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After debating whether I should go out at all in the 3-5 mph winds (too little wind), I figured I'd go local and launched from Riva Avenue in East Brunswick. I rigged up some hose adapters for the inflator so I can let it do its thing while I assemble the sail kit - and the total unpacking and assembly only took a half hour (alone).

The wind was blowing (when it was blowing) steadily down river, thus I decided that I'd tack upwind first to see if I should dare to go downstream for fear of having to walk back. It was rather slow but doable, so I sailed downstream. To make a long story short - narrow, winding river, intermittent wind and lilies do not mix with sailing. Tacking isn't pleasant in such an environment: first you tack left, and the boat drifts 20 feet before catching a gust of wind and moving across in seconds and regaining barely as much ground. Then you tack right, and you do the same except you wind up on top of lily pods, effectively grounded. Then you row, and have to jump back to sailing position, only to repeat the whole ordeal. It took me 2 hours to go half a mile, back to the truck.

To add insult to a tiresome experience, I once again parked on the wrong side of a low bridge. Having discovered this, I decided to move to a different spot on the same river - but I didn't want to break everything down, so I just threw the boat on the truck (on the cab and bed), tied it down somewhat and drove over. Then it hit me: why not do that every time?

In my quest for large but protected bodies of water, I searched Google Maps and spied what seemed like convenient access to Shrewsbury River (Middletown, NJ) from Old Warf park. This was indeed a great location to launch from (the parking lot is very close to the water)... unfortunately I did not account for one small problem: a low bridge. We set out, tacked upwind towards the main body of water, and then encountered a 6' tall bridge (with the NJ Transit North Jersey Coast Line trains passing overhead).

The mast of the sailboat is at least 16' tall. There I was, struggling to remove the mast while the boat is helplessly drifting under the bridge. Live and learn. Ultimately, we sailed in intermittent 5-7mph winds and managed to hit maybe 3mph (according to the waterproof gps I brought.).

To Sail or not to Sail

After my earlier Kite Kayaking adventure, I started cautiously looking into sailing. The appeal of not having to paddle was undeniable - being able to just hang out and take in the environment, rather than having to work the entire way. Kite kayaking is fun, however tricky or even dangerous, but a single-line kite can only pull you downwind. Even if I attempted to use a control-line kite, I'd have no hands left to steer.

Decisions

The other option, of course, was a sailboat with a mast, which would allow me to sail into the wind. The problem is that I already pull a trailer, so I can't very well bring the RV and the sailboat... or can I? Then I discovered Sailboats To Go - a line of sailing kits for just about any inflatable craft there is. Typically the kit and boat pack small enough that they can be checked luggage.

I wanted to have a portable craft that wouldn't take too long to set up, and would not require a trailer or boat ramps. Eventually I settled on a deluxe kaboat kit (a 14' Kaboat with the 55 sq ft sail). The kaboat is fairly streamlined yet stable, and has a transom for a 10 hp motor (which I may wind up getting eventually). I got the larger leeboards, but skimped on the stabilizer floats, thinking that $150 is a bit much for buoys on sticks, and figured I'd make my own.

The boat and maiden voyage

The boat took over a month to arrive - all kaboat retailers were out of stock. By the time it arrived, I had everything ready for a maiden voyage on the 500 meter long lake in my town. Here is what things look like from outside and from the boat itself:

Jane's Island State Park looked appealing on Google Maps. That's really how I picked it. It's near water, and the surrounding area is thoroughly crisscrossed by water trails. That's what they call them over there - "water trails". I like water, and I like trails - great success.

The drive from New Jersey is longer than you might expect - about half the trip is spent on less-than freeways - ranging in speeds from 35 mph all the way to 65, littered with occasional traffic lights that can change suddenly - something that you probably could do without when driving 12,000 pounds. Yet that is the only way to get there, so we deal and persevere, and are glad we did.

