Thoughts and reflections form the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat plan – ALL ABOARD!
I’m excitedly (and somewhat prematurely) typing this. Yesterday, we learned how to “swage” metal wire and fitted a dog-loading gate to the boat’s guardrail.
That’s hard to picture, so I actually took some pictures for you to see. Check it out!
An acceptable bodge
This gate isn’t human-suitable, like a real boarding gate would be. It’s kind of a neat bodge job, just for the dog.
If you were to do it properly you’d need to fit gate stanchions and so on so that people have something to grab onto.
There are two reasons why we didn’t do that:
1. Price; and
2. On our model of boat, the other people who had factory-fitted gates put in weren’t happy with the result anyway.
In a world after our dog (bless him, but he is an older boy), we’re going to probably replace the steel guardrails with Dyneema rope. As we haven’t modified the boat, we won’t have to revert the modifications back to their original settings.
Learning to swage steel wire
To swage 4mm steel wire, we needed: (contains affiliate links):
- A set of generic stainless steel thimbles and sleeves . I bought this set on Amazon. The sleeves will corrode, but if they do I can crimp a new one on.
- A swaging tool. Stainless is hard compared to aluminium or copper wire, so I bought this Chinese made hydraulic crimping tool instead of a hand crimper, which turned out better than expected.
- Your wire (duh).
- Whatever specialist fittings you want to attach.
- Wire cutters/ bolt croppers. Steel wire prefers solid bolt croppers, can confirm.
- A knife to trim off plastic coating, and pliers to force a tight loop into place. I can confirm that the Leatherman Wave was the tool for the job, an I absolutely swear by Leatherman over any other multi tool on the market.
As an aside: I would, without any form of payment, hands down recommend a Leatherman to you if you’re looking for multi-tools. I’ve tried Gerber, I used to like Victorinox, but the Leatherman has been The One for my military career, DIY work on a house, and now boat life. They’re so good I insisted on buying Lady SierraWhisklyMike one so we both have one at hand during sailing. £150 ain’t cheap, but I wouldn’t skimp out again.
It’s not too hard once you get into the swing of it. I trimmed the plastic away to reveat the metal, pushed it through one hole in the sleeve, through the fitting (over a thimble to prevent chafing later) and then back on itself to create a loop.
The hydraulic crimper was the easiest thing in the world to use. You slot in a metal die set, switch the hydraulic release to “off” (counter-intuitive, I know) then pump it with the sleeve in between the die until it squishes.
Top tip: leave a long tail
At the start, I tried making loops right at the end of the wires, to keep wastage down. I found that this made it really hard to push the sleeves into place to get a neat loop.
Later on, I gave about six to eight inches of wire, leaving a tail I had to cut off after crimping. It was easier to thread a tight loop over a thimble, even though we then taped up the sharp wire ends afterwards.
We also made dog steps
Using the powers of a trip to B&Q, we’ve made a set of courtesy steps to get the dog aboard through our new gate.
Test Day is TODAY!
We’re testing the dog with the new setup today. If he can get onboard (ha!) with the plan, we’re going to start moving aboard tonight.
EXCITED!!!!
Payday
I was so preoccupied with boat plan than payday went past and I barely blinked.
Automated investing: do your thing. I’m busy, dammit!
Distractions and detours
Actually, we’ve been focused and productive this week.
Work has probably been the biggest distraction, taking up most of our time with long hours. Not cool.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
I gave quite a good rendition of Metallica, and my guitar teacher has put me onto Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. The riff is a bit fiddly, but the song structure is simple, the verse is easy and there’s another solo in it.
Still not a great guitarist, but the progress has been great. I’m making fewer mistakes now and I’m starting to see patterns in simple minor pentatonic songs. That’s pretty cool
Fitness
Managed to get in two big cardio sessions, but that’s about it: a run and an intervals sprint session. Not ideal, but I’ve been busy.
Final thoughts
We’re planning to do the initial move aboard tonight.
There’s a ton more work to do on the boat, starting with the hatches to make the forward cabin usable, but it’s solid progress and gets us closer to our Why of FI: the boat plan.
My financial independence campaign continues!
