my full meditation of 20 minutes.
Just, you know, keep it moving
because I slept so much,
and, yeah, then we will go to the boat.
(kettle whistling)
(soft music)
Thank you for driving.
- [Lou] Yeah.
- Hey, there she is.
What, Penelope!
- Look at this.
- [Dana] What do you think?
- Wow, so we're switching out the bottom paint
for something that hopefully will be a little more
environmentally friendly.
And as part of the process,
they had to strip all of the old paint,
so like 40 years of paint off.
- Crazy, look at that.
(fingers tapping)
Just the hull.
So we're gonna get to work on the kitchen,
but I kind of think I need a snack.
(soft music)
- [Lou] Hand me the bag.
(Dana groans)
All the snacks, (laughs) so heavy.
It's actually not that cold today.
- [Lou] No, it's nice, right?
- Snack time.
I brought us cookies, hot chocolate, and carrots.
- [Lou] Nice.
- And these are actually carrot cake cookies.
I'm getting excited.
Smell that.
(soft music)
- [Lou] Cheers.
- So Lou, what is the plan?
- We have two options, I'll let you decide.
- [Dana] Okay.
- So the first option is we can redo the bed.
So this is gonna be a bed in here now,
as like a backup bed, not our main bed,
but this plywood is really thin
and it kind of gives when you're lying on it,
so we wanna switch it out
for something that's a little thicker.
And we have to raise it so that it's flush here,
so that there's nothing digging into your back.
- Like this spot here. - So it's like
this board has to come up to there,
so that it's like a perfectly flat bed base.
So that's project number one.
- [Dana] Okay
- And let me walk you over to project number two is in here.
We need to make the shelves
that are gonna go inside the kitchen pantry,
and that'll be like a very time-consuming tedious job
because the back of the boat is curved,
so we wanna make sure we make each shelf
go all the way back,
but it's gonna be like a custom cutting job
for every single one.
And then you can only build it in reverse order
'cause the space is so tight.
So it's like, once you put,
you have to take all of the shelves I've already installed,
uninstall them, and then start at the bottom,
re-install one by one with the actual shelf.
- [Dana] Okay, Lou, I've decided what I pick.
- [Lou] Yeah?
- I would like to do the kitchen cabinets
because that is actually
what's gonna make my life so much better.
We're probably not gonna sleep on this bed very much.
This thing here, it's like, before,
I would keep all of our stuff underneath the cushion
where the fridge is now,
and so it'd be like a whole process,
like just to make some rice, you know,
it's like taking the cushion off,
take this out, climb under there, whatever, into chaos,
and now we're gonna have quite a nice system.
- Right, I feel like it's gonna be a total game changer.
This weekend is like the quality of life on the boat
is just gonna be like wadoop.
(Dana laughing)
- And then you want me to trace around them?
- [Lou] Yeah.
It's a good job for a little flexible person.
(Dana laughing)
- [Dana] That's why you brought me to the boat today.
(drill whirring)
(indistinct)
(upbeat music)
So the way that, like, we do this is that
I measure out the shelf, it's like an odd shape, you know,
one side is longer than the others,
and then I transfer all of my measurements on to cardboard.
And then we check the cardboard, make sure that that fits,
and then we cut the wood
because if we were trying to do this with the wood,
it'd be so much trickier.
But the cardboard, since it's flexible,
makes the process much easier.
(saw cutting)
No.
- Oh no, that was our last battery.
- [Dana] Tragic, did you bring the charger?
- No.
- I think that calls it on today's boat work.
If we don't have any more batteries for the tools,
we're kind of done so.
All we have, I guess...
Do we need to sand anything?
We do have a sander that we can plug in.
- [Lou] Not really.
- No? - No.
- [Dana] So what's the plan for tomorrow then?
- Bring all of our batteries fully charged.
(both laughing)
- [Dana] No, I mean like for the work.
- Well, we just install the last shelf,
and then that's like the main thing we need
to get done tomorrow, hopefully.
- I thought I'd take you up
and show you what we've got going on so far.