The park itself is hidden behind sparsely populated lands, making it even quieter than it already is. The staff is remarkably forthcoming and friendly. The campground has three loops, each offering some water-front spots, though not all have electricity (and none have anything more). The sites are situated between sizable trees, mostly pines, giving the site pads (and the roof of your RV) a pleasant pine-needle feel. These sites overlook a narrow channel that leads to the Chesapeake Bay by way of a maze of water trails, or, if you prefer - in a more direct way.

With my typical tendency to postpone decision-making until some other time, I found myself searching for available campsites for the week prior to July 4th... with barely 3 weeks to go. We were looking to get away for 8-9 days and return on July 3rd, prior to the crazy traffic - and ideally not spend the entire week driving, leaving plenty of time to explore and enjoy one area, which would ideally be nice enough to warrant such exploration.


I settled on lake Ontario for no specific reason other than "it felt right" - and went through Reserve America one state campground at a time (using their semi-usable Microsoft-biased web interface). Most were booked solid or had availability in what appeared to be the worst remaining sites. My clockwise search around the lake eventually reached Lakeside Beach State Park, and that is where we went. The park is less crowded (except on July 4th, as I can attest) than its neighbors because it lacks a swimming beach altogether - in fact, it even lacks a boat launch. All access to the lake is either over boulders, cliffs, or both. For us, this is an ideal destination: less crowded, fewer kids, more serene. (Again, except July 4th). I was able to reserve the closest site to the lake on loop C for the days we wanted, and off we went to be quite surprised on arrival.

Our Sunline T1950 comes with a 24 gallon fresh water tank. It's probably intended to give you a chance to wash your hands and wash the dishes after a roadside picnic on your way to a full-hookup campsite - anything beyond that is tough to accomplish with 24 gallons. We've managed to make it last about 2 days with very judicial usage and military showers (2-3), but it's hardly convenient - and we didn't upgrade to an RV to forego convenience!



In the past, I did manage to extend things a little by bringing along a couple of 6G Reliant Aqua-tainers, but that's cumbersome in its own right because you have to lug them around, improvise a hose to pour them into your tank filler orifice, not to mention holding them up above waist height!

Therefore it was time to make a change. For this installation I decided to limit project scope to the fresh water tank only. My grey and black tank are both 28G for reasons that are completely mysterious to me, but I figured I'd deal with that limitation later on. Measuring the space it became clear that there are two ways to go - either replace the tank with a larger one, or add a second tank alongside. Adding a second tank would require a lot of hackery with Y adapters on all four connections to the tank, in other words - more points of failure. With that logic in mind, I decided to cram in the largest replacement tank I could possibly fit.

This is sort of a trailer trip - being a part-owner (by proxy) of Kingley Health (and Tazi's Cafe that's in the building), I found myself participating in the 4 day long move of the Piscataway location from 120 Centennial to 220 Centennial (it's a really great building). Since I knew that we'd be there all day, I just brought the trailer to the parking lot to save us the commute home - and we could stay there legally for once!

This was a really fun move, and although it was a lot of work I'm glad that we didn't hire professional movers - it forced the entire Kingley Health crew to not only get much closer, but also develop a great deal of appreciation and ownership for the new space, which is a little part of that magical reason why one may want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. And our clients can feel this too.

Anyway, the trailer was on purely night-time duty for this trip - water was barely used at all as the building has full facilities, heat was not necessary this time of year and we didn't have time to cook. So, basically, we just used the bed. I also brought a chair massager for our sore muscles and it worked just fine on a 320 watt mini plug-in inverter. Everyone was rather amused that we spent our nights in the trailer, but it wound up having an unexpected benefit - we played security guards one night when some neighborhood kids waltzed into the unlocked space. Electric was not even taxed as the solar panels got plenty of sun.

This was a 3-day weekend trip, Saturday through Monday, and our destination is close enough (200 miles or 3.5 hours non-stop) to do this with ease. Assateague Island is a barrier strip with half in Maryland and half in Virginia, and it being an island on the East Coast it has the Atlantic ocean on the East and the bay on the West side. Both have their beauty, though the bay is naturally more buggy . In mid October the insects are pretty much gone (except flies), especially on the ocean side, making it a great time to go there. The island is well known for its wild/feral small horses that roam freely and steal your food.

