Lance is headed for the finish line in terms of completing the transformation from his origin as a 2016 Kenworth T270 Horton Ambulance to our awemazing eXpedition Recreation Vehicle XRV aka “Lance”. He and I are now back up at our place on Saturna Island where I have a great woodworking workshop that I am thoroughly enjoying as I complete the last phase of the internal buildout of the original Horton 14 x 8 ft ambulance box. This is the only wood I’ve used so far as everything else is either extruded aluminium or XAL, Aluminium Composite Material ACM for the surfaces of the walls and ceiling and then LVT solid vinyl planks for the floor and solid surface acrylic for the countertops.
No surprise to those of you who have been following my adventures for any time, the lead up to this post is a great story and the wood itself has its own which I’ll outline first.
Mother Nature + Friends Converge
I have some dear friends, Rick & Sherry and we lived and worked together when Rick & I were teachers on the Canadian Armed Forces jet fighter base in Baden Baden Germany in the early 80’s. Hard to believe that is now more than 45 years ago! Rick and Sherry live in Vancouver and have had a lovely property I’ve been to many times over the years on Gambier Island off the coast of North Vancouver as you’re driving up to Whistler mountain. Their son Colin was just a young boy when we were all together in Baden and has grown a wee bit since then. On our way back from our “sea trials” with Lance last summer when we drove across the US to attend the wedding of my niece in Portland Maine and then back across Canada, we stopped in to see Rick, Sherry and Colin while they were at their place on Gambier Island. We stayed overnight swapping stories and catching up. In the course of our conversations they told me about a very large old Cherry tree, over 200 years old they think, that had come down in a big wind storm a few years ago. Colin lives on Gambier full time which is saying something as it is totally off grid and only accessible by private boat, so he grows all his own food and is very talented and self sufficient young man. Over the years, he and I have developed a growing friendship discussing some of our respective DIY projects and he has been following my progress in transforming Lance into an XRV. In telling the stories about the stories about this big old tree coming own, Colin told how he had salvaged as much as he could using a chain saw milling machine he had assembled and he was anxious to show me the planks from his handiwork. As we looked over these massive planks he had hewn that were about 75mm / 3” thick and 4m/12ft long I asked him what he planned to do with them and he said he didn’t have anything in mind just yet. Well, you know where this is going and so yes, Colin ever so generously insisted that it would make him very happy if I would take some and use them for the interior of Lance! Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the whole stack of Cherry planks but these are the ones we pulled out and loaded onto a cart to move down to the boat dock. Why the cart you ask? Well, as you may recall Gambier can only be accessed by private boat so we now needed to figure out a way to get these planks off the island and back over to the mainland where Lance was parked. After all his years on Gambier, Rick is used to this so he helped load up the planks and drive them from up on the property down to the boat dock, which as you can see is a looooooong way down. Rick and I carried them down the last way on the ramp and had them all ready to now load onto his boat. Easy peasy as we Canadians say and Rick put his boat into gear and we were off on the 10 minute ride over to the dock and then carried them up and loaded into Lance! Christine and I bid them all adieu and headed off on the final leg of our cross North America trip to get Lance back to our place on Saturna Island where I carried the planks on their next voyage into my workshop. You can see some of the planks now standing up on edge to the Left of the yellow table saw. A few weeks later my awemazing son Skyler came over for a few days to help me out and after a bit more wood wrestling and we had the first slab horizontally on the sawhorses ready for to be cut down to size. What we needed to do is cut some of these into strips about 20mm/ 3/4” square that would be glued to the edges of 13mm/ 1/2” Baltic Birch plywood and then to cut others into very thin sheets that would be glued on top of the edged plywood to create all the drawer fronts and cabinet doors patiently awaiting inside Lance’s Galley. Skyler is a very talented cabinetmaker and woodworker and he had brought over his Fein Track Saw with him which was just the right tool to cut the rough sawn slabs down to more usable size. Cherry is a lovely wood to work with and over the years I’ve used it to built quite a lot of furniture and cabinets with. These thick planks were a bit of a challenge but Skyler and his saw were up for it and along with the table saw we soon had these planks cut into about 150mm/6”wide boards for our next step. Which was to move them over to the bandsaw which had a sharp new 1” carbide toothed blade I had just bought and fitted. We made up the wooden fence you see here to guide the planks that were now up on their edge ready to be run through that blade a bit like a meat cutter blade shaves thin slices of ham. After a few test cuts we had the fence set just right to give us consistently thick slices. This yellow feather jig clamps to the slots in the bandsaw table and keeps the plank pressed tightly against the side of the fence. Each slice is about 3-4mm / 1/8” thick and will be the “veneer” that I glue onto all that edge banded plywood drawer fronts and doors. Net result was four of these stacks of the 6” wide Cherry veneer. For the solid Cherry edging we needed for the perimeter edges of each Baltic Birch plywood blank we ripped them to rough size using the table saw and then fed them through our thickness planer to take them down to be just a wee bit thicker than the 1/2” plywood so I can trim them down to be perfectly flush with the faces of the plywood. There are a LOT of drawers and doors each of which needs four solid Cherry edges so we set up a bit of a production run between the two of us using the table saw and the thickness planer and started putting them all into this plastic waste can. The past few weeks I’ve been busy cutting all the BB plywood pieces to size and then gluing these lengths of Cherry edging and getting them ready to laminate with my vacuum bagging press to create what I’m calling my “Cherry Burritos “ But I’m going to going to leave that whole process for the next update here which I will do my best to put together in the next week or two before we take off on our next adventure over to Europe for a few months!
