Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.
Progress on my goals
Boat life
This weekend I fitted a new battery monitor to replace the 2010-era monitor that had long since died.
Seriously, there wasn’t even a working button on it, and the screen was basically unreadable.
Now we have a shiny new Victron Bluetooth thingy. Look at it in all its backlit glory!
This does some funky stuff, like track our usage over time and let us see it on a user-friendly phone app. That’s important for our next project…
Solar system
We used today to rig up the ancient (and screaming in pain) Bimini. That’s a boat word for “tent cover/sun shade wot covers the steering wheel outside”.
Lady SierraWhiskyMike and I measured it and we reckon that we can get up to 400W of solar panels strapped to the top of that bad boy. At 20-25% efficiency, on a clear day that will charge our batteries for a full day’s energy usage in 8-12 hours.
Which is pretty good. If we plan to keep energy usage to the essentials while we’re at anchor that could give us indefinite stay time in a remote location during a good bit of summer. Less likely in the UK and Channel Islands, but if we were in the Mediterranean we’d probably be laughing.
In an ideal world, I’d want 600-800W. That would cover our “at anchor” usage and then some. There’s probably some way I can do this by having an add-in connector for extension panels when we’ve got sails down, but that’s probably a stretch goal.
My plan is to acquire the 400W flexible solar panels and a decent Victron MPPT solar panel controller (don’t worry about the acronym but there’s two type of controller and this is the shinier type – if I was just powering a shed or a small off-grid project I’d probably live with the cheaper type, but if we lose anchor and nav lighting we are Seriously Boned) to connect up to our existing battery bank. Because our Bimini is, er, well loved I don’t mind patching it and cannibalising it to make a carrier for the flexible solar panels. This should be enough for us to run some tests over summer and see what the “final” setup is going to look like.
Version 2 will then be a modified setup of that, but we’ll upgrade the (suspiciously old) batteries to deal with that, and that will probably mean we have a higher energy storage capacity anyway.
For now though, the challenge will be fitting the system to the existing rig. No pressure.
Merino wool clothing trials
So far so good with the merino trial. I’ve added a second polo shirt and a t-shirt, and the plan is to use those and the overshirts I have to be the bulk of my weekly clothing.
I work in corporate offshore law. It’s rare that I meet a client; most of them call or send an e-mail. The few that I do meet also dress in collar and jeans. I guess the pandemic legacy has been a net positive for the non-uniform office uniform.
This has allowed me to get rid of something like 7 shirts and 5 t-shirts so far from the locker. I haven’t binned them or anything yet, they’re just being put to one side while I trial this system out.
In theory you can wear merino wool semi-indefinitely with no odour or bacterial degradation. That means you should just be able to spot-clean it and occasionally spray some vodka on the pits if you’re worried about it, for quite a sustained period.
I don’t know if I believe this, but if I can bring my shirts/t-shirts laundry down to fortnightly or monthly then I’m laughing.)
After reading heavily into it like the hyper-fixated nerd I am, all advice has been to have about 3 items in rotation and to hang them up in the evening for a proper airing out.
I tried this with just the one polo shirt and can confirm that hanging it out to air has been amazing. I wouldn’t say I’m a super-sweaty guy, but I train a lot and have that stress sweat of an intensive office job, so usually I get up to two days out of a shirt if I steam it in between days.
I’ve already gotten three out of the first polo and it’s fine. It also survived being packed in my bag and worn straight away without ironing, which is a big win.
Distractions and detours
Trump Slump
Well global (because of the heavy US-weighting) equities backtracked, probably in response to the US’s stance on trade tariffs and the rapid decline in Tesla desirability.
My funds don’t seem to have been that badly hit, but I can confirm that basically everything with a US-weighting got slapped 2-3% or so on my side.
Which could have been a lot worse.
My Bitcoin holdings also dropped in cash equivalent value. I’m still many times above what I’d contributed, but it’s an interesting dynamic given that the US is now about to buy a load of it for a “strategic reserve”, making Bitcoin now a state reserve asset. Not the future I’d expected so soon, but I guess this means we’re getting closer to mainstream acceptance provided that the Trump-Vance-Putin combo doesn’t taint it by association.
Realistically there’s not a lot I can do about it. Trump will probably be in power for a while, even if he does kick of World War Three then the pre-war Sterling will be basically inflated away to zero anyway, and if it’s all overblown hype then I’ll be glad for having made the investments over time.
So I might as well crack on.
Non-FIRE goals
My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)
This week we started You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC. I’d tried learning this on my own, so it was reassuring to see that what I’d taught myself wasn’t that far off the graded piece my teacher wants me to practice.
Actually, truth be told, my playing has been going through a slump lately. I’m still practicing because discipline is important to improvement, but I’d be lying if I said I did more than 20-30minutes of playing in a session. I dunno, somehow I’m not feeling the love this month. It’s probably the running injury getting me down and not related to guitar at all, but it’s there.
I told my teacher about this and he suggested that it’s something we need to work on as a pair. I wasn’t expecting that response at all! I’d assumed that the answer would be “well, be more disciplined” or something like that. I’m thinking that this is a temporary slump, but my teacher seems to think that this is a sign that something is off in the way we’re approaching the learning, so I’ll see how that changes our lessons. Ultimately, I have no plans to stop learning, so more practice is going to happen. If that’s five sessions of 20 minutes per week then so be it.
Fitness
Yeah, I can’t run.
I can’t even do a dog walk of over 30 minutes without knee pain.
So I’m just going to call that marathon off now. It’s not realistic that I could retrain up to it by the start of next month without causing myself permanent lasting damage. I’d just rather not.
While this has started to heal – I’m so grateful that I can sort-of walk up steps like an adult again – I’ve been like a neurotic former racehorse. Mood swings, unpleasant demeanour, massive urge to eat my feelings, you name it. If I don’t get exercise people around me know about it. Lady SierraWhiskyMike has been understanding about it, it can’t be fun living with a right grump.
So I’ve now gone back to the gym to stick with upper body exercises and start to incorporate things like a swim or an elliptical trainer. It’s keeping me in the habit of training and even though it’s not the same feeling as completing a run there’s still something cool about finishing a session and seeing the pump from pull-ups and dips.
Usually when I don’t have running I do kettlebells and barbell compound lifts. They’re temporarily off the table because they rely on my knee being strong, which is kind of a problem right now and will be for another week or two at least.
If things go well in the gym this week I’ll go back to cycling to work again as well. Summer’s coming and it’s nice to avoid the traffic if nothing else!
Final thoughts
Boat plan seems to be going well again. There’s always something to fix and there’s always something to add in. The solar project is pretty cool, and I like the idea that we can effectively reduce our electricity bills to nearly nothing over the summer but the minimum standing charge.
That would be seriously cool.
Trump slump affected me but I’m still quids in on my investment journey so far and there’s a long way to go yet. No panic, just a shrug. A theme of this blog and my life is do what you can with what you have, and that’s basically what I’m doing by adding solar and trying to reduce my launderette costs.
My leg injury sucks. The hip pain has gone, but now I have a grinding knee pain that comes out if I do too much walking. That’s a problem because I walk a lot every day. If it continues too long I’ll get a doctor’s opinion. Right now, only two weeks after I did whatever I did to it, probably just needs rest and time to heal up properly.
My financial independence campaign continues!