There are several ways to stay there, unfortunately boondocking is not one of them. Developed campgrounds exist in both the State Park and the National Seashore Park. The latter is cheaper but requires you to pay the Park entrance fee (they take the national park pass) since the campground is located inside the National Park. The State Park campground costs $10 more per day ($20 more if you want electric hookups), but the lots are somewhat larger (or they seem to be). By the time it occurred to me to make reservations (which they only take up until mid October, incidentally) the National Park was full and the State Park gave me a choice of only one spot (D15) for $30/day, which I promptly grabbed after inspecting their campground map and realizing that it's one of the best spots I could ask for - closest to the ocean, and a huge back lot should I need more room. Here is a Google Maps link to the exact spot. My brain, pre-programmed for suspicion, naturally asked "What's wrong with this spot that nobody wanted it?", but I squashed it with "can't be choosers" concept, and it turned out to be a great site indeed.

There are alternatives to getting paved spots in the parks - backcountry camping (read: hike 2.5-15 miles carrying all your fresh water) is permitted but not reservable. I have friends who have done this, and this is probably not a beginner backpacking adventure unless you're in great shape - walking on the sand with 50lbs on your back can be a challenge. Alternatively, the park offers OSV (Over Sand Vehicle) permits, though I couldn't quite figure out if you can overnight (seemed like a "NO" unless you are actively fishing. What does "actively fishing" mean, exactly?) or if you can bring a trailer onto the sand (seemed like a pretty strong "NO"). I am pretty sure my truck could do it, though I'd probably not let someone like me onto the beach

Getting there was uneventful, my old Garmin C330 had no trouble bringing me directly to the park entrance (Assateauge is in its database), and the people are quite nice. Their access control system boils down to an automatic gate with a 3 digit code, which they give you with your parking hang-tag. We traveled with our fresh tank empty since there is a dump station and faucet available in the campground. Note that there are no camping spots with full hookups, meaning that as you get close to the 11AM checkout time, a pretty sizeable line of RV's forms at the dump station, which handles just one vehicle at a time. We were leaving on a Monday, but the line was still at least 15 RV's long, so we found a free dump site along our way home (Dover Slots) on sanidumps.com and that had no wait.

Now about the park:

Labor Day is not the best time to take a long drive in New Jersey, but if that is the only time you can manage to take off 3 days, then there are things you can do to mitigate your traffic experiences. Like - going local. And local in New Jersey means Pine Barrens, aka Wharton State Forest.

Having no specific plan of action I figured we'd go and find a place to hang out. It was my understanding that you can overnight in these areas since the prohibition signs enumerate a variety of noise and impairment-related restrictions, but say nothing about camping or parking. This would also be our first trip with the newly purchased truck (Ram 2500 V10), and with that comes the need to make some adjustments... Specifically - height adjustments. The truck is about 8" taller than the van (it's a 4x4) and I'm still using the same hitch ball mount from the weight-distributing hitch. Which makes the trailer sit a little funny... and by funny I mean that the rear bumper is eerily close to the ground.

The water level sensors in my RV's waste tanks simply don't work that well... It's possible that this is how it must be for exposed metal sensors, and I must simply live with it. Most of the time the tank reads full. I can only assume that the cause is the build-up of conductive waste material on the tank walls, and as long as this layer is even slightly damp, all the sensors are effectively shorted.

The RV forums are full of sensor cleaning remedies - from commercial products to driving with bags of ice cubes in the tank. Spray cleaning tools also abound, and while I am not in the mood to cut a huge hole in the tank to install a permanently mounted (and complex) spray system, I think there is something I can do about this. But first, I'd need to get in there!

Thus, the first order of business was finding the entry point - and it presented itself readily enough, in the form of a mechanical vent under the sink. The pipe leading to this device is entirely straight, as vents tend to be. Removing the vent allows me to insert something down the pipe directly into the tank, but what would that be? There isn't much clearance and thus I can't get my Camco rinser (40103) in there. So it needs to be flexible.