Hope you will stay tuned for that and join us here again.
My sincere thanks again to Rick, Colin and Sherry for their kind generosity in donating this gorgeous Cherry to the cause here.
And thanks in advance for all your questions and comments that you can put in the “Join the Discussion” box below and thank you SO much for taking them time to follow along on these adventures in Wayne’s World.
As we all head to the exit of 2025 I will continue to summarize the progress in various key systems and areas on Lance over the past few months.
This week I’ll bring you up to date on where the Galley is at so far.
Easily one of the most used and most important areas for our day to day live in Lance and our 10,000 + mile “maiden voyage” this past summer proved that our design worked well as we used it during that two month test drive. We prioritized large areas of open countertop, dual deep sink, induction cooktop and large fridge and freezer and you can see the basic layout from the 3D model screengrab here.
GALLEY COUNTERTOPS:
Here is what it looked like as of the beginning of June, just before we hit the road to the East Coast of the US. This is looking forward so Drivers Side DS on the Left and Passenger Side PS on the Right. Entry door into the Hab (Habitat/box) is on the upper Right with the large vertical door 10 cubic foot Fridge/Freezer on your Right as you enter.
Deep double sink being undermounted to the 25mm/1” solid surface acrylic countertop.
Lots of options for water at the sink; hot/cold adjustment at the base of the faucet with both a large flexible rinsing hose with its own nozzle & lever and then an independently controlled rotating spigot. To the Right of the main faucet is an ultra purified drinking water nozzle that has water that has been put through a full Acuva UV treatment to remove any possible remaining particles after ……….
……… it comes out of the main filtration which is handled by this triple set of progressive main filtration that all our potable water goes through.
We have eXcellent water pressure running about 65PSI thanks to this Kohree 7GPM pump. All the water system equipment is located in the externally accessed compartment that is midway along the DS.
On the PS of the Galley there is more countertop and our 2 burner induction cooktop that is eXtremely efficient and a joy to cook on. This cooktop fits snugly in the countertop cutout so it can be easily lifted out and plugged in outside when we want to cook out there.
The vertical extruded aluminium XAL on the Right here is the linear actuator for the PS Front corner of the Queen Bed lift system. Underneath both countertops it is all drawers as we find these much more efficient to use than cupboards and overall we have more than 20 drawers inside of Lance.
GALLEY DRAWERS:
I have always preferred dovetail joints for all drawers given their superior strength that stands up for decades of use and I think they look great too and so that’s what we went with for Lance. I was going to do this all myself but with almost a hundred dovetailed corners to do and SO many other jobs demanding my time and attention I decided to job this out. I found a fabulous company to work with called Barker Doors who offer a service using CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machines to custom cut all your drawers. I had all the drawers fully modeled in Fusion 360 so it was easy for me to send them these files with all the exact measurements I needed and they cut all the 5/8” Baltic Birch plywood to size for all the sides and the bottoms and then CNC cut all the dovetails. In the end this all worked out to cost less than I would have paid for just the Baltic Birch plywood and drawer slides so I was super happy with how this all worked out and I can recommend Barker Doors to anyone VERY strongly. They shipped all the pre-cut drawers to me as flatpacks like this so the whole shipment of all the drawers was not too large and they were all very well shrink wrapped and carefully boxed up so they arrived with no damage at all. They also offered a great prices on the the top quality Blum undermount ball bearing drawer slides I wanted so it all came as a single order which made my life easier.
