Store It and Forget It

Our boat, an Island Packet 420, was designed with some serious off-shore cruising in mind.  This boat has so much storage you could probably be out at sea for 90 days before getting concerned about running low on supplies.  I'm not kidding.  I went through and listed all the storage compartments and came up with 54.  We also installed 16 baskets in two of them for keeping dry and canned goods.  That makes 68 areas on our boat to keep stuff.  Some of these spaces are located beneath one or sometimes even two other levels of storage.  After living aboard for over three years we've realized that things get lost fairly easily around here.  You put something away and forget about it.  Six months later you go looking for it and it's nowhere to be found.  You know it's on the boat somewhere but it may take another six months of digging to find it.

Two of the storage areas are bins beneath the port side settee in the Main Salon.  Each one is approximately 24" x 24" x 30" Deep.  Because of the size and depth of these bins we decided to use these cool-man plastic baskets and we can fit two layers of baskets, four to each layer, for a total of eight baskets per bin.  In one bin we store dry goods like sugar, flour, rice, pasta, etc.  In the other we store canned goods and jars.  The bottom of these bins is sloped because it's the inside surface of the hull.  We had to put in a level floor in the bottom of the bins so the baskets would sit flat and it also keeps them dry if any water gets in there.  Which it can.  It's a boat.  (Note: we use plastic and don't allow cardboard on the boat because it has a reputation, especially in other countries, for bringing bugs and little critters on board.  That's bad enough in a house but it's a disaster on a boat.  Aside from affecting the living conditions, a bug infestation can prevent you from getting into the next port.)

So we've got these great baskets for storing food but we found that we kept buying duplicates of stuff because we had no idea what was actually in the baskets, especially the ones on the bottom of the bins.  We'd end up with five jars of pizza sauce or 15 pounds of sugar or something like that.  We really needed a way of keeping track of what we had in storage on the boat.  For the boat's computer we use a Mac mini and we each have iPads and they all share info back and forth.  There's got to be a program or an App that can keep track of our stuff and make it easier for us to find something when we need it.

What we found was an App for the iPads called Stock Control.  This is something really intended for keeping a running inventory in a small store but with our 68 storage areas it's just what we needed.  It took a while to get familiar with the program but once we had the storage inventory uploaded we knew we had the answer to our problems.

Last Sunday we spent all day going through the storage areas in the Main Salon.  The real reason for this was our semi-annual deep cleaning but I used it as an excuse to get the inventory done.  When we emptied out the storage areas behind and beneath the settees we found water intrusion, most likely from the chainplates.  The water we found was old salt water; thick, brown brine with salt crystals.  This was obviously left over from our trip to Bermuda.  Fortunately, we installed those level floors in the lower storage areas and that kept our stuff high and dry.  There was some mildew in there but it all cleaned up nicely with bleach and fresh water.  Guess it's time to re-seal those chainplates.

We tackled one side of the Salon at a time, pulled everything out, cleaned and then wrote down everything as it went back in.  We also weeded out a lot of stuff we really didn't need or that was duplicated or had gone bad over time.  In the end we had a list of everything stored in that part of the boat.  This is the biggest part of the storage but is by no means all of it.  We still have a lot more to do but this was a good start and it showed us how nice this App really is.  We now have everything divided up by location; "Main Salon, Starboard Side, Settee Back, Center Upper".  You can go to that group and click on "items" and it lists everything in that area.  Better yet, click on "Overview" and you can search by "group", "all groups", "subsets" or "barcodes".  We mostly use "search all groups".  You get a simple info bar to type in.  You begin entering what you're looking for and it lists everything that applies.  The more info you put in the more it narrows it down.  Let's say we're looking for egg noodles.  If you type in "noodles" you get a list of all the different noodles in dry storage with the appropriate location for each one.  If you type in "egg" you get a short list of stuff in the fridge and dry storage.  Type in just "e" and you get everything on the boat that has the letter "e" in it.  This is really cool.  You don't have to have the exact description of something, you just have to come close.  And now when I'm looking for 1" 1/4-20 stainless steel machine screws I'll be able to go directly to them without searching through half the boat.  This is awesome!

An unexpected benefit of all this cleaning was the realization that we still have a ton of available storage space.  Some of it will require putting in a flat floor like the dry goods bin.  No big deal.  But we now have less than ten months before we head out on our adventure.  We still have stuff in a rented storage place up in Annapolis.  Now that we know what we have for storage space on the boat we can begin getting stuff stored aboard in an organized manner and know where to find it later on.  That is a big deal.