It’s been a hot summer. Keeping cool has been easier on the trawler than it was on the sail boat, but a challenge none the less.
We are lucky to have privacy screens on all of the windows and find that unsnapping them from the top and flopping them down during a heat wave allows much more air to flow through the boat.
I’m an old cow who suffers from hot flashes. One of my first requests, when we moved on board the trawler, was to have Captain Sweetie install 12 volt fans. He obliged and installed one over the bed, but I still want one in the galley desperately. We use those little Helo fans from Germany. They are inexpensive and don’t use much electricity. It would also be grand to have one installed in the head and another over my recliner in the main salon. Until I can convince him to install every fan on my list, we have been using regular 110 electric fans to move the air around. I have an elderly box fan that I prop over the overhead hatch in the forward cabin. The trick is to turn it upside down so that it will pull hot air out of the cabin instead of blowing it in from the outside. Once the sun goes down and the temperatures drops, I simply turn it over and let the cool night air blow into the boat. The cat seems to have radar for this kind of thing and will plop himself down directly under the fan. Don’t ever try to move him – he bites.
I also use the engine room blowers to move hot air out. I don’t know that they help much, but when the temperatures are in the triple digits, I’ll do anything to keep air moving through the boat.
In past years, I have tried cooling the boat by running water from a hose over the cabin tops and decks. I confess that my experiment at evaporation cooling was a dismal failure, but at least I got to splash in the water for a while.
No cooking is allowed during heat waves. We dine on big kitchen-sink salads or fruit salads during hot weather. The barbeque takes the place of the stove and oven. I say; “let the Captain suffer the heat if he won’t install fans in my galley”.
My favorite thing to do when it’s hot is to make rum daiquiris, and plenty of them! Nothing beats the heat like a good, boozy, blended drink. We blend strawberries, ice, sugar and rum in the blender and chug them down until we either don’t feel the heat, or don’t give a damn if it’s hot. Either way, the daiquiris work. I even bought a 12 volt blender, just for this purpose.
Of course when we are in the Delta, all I have to do is splash my big self over the side and into the river, but here in South City, the water isn’t suitable for swimming. So, think of me sitting under my fan, sipping my daiquiri and keeping my cool. You try to do the same!
