Still at base camp

Still at base camp teaching a semester in the classroom at our local college and waiting to take off for parts yet unknown.  Fortunately this has given me the time to learn to live in a tent.  Residing in a tent is much different than just going camping for a weekend.  So far I hope that my concerns about the longevity of the nylon fabric have proven to be overblown.

A beautiful day today.  I have now lived in Matilda since May and am just beginning to get the idea of what living in this associated collection of home-made tools is going to be like.  In one word: comfortable.  The bed (90% of Matilda) is the best bed in which I have ever slept. 

 

The side walls have been a really good idea for this tent.  Below is how the side panels look when they are down (usually when I first get up in the morning or in the event of a storm), and then reefed.

My kitchen has not had that much use since I have been at home base much of the time, but all I have, and all I need is a simple camp range.  The table is from Gander and has a folding aluminum slat top with a cloth storage unit that includes four zip bags, at least two of them are insulated.  I just keep my cookware, eating implements as well as canned goods and dried products in this item.  The problem is that you really don't want it to get wet, so I just pull it inside the tent at night or during inclement weather.

Next week Matilda may be heading to this marina where a lot of elbow grease is going to be needed in order to make Woodchuck's new sailboat look livable...because he plans to live on it and be a nautical nomad.

Sewing and Equipping Your Tent

Sewing your own tent takes some technical sewing skills that you need to learn, but that involves no more than the ability to design and cut-out patterns and also use the sewing machine itself (thanks to Mother for oddly supposing that someday this skill would come in handy for a man).  I wanted a very large tent so that my whole camper would fit comfortably inside, so I worked out a 14 foot by 14 foot tent supported by three expandable poles in the center and five expandable poles along each side. There is no tent frame, and the tent is supported by the tensile strength of the nylon fabric. In this post I wanted to add some images of odds and ends that really help make the tent a more efficient place to live.

SNAPS:  These suckers are a bit expensive if you need hundreds of them as they sell for about a dollar a snap set.  Snaps come in a four-part set and some packages include a cheap tool to crush the parts together.  Recommend you spend the ($10-$24) pliers unless you have more than two arms.  I am going to use the snaps to snug-up the tent panels and to 'button-up' the tent in colder weather.

D-RINGS AND GROMMETS:  D-rings are everywhere and so are pretty cheap.  These are not mountain-climbing quality so don't even think of risking your life hanging from one of these, but they are really useful for  hanging-up panels, for making a friction-free sliding panel or for just hanging up various tools and toys from posts and cables.  Grommets are a really useful item but you have to pound them together so you should really do this step before you get your tent up.  Grommets are pretty cheap and you can get them at places like Harbor Freight, Michael's, Walmart, Lowe's ext.. You cut out the hole then use a hammer and pound the two sides of the grommet together.  Recommend you reinforce the fabric around the grommets.

Cord fasteners: This one is a large heavy-duty fastener and is extremely useful.  I bought them as a bag of 100 from usalanyards.com for 30$ and shipping.   I am using them to snug-up the lines that tighten the nylon side panels to the poles.  When I raise the tent sides for a seven foot elevation from a four foot height, all I have to do is loosen these tighteners and just raise the cloth, then tighten again.  This is fast and efficient.

CLEATS:  Well, I guess not for the tent itself, but these are so darned useful that I wanted to give them a shout.  You can use cleats to anchor rope of course, but you can also use them for many other purposes.

You can buy less expensive cleats at home improvement stores.  Marine stores will carry high quality cleats but if you are not risking your camper on the high seas then the lesser quality cleats will do just fine.

COOL STUFF:  I got this neat gadget from a dollar-type store.  This particular object connects a bottle to a D-ring so that you can hang up your beer or cider.  Angry Orchard cider is one of my favorites, and I am doing great in my ambition to be like President John Adams and begin my day with a cold cider.  Adams drank a whole quart for breakfast, but I find one of these to be quite efficacious.

PEGS:  Kind of mundane as a subject, but when the rain falls for four days and the ground turns to soup, you really want a decent tent peg to keep your lines from collapsing.  Many places sell these larger, more heavy-duty pegs and I really recommend spending a few dollars and upgrading those little wire hooks.

FIGURE NINE ROPE TIGHTENER:  These are really the cat's fuzzy buttocks.  Tightening ropes becomes fast and efficient, and these things really hang on to the ropes even in a good stiff wind storm.

And if you need to get out there in the middle of a tropical downpour to adjust your lines, these will get you back inside the tent much, much faster.

S-RINGS:  These things are useful for connecting two objects like ropes, or whatever will fit through the rings.  I have used them for entry connectors because they are easy to open and close.  

Now that I have all those things done, I can just lay back in my camper and ponder at all the 'improvements' in my neighborhood as we pave over more of paradise to turn it into a parking lot.  Is there a more sustainable way to live besides having to endlessly swim forward with development of all the remaining spaces just to avoid economic death?  Our 'shark economy' can only survive if it is growing.  That is uncomfortably reminiscent of cancer.  We need an economic model that is more like an organ and less like a disease.  And can any sustainable system be built in a world of uncontrolled population growth such that the 'tragedy of the commons' might be avoided?

An unexpected tropical downpour and thunderstorm

The plan was to know when inclement weather was coming and then lower the sides of the tent to make a steeper roof pitch for more efficient shedding of water and to keep the wind from getting under the tent.  But late yesterday afternoon a huge convective storm popped up with high wind and an enormous amount of water.  The tent was configured with the sides up and the sidewalls reefed.  But after taking a real beating by Mother Nature, the tent was still standing after the rainstorm ended.  

Some recent improvements that I learned really help a lot: 1. Changed over to figure-nine rope tighteners because they allow a much, much faster response to the need to tighten up the tent lines and raise and lower the tent itself.  2. Changing over to those little black plastic cylinder string snugger-uppers that you have on jackets, to keep snug my side-wall panels.  Having to tie and untie knots gets old. 3. Changed to s-style clips to link my entry panels.  They are fast and easy to manage.  

Although the  roof sheds water like it is doing in the picture, it still manages to get a bit misty inside the tent when the water is coming down in buckets.  But mostly the nylon fabric breathes well and sheds all the water you really need it to.  My concern is that the fabric will  fade in the sun too quickly and lose tensile strength.  But at least for now, the tent has really outdone itself in terms of expectations.  It provides privacy, a place to meet people, weather protection and a place to live outdoors, outside of Matilda.