Mounting more than 40 drawer slides to the XAL framework was very straightforward but time consuming to get them all exactly parallel and lined up. and some required a bit of Houdini moves to hold in place and tighten up. Next, I set up a little workbench on top of the PS Galley counter to assemble each drawer. Each set of dovetails only required a few drops of wood glue and they went together very well with two bar clamps and some taps with my little hammer to get the joints to fit together all the way. The dovetails were so precise that every drawer went together perfectly square and were solid as a rock. The Blum drawer slides required two slots in the bottom of each rear drawer side so I cut those out next and then I mounted to the Orange locking hardware to the bottom of the front corners. These are where the drawer slides clip into the drawer and make it very easy to lift out a drawer at any time. It’s a great system! Installing each drawer was now a simple process of pulling out each drawer slide………. ………… setting the pins in the rear of each drawer slide into the corresponding holes I had previously drilled and pushing them closed till they clicked in place. Et Voila! We’ve got drawers! Sad to say that I wasn’t able to get this done before we left on our big summer adventure so we REALLY appreciate having these now! I wanted all surfaces of these drawers to have a tough durable finish and decided to go with this two part Rubi Monocoat finish that you put on by hand with cloths rather than brush or spray. Hand rubbed finishes have always been my favorite and while this was a new one for me I was eXtremely pleased with the end result and the whole process of applying it. It was a bit laborious and a good workout but a very satisfying process for me. Difficult to see in photos but the Baltic Birch plywood came out with a glowing warm colour and a very tough finish that is also very easy to reapply in the future. To reduce the loss of usable space under the sinks I used these low profile P-traps which have turned out to work very well. and only required a small cut out on the rear of the two under sink drawers to clear nicely.
GALLEY CEILING & COB LED LIGHTING
Onwards and upwards I turned my attention to the ceiling of the Galley. It took a LOT of research to find the Goldilocks material for the ceiling but I finally found this White wood textured PVC trim molding material that checked all the boxes of light, easy to clean and attractive. It comes in 6” wide 8ft long planks and was very easy to work with. For lighting, I decided to use COB (Circuit on Board) LED strip lights which I set inside lengths of 20mm wide black aluminium U channel which I ran in between each of the White PVC ceiling planks. I like these newer COB strips for two reasons; they provide an uninterrupted line of light rather than individual points of light in the regular LED strips and they can be adjusted from about 2200K (very warm amber) up to 6500K (daylight white). In the past, SMD LED strips you have to chose a specific colour temp and they often have 60–120 LEDs per meter (≈1.5–3 LEDs per inch) whereas these COB lights have hundreds of micro‑LEDs tightly together, giving continuous light with no visible dots of light. Once I had the layout done and the strips of PVC and AL channel cut to length, the process went quite quickly. I could apply the construction adhesive to each plank and AL channel and press them up into place and then use my super handy cargo jacks and some scrap lengths of XAL to press these all up against the ceiling so they ended up flat and aligned. You can buy the COB LED lights in 20 meter rolls which you then cut to the lengths you want and solder three wires to the copper strips underlying the Yellow COB light strips. Takes a bit of practice to get these tight solder joints without any cross connections but all went pretty well after a few practice solders. Then I twist the wires to help reduce any electrical interference and slide a clear tube of heat shrink tubing over the joints and shrink them in place for a nice clean and protected connection.
Each of the LED strips have self adhesive on the back so you just peel off the protective wax layer and press these into the AL channel. I purchased the Black AL channel with frosted clip in covers so once I had the COB LED light strips glued in place and wired up ………… ……………. I could now press these clear covers in place. Here’s the result at about 6000k. These LED light strips are also fully dimmable so you can adjust both the colour temp from warm to cold white and from off to full almost daylight brightness.
We are very pleased with the end result.
Yet to come is the making of all the fronts to these drawers where I will get to use the fabulous 125 year old Cherry that my dear friends Colin, Rick and Sherry gifted us with but that probably won’t be until we get back here next year from our trip down to Baja so due stay tuned for all of THAT!
My sincere thanks for taking your valuable time to read these updates and join us on our adventures. Please leave your questions and comments in the Join the Discussion box below and hope to see you here again next week.
We had a fabulous week in Portland Maine for my niece Julia’s wedding on June 21st and several days catching up with family and friends who were in attendance, which is where I left off in last week’s update which if you have not read yet is here; “Life is what happens while making other plans!”.
From there we started our trek back to our place on Saturna Island BC for the rest of the summer and then most recently back down to our place near Searchlight down in the southern tip of Nevada and that’s what I’m going to do my best to summarize in this week’s update. As you can see in this map of all our travels (click to enlarge any photo), that’s a LOT of miles or clicks 17,250 km/10,720 miles to be exact, so it will be a bit of a whirlwind marathon.
So Get comfy and here we go ………………………..
Here’s the map of our travels after we left Portland and made our way back to Saturna Island.
On June 24th, after saying goodbye to the bride and groom and all our friends and family gathered in Portland ME, the four of us (Christine, Zoe, Razz + I) got back on the road heading north up the coast of Maine and crossed into Canada and the province of New Brunswick. While Lance was far from finished and a bit “Spartan” for living in shall we say, he served us very well the whole trip and I continued to work on the eXtremely long To Do list as time allowed on our travels. In next week’s update I’ll get back to covering the work I’ve done over the past months on Lance so stay tuned for that. This photo is taken looking aft with the two Galley countertops in the lower left and right and the L shaped Settee behind. The Queen bed is up in the ceiling thanks to the four linear actuators on each corner that lifts it up there each morning with the push of a button. More on all of this to come in future posts.