As it turns out, making one with parts I had on hand isn't so hard - a piece of garden hose, a barbed adapter to fit it, and a PVC cap that I blessed with a few small holes. And oh, it works.

PS: In the long run, I decided that I don't really care. I know how much water I had in the fresh tank, therefore I know how much water might be in the grey tank. And besides, it backs up into the shower when over-capacity

In an attempt to make our battery last longer on dry-camping expeditions, I measured all the electrical loads we have and found that the biggest appliance we have is the lighting system - and the Sunline has 15 interior light bulbs, not to mention outside lights all over the place. All the bulbs are 921 (spade type) and at 12-13v they consume at least 1.3A each. That's easily 18 watts. That's each! If we have, say, 4 of them turned on, that's over 5A - over 100Ah in a 24 hour period! How big is your battery?

So that was no good. There are two alternatives - compact fluorescents and LED's. I've tried LED's before, but the color temperature was horrible - very cold and white, bluish almost. They are very efficient though. As for CFL's, the idea of running something that will only glow at several hundred volts from a 12V system just doesn't sound efficient to me, so I looked into what's been happening with LED's these days. I was pleasantly surprised...

Problem: the water pump pulses on-and-off to maintain water pressure. It does a decent job, but it's noisy and the water flow varies every second or two.

Solution: install an expansion (accumulator) tank that will accumulate pressure and reduce the need for the pump to cycle or even turn on.

After some preliminary research, I ordered the parts and installed it in 2 hours (including some performance testing). Here is the how-to, largely for me to remember how I did it.

We have yet to take our first trip, but I couldn't wait. Actually I found used panels and a charge controller on Craigslist and picked them up the same day we got the trailer! Someone was selling a pair of 50 watt panels and a 15 Amp charge controller.

As it turned out, the hard part of this installation was not electrical but rather mechanical - finding beams to screw into, without perforating the rubber roof unnecessarily or causing leaks.

Some details on both electrical and mechanical install:

It finally happened! It's a 2003 Sunline Solaris Lite T-1950. We were fortunate to find it in perfect condition, one owner, having been professionally cleaned with a toothbrush by a meticulous owner for the last 6 years. Even the awning is spotless, not to mention the interior. The water tank has never been filled and the water heater never ran on propane (it was always hooked up).


Why did we upgrade? It's not that the conversion-conversion van is not functional - it is, it has a place to sleep, a sink, even stove and toilet. What it lacks is a place. As in space. It lacks the space to "just be". If you want to relax and just hang out, you either have to do it on tiny director's chairs (blocking the isle), in the driver seat (can't turn), or lie down on the bed. If you need to move around - well you keep your head down, and you push the other person out of the way. If you need to use the bathroom... well the other person should probably vacate the premises, which is fine when it's sunny and pleasant outside, but... You get the idea. It got us this far, and now it's time for it to pull our new toy instead. Which brings us to the trailer:

There was no plan to this trip. The only thing even remotely close to a plan was my idea that I wanted to go somewhere warm, which (in December) - meant Florida. We didn't make it all the way to Florida because Georgia was already warm enough - days were in the 70's, and that was good enough for me. Plus - they have Palm Trees out there!

We headed out on Dec 14th and drove straight down for about 250 miles (the first day) and wound up staying in a hotel parking lot the first night. (As we've figured out, hotel parking lots are just about the quietest/calmest place to overnight, especially if it's a bit away from the Interstate). We then proceeded onwards and were soon in North Carolina. Despite not having a plan, it was my idea to drive South for a while further before getting off the Interstate and switching to local roads. On board we have a book titled "Road Trip USA", and this book advocates doing just that - travelling the byways and actually "seeing something" rather than zooming past rest areas. By the time we made it to South Carolina, we headed over to Rt 15 and followed the coast line to Charleston, a pleasant and quaint city on the water.