Still sitting in the office alone after a long working Thursday, listening to “Pull me Under” by Dream Theater on loud volume. I finished five blueprints today; Vaccuum toilet system, Freeboard arrangement, Entry point, Watermaker, and Galley layout. There has been a lot of drawing, and I am really getting into the skin of the software I use; Adobe Illustrator CS2 on OSX.

In a good and in a negative way. Yesterday, for instance, Illustrator decided that my save files from the last four hours looked bad, made itself crash and ate my saved files! I did not forget to save, i was a deliberate attack from the program that ate already-saved files! Not only once did it happen, even twice in sucession. Getting up this morning to know that the first thing you need to do is to re-create a lot of work. Even so, I had an unusually productive day.

The spring has blessed us with some hot days with sun and little wind, allowing us to eat on deck for the first times. Elinor also made use of the kitchen yesterday, making the first self-produced lunch on Elida V. The propane stove seems to be very good to work with, only lacking a proper low heat mode for boiling rice.

I have delegated the watermaker work to Robert. When he thought he was finished and managed to produce fresh water from the sea, things got bad. First, the feed water filters started to leak, making the feeder pumps pump a mixture of water and air bubbles instead of just water, making a lot and lot of noise. From this air/water mix, the reverse osmosis cartridges produced less water instead of the rated 100 l/h. He searched for leaks, found a handful of errors made by the watermaker manufacturer up to and including not installing a filter correctly, leading dirty water into the hyper-sensitive watermaker and possibly ruining it. (System #2 doesn’t work anymore, and we believe this is the cause…)

More trouble. Having the feed water filters installed underneath the sole will be a maintenance nightmare, so today Robert started to move them to the pump room instead, installing a small feeder pump right at the water intake instead of relying on gravity. There seem to be something like a week left until the system can be completed, that assumes that System #2 will start working magically all by itself without needing to be replaced.

Robert and I do agree that the list of mistakes by Enwa, the watermaker manufacturer is growing far too long. Even now, we do not have the system that we ordered, another replacement is about to be made to give us two independent systems instead of two dependent systems as we have now. (We ordered two separate systems from the beginning…)

Nevertheless, I have been able to drink some of the water produced in the harbour. It has taken really dirty and disgusting water from the Fiskebäck harbour; filled with algae, oil, various types of dirt and dead fish; filtered it and pushed it through a “magic” reverse osmosis membrane that on molecular level separates the H20 from NaCl and other salts and impurities and outputs 99,9% clean water. This water I filled in a glass and tasted, and indeed, it did taste more clean than the regular tap water (and remember, tap water here in Sweden is really, really good). Also, The pasta that Elinor made yesterday was boiled in, that’s right! Watermaker-produced water (and we are all still alive).

Tomorrow I am going home for an extended holiday. The last weeks have been really demanding, with meetings with Maritime Authorities and piles upon piles of blueprints, long working days (don’t remember the last day I didn’t work more than twelve hours) and insecurity about the future. Now we do know that the masts will be transported from Nirvana spars in Medemblik in Holland to Fiskebäck, Sweden by truck and installed on place. It will be an interesting sight to see a truck transporting a 45 m long aluminium spar all the way to Gothenburg…

So anyway, I am going to Västerås for Easter holiday and I will be back to work on Easter Sunday again. Happy weekend!

Seems like “chineseing” at the Hay’s place has become a weekend tradition for me. It is the second weekend in a row that I most unplanned and unprepared stay the Saturday and Sunday at their flat, without bringing even a toothbrush. Thanks to some great hospitality I have borrowed both various dental cleaning devices to bed sheets and matresses. Hjalmar is also a guest of theirs, although he lives here slightly less temporary than me, and we have spent this free Saturday in a most relaxed fashion.

Waking up very late, strolling a few blocks to get an English breakfeast at a local coffeshop, meeting up with Magnus (who now is working as a full-time cook in Öckerö) and scanning through the streets of Haga for things to shop. Later in the evening, Mathilda, Robert and Karin joined us in the small apartment in Majorna to watch “Mr. Deeds”.

The last week has been quite a ride. First knowing that the departure is due this Friday (yesterday, that is) and there were still quite a lot of essential systems not functioning, we had a bit of stress trying to get everything fixed up. I have now resumed struggling with the precious watermaker, nagging the manufacturer to fix some problems with the system. There seems to be no end of the problems we have had with this machine, but at the same time I have come a long way with the installation this week and I hope to finish it in the coming days.

That is, if I get some time to spare. I have been appointed to join a few other people from both the board and the team to present the fire analysis report for Elida V to the maritime authorities. Since we hope to leave this Friday we need to get the approval from the authorities to go to Holland for rigging. On Wednesday, we will depart for Norrköping to meet these bureaucrats, present the facts and what we have done in just the best way possible, and God willing they will let us leave when we want to. Stefan has had very much to do, coordinating with the authorities what still needs to be done on the ship and geting blueprints finished. I have been helping out with this, making blueprints of evacuation routes, fire reports and the electric system, to name a few.

You can feel it on the ship now, the spirit of progress. I like it when things just get fixed and happen, for instance we finally got gas springs on the hatches to the officer’s cabin, eliminating the risk for cutoff fingers or necks under the heavy doors. The stove is also installed, and Sergey, our magician, carpenter and metalworker, has made a well-designed and beautiful rig around the cooking area that both holds the stove in place, but keeps kettles and pots in place in rough seas. The LPG stove seems to be advanced and of high quality, so we will probably have no problems using it for really large camps on board. The fridges arrived this Friday as well. There are two fridges and the one freezer (both half-tall models) and are powered by 230V power (24V fridges are ridiculously expensive).

It is now late and Hjalmar asks me to go to bed, seems like my typing keeps him awake. Over and out.

Elida V has been progressing pretty well the last week. The new guy, Samuel, has installed the kitchen sinks and worked with the box for the LPG bottles for the stove.

Sergey has installed a few more toilets and is now working with the seats in the lounge.

Greg has had his arm re-cast, the new cast does not go over the elbow, giving him a lot more freedom to work with. He is now the ship’s car driver and purchaser of materials all over Gothenburg.

I have finally been able to finish the solar panels. Jimmy gave me a good idea of how to connect the various cables together in a neat fashion, speeding up my process a lot. It took me less than two days to connect the ten panels together, and all regulators are now happily ticking forward, giving around 1-2 Amperes of 24 V power each to the batteries.

During spare hours, I have been working for ABB, doing more tasks in Office VBA.

I also have been tinkering and modifying my own hobby program, now called “evad”. Evad is a little music program that is a client to the MPD music player. It looks and feels very similar to the excellent ncmpc but written in python and with my own ideas and improvements implemented. Hopefully, I will be able to make the first public release within some months. I am no Python expert, though, and it seems the things I am implementing requires some expertize, therefore the delays.

The next days will be interesting. Elida V is scheudeled to leave Sweden next Monday, the twelfth of March.