Back to our travels after the wedding, as many of you might know, I’m a Canadian Army Brat as my Dad served over forty years as a chef in the Service Corps and we moved to a new posting every 2-3 years. We were posted to northern Germany from 1957-59 and returned from there to Camp Gagetown near Oromocto in New Brunswick where we lived in the house you see behind me here in the PMQ’s (Permanent Married Quarters) on the Base. Other than the new siding covering up the original red brick I was absolutely blown away to find that everything was exactly how I had remembered it when we left in 1961. Unless they close down, things on Canadian military bases don’t change much. So it was great fun to go back there for the first time in all those years since and be able to regale Christine in all the misadventures I had as a young boy. This was also the home that my brother Bruce had come home to when he was born so there were a lot of memories here. I had gone on to be a shop teacher at the High School on the Canadian jet fighter base in Baden Baden Germany from 1980-84 and I have retained very close friendships with many of the awemazing teachers who were there during these years. Christine had also done here share of traveling both growing up and in her adult years and as a result we both had a lot of friends all across the US and Canada, many of whom we visited on this latest trip and our routing was largely driven by all those the “mooch docking” we did as we drove Lance from one set of dear friends to the next. You’d have thought this would be high season and very busy but for most of our trip it often seemed like we were the only ones on the roads and places we camped out in Lance. Like the one you see on the left looking out the side door of Lance one on our way from Gagetown over to the province of Prince Edward Island or PEI.
I had been in touch with one set of dear friends from my days in Germany, Tony & Anna, and they had said that Tony was giving a talk at a Poet’s Conference at the University of Charlottetown on PEI, another spot I had not been back to since the 50’s. Since then they had put in the Confederation Bridge from the East end of New Brunswick over to PEI so that was a whole new experience for all of us driving over to PEI rather than on a ferry.
After meeting up with Anna and Tony at the University, we spent a few more days camping at the PEI National Park and exploring more of the island. One stop was here at Richards, a famous local spot for VERY fresh fish & chips. ……………….. and a beer with a view for my thirsty Bride while we waited for our fish & chips to arrive. For a change of pace and a different experience, we decided to take the ferry off of PEI and over to our next province on the itinerary; Nova Scotia.
More Moochdocking (parking in the driveways of your friends) with teaching friends from Germany, Blaine & Jill MacDonald, one of the three sets of friends we had in different spots in Nova Scotia. And you can’t be in Nova Scotia and not have a good lobster feed right? And BOY, did Mike and Cindy ever treat us to a feast with the lobster we picked up with them earlier that day. By now it was the July 1st Canada Day holiday which we were fortunate enough to have another great moochdocking spot with Christine’s sailing friends Dick & Deb who were both retired Canada Coast Guard Captains. On to yet another horribly crowed camp spot on our way back through the north side of New Brunswick as we made our way over to Quebec City. Along the way tried out lots of different ways of finding great spots to live out of Lance and one of these was by using Harvest Hosts. As their web site puts it “Harvest Hosts is a network of farms, wineries, breweries & distilleries, golf courses, community hosts and more that invite RVers to stay overnight, giving Members safe, convenient, and unique places to stay during their travels”. Having paid our $100 annual membership fee we were able to find spots like this little out of the way winery in Ontario. Harvest Host sites only allow one or two RVs per night and no facilities which is a Goldilocks combo for Christine and I.
At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes you do just need to be a tourist and how could we pass by Niagara Falls for a quick visit as we travelled westward across Ontario.
Christine had never been so it was even move special for the both of us and well worth the stop. Onward to the west side of Ontario in Kingsville on the north side of Lake Erie with Detroit just across the river to the west, where we stopped in for an extended stay with our longtime friends who are more like family, the Alonso Clan. I am honoured to be the godfather of their four children and Christine knows them eXtremely well too so it was a very special stop after not seeing several of them for some time. John’s Dad Juan is an eXtremely skilled craftsman of many trades with an eXtremely good selection of every tool and machine known to man which he kindly shared with me and helped me finally build this prototype table top for the settee in Lance. It was a much appreciated replacement to the temporary loose piece of plywood we had been using for a table up to that point and has its own electric pedestal so just like the bed it too goes up and down from dining table to coffee table height or all the way down to create a lower bed for infrequent guests. More on all this in upcoming posts so back on the road again for now…… We both love to live for eXperiences an this was our next one. After a quick dip down across the border to Valparaiso Indiana for a quick visit with Christine’s brother Steve & Susan, we decided to backtrack east a bit for an experience that Christine had found taking a ferry across the middle of Lake Michigan. Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. Off the ferry we headed due North and crossed the border back into Canada at the very south western corner of Ontario and headed West across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and into Alberta.