So we actually did get two shelves in,
and they look really good.
So this is what we've got.
We've got these two in,
we have another one coming in there
that we're working on now,
and we've decided we're gonna
put dividers in,
so it'd be like spoons, forks, knives, or whatever,
and then we'll put a divider,
and then we can have nicer sharp knives
and then other stuff.
I think we're gonna clean up, head home,
and, yeah, maybe I'll do a little studying.
3:30 is an early day, Lou.
- [Lou] Right.
- Having those batteries die really cut it short.
(upbeat music)
- I wanna see if you can guess what it is.
(plastic rustling)
- [Dana] Ha, did you get yourself a neck massager?
- Yeah.
(Dana laughing)
(Lou grunting)
It's actually a forearm massager.
- [Dana] Oh.
- Yeah, you go like this.
- [Dana] All that editing making your arm sore.
- It really is.
(Dana laughing)
- We're home, Lou's gonna shower.
I'm going to get some studying in.
I've decided I'm gonna keep going with weather.
I'm gonna try to figure out these GRIB files.
We have a lot of learning that we wanna do this winter,
and a lot of that has to do with weather
and understanding weather routing
and how to pick your route across an ocean,
when to go, all of that stuff.
And so I'm gonna spend some time doing that,
make some dinner, have another chess game.
We've been playing a lot of chess lately.
It's been really fun to like,
just do a little bit less screen time in the evenings
and learn this new game.
So that's what I'll probably do.
Studying, food, showers, chess, and have a nice evening.
So we'll see you tomorrow when we're on the boat,
getting back to work,
and hopefully we can get a much bigger day in.
So we're back on Penelope, and Lou had a really good idea.
He was like, "Why don't we bring
some of the kitchen stuff here,
so that we can see how it works with the shelves?"
Whoa, my arms are tired from my workout this morning,
but yeah, we have plates,
we have bowls, we have some cans,
and we just wanna put them in the shelves
and see how our guesstimated height
for the shelves works out.
So let's look at them.
- All right, moment of truth.
Standard size can.
- [Dana] No, oh wait, it does fit.
- [Lou] Yeah.
- [Dana] Wow, just barely.
- [Lou] Yeah, so if there was a lip on this one-
- [Dana] Oh.
- Then, like if we made that- - Yeah.
This is what I was hoping, does this fit?
- [Lou] Yeah, let's try the other bowls.
- So these are the ones I'm hoping we can fit in here.
Maybe not.
Oh!
This is amazing,
because before, like, all summer, we had them up there
in this different section,
and it was kind of annoying
because when it gets really hot out,
the wood swells a little bit,
so those slides don't work that well, and so,
and it's really crammed in there,
but I think this is easy peasy.
Yeah, so maybe this is just like bowls,
plates, and Tupperware
because we're gonna be using our Tupperware much more
because we have a fridge.
So that means we can put leftovers in the Tupperware,
and it's like, you want a spot that you can keep them.
(soft music)
♪ About to leave ♪
♪ Already packing ♪
- This is gonna be a real challenge.
(Dana laughing)
Hey.
- [Dana] No.
- Yeah.
- [Dana] So that's the top one,
and now we have to put the struts in?
- [Lou] Uh-huh, yeah, and we can also decide on the height,
see if you wanna change it.
- [Dana] Oh, should I get, let me get the tall can.
This is the tall can, right?
So definitely don't want it lower than that.
- [Lou] This is where it'll be,
according to the lines on the wall.
So I think we
really can't afford to put big lips.
- No. - It just like really barely-
- [Dana] 'Cause it's like this is what this side has, this,
this, which is nice because things don't fall.
But I think that it will take up too much space.
If you put a lip here, the can can't get in.
- [Lou] Unless we raised this one a bit higher in height.
- [Dana] But then it's like, what can you get in here?
- [Lou] Yeah.
- [Dana] I think lower is fine.
I think you don't need a lip.
It's like the door will stop it.
- Well, it's just if you're heeled over,
and you wanna open this,
everything will slide out, like on a...
