Hobie

Posted By: Tom T. House
Date: 10/24/06 11:56a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: Excellent Advice (Raul)

Raul, Nice to hear from you. Life sure gets busy, doesn't it?? We've placed this list of things, for two people, in two duffle bag and two small gym bags, many times before, on various past adventures. We lash the bags to the catamaran in the trampoline's center, near the front beam and the gym bags behind them and these are great to sit on or lean against when waiting for the wind to come back up. The trick is to keep personal clothes and things to a minimum and the weight needs to be a big considerations and divide the things that be "shared" between the two duffle bags and put personal things in the gym bag. We also put the things we want to remain dry, in individual zip-lock bags, and then those go in the dry bag and the dry bag goes into the duffle bag. To this list we've also, many times, thrown in several days worth of some ready to eat back-packer type meals, like MREs, instant potatoes, instant oatmeal, hot chocolate, cup-o-noodles, tuna-in-a-pouch, a small can of chilli, etc. and munchies. However, you are quite correct, it is a bit challenging....and that is why I now use a 27 foot Stiletto catamaran instead of my 17 foot beach cat. Another trick I use is to get everything I need and lay it out on the floor, ready to pack. I then divide the things into three piles: 1 is for the things I need or I will die; 2 is for the things that would make life hard or unsafe if I didn't have them, and 3 is for the things that would be nice to have. I then pack piles 1 and 2 and leave pile 3 at home. Some of the bigger things, like sleeping bags take up lots of room, inside my dry bag. To eliminate this problem, I put the sleeping bag into a plastic trash bag and then "suck" the air out of the bag using a vacuum cleaner and tie off the bag with a twisty tie and fold the end over and add another twisty tie and that goes into a cinch sack. That works well until the first time I use the sleeping bag...after that I use a cinch sack and really work at getting it as small as possible. Everything that is soft I also put into cinch sacks and tie them very tight so they will be as small as possible. The next biggest thing is usually my water and I use four 2 liter soda bottles, filled with water. I lash half of those under the boat's trampoline just behind the boat's front beam, inside the trampoline's lashings. The other half I lash to the tramps middle section, under the duffle bags. It is not uncommon for people to go on a backpack trip for a week or two and boat camping on a small beach cat is much the same. The difference is one must also carry fresh water on a boat camping trip, but that can be lashed to the boat rather than one's back. After a couple of trips, it gets easier to decide what to take and what to leave home. If one must carry it on their own back for an entire week, one can become very "judicious", "frugal" and creative. Are you still in Tiajuana or have you completed your home on the Baja?