Another one of our Harvest Hosts stops was in the back of this great little out of the way restaurant where we had a great meal and evening before moving on. There is no fee for your stays at a Harvest Host site and instead you are encouraged to partake of whatever that host is selling from meals to wine. A fabulous deal in our opinion and we thoroughly enjoyed them all. As we made our way across Alberta we wanted to see more of the HUGE Dinosaur National Park. Several years earlier on one of our many cross country drives, we had visited a part of this park further west near Drumheller that had the truly awemazing Royal Tyrell Museum which we would consider a must see for anyone any where near the area. This time we wanted to explore more of the wilderness side of this sprawling National Park. Truly an other worldly type of place as you can see.
Middle of July and so once again the campsite were eXtremely overcrowded!! Of course this might have kept a few people away, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and will be back for more on another trip. Growing up I had spent many summers at my Uncle Roland’s farm just east of Calgary which my cousin Dale now runs and is always extremely generous with his time and knowledge every time we stop in on one of our trips. It is just SO fascinating having a modern day farmer take you on tours of his farm answering the litany of questions we always have for him and being in awe of the advanced tech that has become the norm for running a family farm these days.
Making our way across the Rockies through Banff and into BC, we dipped South a bit to take the ferry that is part of the Trans Canada Highway to Ainsworth. On one of our first cross country tours not long after we had met, we had been snowed in there for three days after a record snow fall. Much warmer weather this time and we also stopped in for a dip in the Ainsworth Hot Springs. However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
Just stunning to see.
Oh, and the falls weren’t bad either! We had several stops ahead to see friends in Vernon and Salmon Arm but the night before we stopped in at a brand new Harvest Host that was a working ranch. In spite of being very new and still a work in progress they treated us to an evening BBQ with their family. With these views out over the valley for our early morning coffee. And the leader of the pack and our new BFF donkey “Mitch”. Inching ever closer to our far western destination on Saturna Island, we were invited in for an overnight visit by our dear friends Rick, Sherry and son Colin at their family property on Gambier Island just north of Vancouver. How could we say no?!!! During our conversations Colin wanted to show me what he had done with a 125 year old Cherry tree that had fallen down in a big storm several years ago. Colin is an eXtremely talented and self sufficient young man and he had a fashioned his own mill and used it to cut this enormous Cherry tree into these 2+ inch thick slabs. Very impressive!
In ensuing conversations I had mentioned that I was on the hunt for some nice hardwood I could use as both solid edging and veneer on all the doors and drawer fronts in Lance and Colin thought, quite rightly, that this Cherry would be ideal for the job and that I just HAD to take it with me! Everyone pitched in and we managed to move these planks down to the dock and onto Rick’s boat as this is the only way on/off Gambier. Back over on the mainland Rick helped me load it into Lance and in some future posts I’ll take you through what has happened to this magnificent wood since. For now I just want to say THANK YOU! to Colin and Rick for their incredible generosity. The next day, August 2nd, we were back on the road, onto some more ferries and just like that, Lance (and us) were back where we had started months earlier at our little sanctuary “Ravens Ridge” on Saturna Island. While there, Christine had heard that a local couple had started up a business renting some very capable eBikes which they delivered to you wherever you wanted. So they dropped off these two in the morning and we spent the rest of the day exploring spots on Saturna such as this favorite at the top of Mount Warburton, one of the highest spots in all the Gulf Islands and literally in our back yard. After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. Christine was happy to be reunited with one of the green frogs that seems to have adopted us. We were going to stay on Saturna to enjoy the warmer weather of summer there before heading back down to Nevada when things cooled down and so a few days after we got back I flew down to Vegas to go pick up “Totu” our 2006 Toyota Tundra truck and drive him back up to Saturna so that we had more than Lance for transportation for the next few months. I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
1520 miles, 2446km later I was back on Saturna. This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna.
Having friends ……… …….. and more friends ……
….. and family over and just enjoying this magical spot on the planet.
But soon enough it did start getting chillier and some members of the family had to break out their Canadiana winter weather clothes and it was time for us to pack up and start our migration south for the winter. We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. Christine has just come back from a very eXciting writers conference in Las Vegas all this past week and she will soon be flying off to Ft. Lauderdale to enjoy American Thanksgiving getting in some much needed Gramma time with our Grandson Liam who just turned TEN a few days ago!!
Meanwhile, I’m busy working away at getting Lance’s transformation more and more complete and ready for our retreat to warmer weather down in Baja Mexico for the winter months in the new year. We’re delighted to be spending the Xmas week down in the LA area with equally fast growing Granddaughters Brynn and Blair and so I’ve got my work cut out for me to get Lance MUCH more completed and ready for our next “test drives”.
I’ll leave it at that for today and next week I’ll get back to covering the work I’ve done on Lance since the last of those kinds of updates back in May.
My sympathies and thanks to those of you who have endured and made it this far and please do add any questions or comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Thanks and hope you’ll be back for more next week!