And it's like when you're sailing, you could be on a tack
where the boat is tilted this way,
or sorry, this way for like a week.
And then every time you wanna open this
when you're cooking, everything will fall out.
(adventurous music)
(saw buzzing)
(adventurous music)
- How high will the last shelf be?
So imagine I just got back from the store.
We are filling the pantry.
Oh my gosh.
Even the vinegar bottle can fit on that one.
We changed the height of all of them.
So this one's more spacious.
We cut off some on the top,
so you have room to get in to this cavernous space
where the bowls go.
They can go on any of them now.
This is so cool.
- [Lou] What do you think, Dana?
- I absolutely love it.
I think this is gonna be so useful and practical.
We just need to put the lips on the front
so that things don't fall when we're heeling over
'cause I completely forgot about that.
Shows you how much of a land lover I'm becoming.
But wow, I am really, really impressed.
It's so much more storage than I was expecting,
and I think it's gonna be really nice
because it's really easy to access.
You don't have to move anything,
like you don't have to take any cushions out
or move anything.
This can be just be like a really useful section
of the boat kitchen,
but I'm also freezing, Lou, like really cold.
- [Lou] We're gonna take another hot cocoa break.
- So nice.
It's actually really coming along.
- Right? - Yeah.
- Big changes, but like so important
for like day-to-day life.
- Uh-huh.
It's gonna be a whole new boat
by the time this winter's over, right?
- Mm-hmm.
So this is gonna be one of Dana's first video edits
in a very, very long time.
So if you leave a ton of really, really nice comments,
you will make my life way easier
because she will keep editing and be empowered,
and I know you're gonna do a good job, so.
- Oh, thanks, babe.
(Lou chuckles)
I have actually been editing a few videos.
They've just been living on our Patreon in a safe space.
I've edited seven videos, I think.
- Yeah, but this is...
- This is a different ball game going up on the YouTubes.
But yeah, this is gonna be like a new thing for 2021.
I've thought about it,
a little late to New Year's resolutions
but I wanna start editing videos,
and I think that it's gonna be really nice.
It's like visual storytelling is quite a skill
that this guy has mastered, and I wanna join the club.
- Here, here!
- Cheers to that! (laughs)
Thank you.
(inspiring music)
(saw buzzing)
So I think that wraps up our work on the boat today.
We got all of them in here, Lou's coming right now.
(Dana chuckles)
- Ooh, are we calling it?
- [Dana] Yeah, I calling it.
- Our third battery
just died anyway, so- - Oh, really?
- We can't make any more cuts today.
- [Dana] Did you finish that last one though?
- Yeah. - You have it?
- Uh-huh, I have it right here.
- [Dana] Okay, sweet.
- I have another torque battery in the mail.
(Dana chuckles)
So we'll get to be able to work longer in the future.
- [Dana] So, this is the last one.
It goes here.
I feel like we built like blocks today.
- Right, it was like LEGO or something.
- Yeah.
So this is like where we're gonna be sitting now.
It's a little bit higher.
I guess it's, technically, it's like 5.7 centimeters
higher than it was before,
and that's actually gonna give us more pantry space below,
and then these hardwood edges
won't dig in to any person who's sleeping on this bed,
or even sometimes sitting here,
I feel like it was too much.
But it's gonna be nice.
I feel like it actually makes us more in line
with the fridge if we ever use the fridge as a chair.
But overall, I would say it was a good day.
The main event, though, that I'm most proud of
is definitely where the ice box was.
- [Lou] Yeah.
That turned out so well, Lou.
- Right? - Yeah.
- [Lou] Really cool, I love it.
- So this place is much better than it was.
Still a construction site, but that will be for a while.
Shall we head home?
I'm hungry. - Me too.
(door sliding)
(water running)
(knife tapping)
(soft music)
(knife tapping)
(soft music)
- [Lou] All right, here we go.
- Are you ready?
This is for all the marbles, Lou.
Oh, every time. - Yes!
(both laughing)
- [Lou] Yes!
(Dana grunting)
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♪ So hard to see ♪
♪ From the moment we arrived ♪