Wow! Another month races into the history books and the progress on Lance continues. We continue to enjoy the almost always sunny weather here in the deep south of Nevada though being at just over 3800 feet elevation it was still cool temperatures for much of March but warming up more and more each day now as April approaches. This is pretty much “Wayne’s World” these days with my table saw, drill press and chop saw set up alongside Lance in between the two 40’ shipping containers. As you might notice, I share this space with my buddies Zoe & Razz who enjoy their “grassy patch” and outdoor play pen supervising my work most days.
This is about where things were at the end of February and my last update, with the XAL (eXtruded Aluminium) framing in place at the front end of Lance’s Happytat where the Head/Bathroom and Shower areas will live. The cabinet on the far Right here alongside the side door and entryway will be where the fridge/freezer unit goes. To max out volume of storage areas I framed in the space above the Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to create an overhead cabinet. I’ll divide this cupboard into two areas with storage in the front area and have a smaller second area behind it where I’ll mount the thermostatic shower control, hose and showerhead. As you may have noticed I am working my way counterclockwise around the interior spaces and the last part of the main framing for the primary cabinetry is the currently empty area on the far Left you see here, which will be the Drivers Side Galley. I continue to enjoy building all the cabinet framing with 10 Series or 1 inch square eXtruded Aluminium (XAL) and it all goes together relatively quickly having done all the design work as I built the 3D model, hence the ever present laptop running Fusion 360.
Good time to also check the fit and placement of the deep double sink with its great views out the window when washing dishes. The model gives me the precise length of each piece I need to cut on the cut off saw and how each joint goes together. Each of those four vertical spaces will be filled with drawers of different heights and the vertical XAL front and rear provide very strong attachment points for all the undermount drawer slide hardware that I’m about to order. Speaking of windows, we have our always alert security guards keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the various others we share this fabulous area. No need for any worry about our safety with these two vicious watch dogs on the job! While we don’t see too many people, which is just the way we like it, there is lots of life to see out our windows including the real life versions of Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner, rabbits large and small, lots of mice and squirrels on the ground and ravens overhead.
Very much a work in progress as you can see but the interior spaces are starting to take shape now. This is taken with me standing in the shower area at the front with the main entry on the far Left, the now completed Drivers Side Galley countertop on the far Right that is 175 cm / 5’ 9” long and a matching countertop opposite that will be 98 cm / 3’ 2” long. Now my attention turns to building the lifting bed platform which is atop the L shaped settee that occupies the area aft of the two countertops. Most of the time the bed platform and mattress will rest as you see here, gently squeezing the mattress up tight against the ceiling with plenty of headroom for sitting underneath in the settee.
Here is a skeleton view of the XAL bed frame in Blue which will then have a plywood panel spanning across the support bars with the mattress tucked firmly inside the outer XAL bed frame. For sleeping, the full size Queen bed lowers down, along with the Settee table, to this easily accessed position. This setup makes it easy to make up the bed every morning and then have it retract fully out of the way with just the push of a button.
No magic tricks required for this! Instead I’m going to install four of these PA-18 Linear Actuators I’ve had built by a Canadian firm in Vancouver; Progressive Automation.
If you look closely (click to enlarge any photo) at the renders above you can see these located at each corner of the bed frame and you can see here how the one on the PS Front is bolted to the two vertical lengths of XAL at the end of the PS Galley countertop. All four actuators plug into this FLTCON-4 central control box which provides the 24 volts for each motor. Inside the long aluminium body of each PA-18 linear actuator is a threaded stainless steel rod which is driven by the black motor at the top which in turn causes the black “Car” below it to move up or down the full length of the AL track.
Last piece of this automated lifting bed system is this small set of buttons that is also plugged into the control box. Once the interior panels are all installed this will be the only part you will see and will likely be mounted somewhere out of the way but easily reached when we want to move the bed Down to Sleep or Up to eat. The Up/Down buttons allow you to move the bed Up/Down to any position you want and then you can save this position into memory of button 1, 2, 3 or 4.
Now anytime you press that number, the bed automagically moves to that position. I will likely program #1 to move the XAL bed frame to the max UP position without the mattress in place whenever I’m working on the bed system and want the platform completely up out of the way. Then #2 can be the regular UP position with the mattress in place for whenever we are using the settee, #3 can be the Goldilocks position for best views out the window when in bed and 4 can be the lowest position for ease of getting in/out of the bed. To ensure that the positions of all four actuators are synchronized there is a Hall Effect sensor inside each actuator which communicates the position of each sliding Car to the control box. Here I have all four actuators plugged in so I could test the “synchro” feature which causes all four cars to go to their Home position with all Cars in their max Up position and then I could also test out the memory setting feature before I installed each actuator.
My next challenge was to figure out a way to connect the sides of the XAL bed frame to the four sliding Cars on the linear actuators such that they would move the bed frame would move Up and Down.
Hmmmmm ……..
I work hard to maintain my well deserved reputation as a pack rat and so I had kept ALL the wires, materials, nuts, bolts and hardware when I fully gutted the original Horton ambulance box and took it down to the bare AL frame. One of the pieces of aluminium I kept was this C-channel and it turned out to be my just right Goldilocks solution for building the saddle blocks I would bolt to the cars on the actuators. I cut the C-channel into four short pieces that were the same length as the Black Cars on the actuators. The width of these Black Nylon Cars was just a wee bit larger than the inside width of the AL C-channel so I carefully guided each actuator through my table saw and trimmed off about 2mm from each side. Which allowed them to be a slight press fit onto the Car. The inside corners of the C-channel have a radius to them but it was easy to file the corners of the Nylon Cars to match and Voila! A perfect fit. Progressive Automation manufactures the thick Black Nylon Cars with three threaded mounting holes on each side which go all the way through the body of these Black Cars; a large M10 in the middle with two M6 on either side, so I drilled out matching holes in the sides of the AL C-channel saddles so I could very securely attach each saddle its Black Car mate.
Next question was how to attach the XAL bed frame to these Nylon & AL saddles? This would need to strong enough to safely transfer the full combined weight of Christine, Zoe, Razz and me as well as weight of the bed XAL frame, cross member, panels and mattress but could not be a solid unmoving connection. It needed to be allow for a bit of rotation for any slight changes in orientation as the bed frame travelled up and down the full stroke length of about 110 cm / 44 inches.
Hmmmmmm ……
I decided to use what are called Heim Joints which as pictured here are typically used to join the ends of connecting rods on things like steering links on vehicles and industrial machinery. These are made for eXtreme loads made of heat treated steel plated with hard chrome and readily available from Amazon. I’ve used these with great success in projects for probably 50 years and they’ll be a good fit here as well. I ordered four of these 3/8” Heim joints which are rated for a load capacity of 4,400 Kg/9,544 lbs.
and come with their matching SS threaded inserts and jam nuts. I used the same scrap of C-Channel to cut four more pieces and cut each of those in half ……….. …….. to make these matching L-bar mounting brackets ……….. ………. which I then bolted to the C-Channel saddles with the Heim Joint sandwiched between the two “ears” of the brackets and through bolted. Worked very well and I could then bolt each Heim Joint Saddle to its matching Nylon Car. I then bolted each linear actuator to the vertical XAL support posts using some AL bar stock that I cut to be thick enough to keep the inner surface of the AL saddles spaced clear of the inside of the XAL posts and they moved up and down.
Final part of this puzzle was to mount the SS threaded inserts for each Heim joint you can see here, to the sides of the bed frame. The sides of the bed frame are made from lengths I cut from 3” x 1” XAL and carefully clamped each one in place so I could precisely mark the center of each SS insert and then I drilled undersize holes through the XAL. As you can see in the photos above these SS inserts are tapered so I used my handy dandy Dremel tool with a rotary carbide cutter to enlarge these holes and carefully hand fit the SS inserts to be a slight press fit into the XAL. I will likely build different corner brackets to join the four sides of the bed frame but for now these 90 degree corner brackets will work to lock the frame square and true while I finish mounting the frame to the four Heim joints. I allowed about 5mm / .2” clearance between the moving bed frame sides and the XAL posts so it is a very close fit that was relatively straight forward to adjust by turning the threaded SS inserts with a wrench on the flats I ground on each one (see photos above). The power/comm cables on each actuator need to be extended but I was able to just plug each cable into the control box and hang it in the center which allowed me to test out the whole assembly.
Best of all ………………… IT WORKED first time!! I was able to raise and lower the bed and set four memory positions to the numbered buttons and it all moves up and down smoothly and quietly. We are eXtremely happy with this design as it gives us have a full Queen sized memory foam bed without giving up any space for seating or eating. And also eliminates the need to set up and make up the bed every night and repeat it all every morning. Last update to show you today is that we were able to temporarily slide the fridge/freezer into its home!
This is an Isotherm Cruise 200 that runs off both 12VDC and 120VAC
Total of 7 cubic feet with a 5.3 cubic feet refrigerator and 1.78 cubic feet freezer – each with their own separate side by side doors.
Will go a long way towards enabling us to have plenty of food to go a long way and stay out there a long time. Can’t wait to start using it.
That’s a wrap for this update and my sincere thanks to all of you brave souls who have persevered and made it this far! Probably waaaaaaay too much detail for many of you but hopefully easy enough to scroll through at whatever pace you like.
I’ll leave you with these photos that Christine is so good at taking of the views out our dining room window most evenings here on Road Runner Ranch.
It is difficult to make out in these photos but the Colorado River is running just in front of the mountains you see off in the distance here.
The light at this time of day as the sun is just setting below the mountains behind us makes for some truly spectacular ends to our days we are so fortunate to enjoy most every day. Hope you enjoy and will look forward to answering any questions or comments you leave in the “Join the discussion” box below.
As predicted when I left off in the last update here, it has been a VERY BUSY time the past month for us but we’ve made the move and are now settling into our new Southern Home Base down near Searchlight Nevada.
There are some photos and details about our new 10 acre property in that PREVIOUS POST back on Dec. 8th so you can check that out if you’d like and I’ll just pick up from where we left off.
BONUS: Be sure to read to the end to see the bonus video that Drone Captain Christine put together.
Our son Skyler flew down from Vancouver BC on the 23rd of December to join us for the holidays in Klamath Falls and he was a HUGE help getting all my tools, equipment, materials and such packed up from the workshop I’d set up in Klamath Falls. Along with our personal belongings and food we managed to get everything loaded into Lance and the beds of the two pickup trucks we now find ourselves with.
We were a bit sad to leave as we had really enjoyed our time getting to know Klamath Falls and the surrounding area of southern Oregon. This is the parting shot just after noon on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) as we bid a very fond adieu to what had worked out to be a great home and workshop and hit the road for the almost 700 mile drive down to our new Southern Home Base just north of Searchlight NV. We broke the trip up into two legs with an overnight stop in Fallon Nevada and it turned out to be a great drive with clear dry roads after we got about a hundred miles south of Klamath Falls and enjoyed the ever increasing temperatures as the miles rolled by. We arrived at the property late in the afternoon of the 27th with big smiles for all three drivers and both pups. And just in time to catch this beautiful sunset which we’ve now discovered is most every night here.
Christine has been getting her drone flying skills dusted off and this shot she grabbed a few days ago from up above the spot we’re setting up to live on for the next few months will give you an idea of the layout. Those two big white rectangles are 40 foot “High Cube” (9’6” high) shipping containers that came with the property along with a lot of great items inside that you’ll soon see. The other white rectangle is the 2012 25 foot travel trailer that will be home for us for now.
** See the Bonus drone video at the end. As Skyler and I unloaded the crates of our belongings and coolers of food, Christine got to work storing it all away and organizing our new home. As sharp eyes might notice, she even baked a loaf of banana bread! Looking aft in the trailer you can see that we’ve got everything we need with a nice U shaped settee and an adjacent full bathroom & shower. Then a separate bedroom in the rear with a Queen bed and even an office for Christine to work at just out of sight in the rear left corner here at the foot of the bed. And check out our views out the windows! This floorplan helps to show how the bedroom & settee are in a slide out section along the right side of the trailer that really helps open up the space.
Keeping in mind that we are both used to living full time in boats, for us this is HUGE!
Skyler started unloading all the crates and materials from Lance and I started to figure out where to put them for now in the two containers. The one you see here on the Left will be my workshop area and the other one out of site in this photo over on the far Right closer to the trailer provides storage for everything else AND houses all our fresh water and electrical power equipment that allows us to live 100% off grid. Could not have been a better present than all the time we got with Skyler and all the hard work he so cheerfully gifted us with to make this latest transition of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents so memorable. Thanks Sky!
It will take me awhile to build workbenches and storage racks but for now all my tools and equipment are very safely stored away inside the two containers.
Part of what made this property such a Goldilocks just right find for us was that one of the things inside the containers was sixteen 305 Watt solar panels and so Skyler and I got to work setting those up in two different locations to try out for now. Eight of those solar panels we propped up against the wall of the container as you can see here which made it a short run for the power cables to go into the MPPT controller inside. Of course the HIGHEST priority was getting the new Puppy Play Pen set up for Zoe and Razz to enjoy. The other eight solar panels we propped up against the south facing side of the trailer to try out that orientation as I monitor the daily production to see what generates the most power to keep our big new battery bank fully charged every day.
All very rough and tentative till we live with all this for awhile and decide best location on the acreage to build on and then I will build proper ground mount racks for all these and perhaps more solar panels. In that previous post you may recall seeing this pallet full of boxes that had arrived at the Klamath Falls workshop which contained the other two key components of our off grid power system. this 15 kWh 54 Volt upright EG4 lithium battery and ………. …….. this EG4 6000XP all in one MPPT solar charge controller, inverter charger.
The battery weighs a svelte 128kg/282 lbs. but Skyler and were able to get it wrestled out of Lance and into the container and get the 6000XP mounted above it and all secured to the steel walls of the container. These two smaller vertical boxes I mounted on on the side at the mid point are the isolation switches and circuit breakers for the high voltage power coming in on the Red and Black wires you see here which come from each of the two strings of solar panels (8 panels in each). We soon had everything wired up and in this shot I’m busy configuring all the settings before turning it on for the first time. Just amazing how far these kinds of off grid systems have come and we were able to go from no power at all when we arrived to having a full 240VAC split phase power system in less than one day. We had about 190L/50 USG of fresh water that I had filled up the trailer’s water tank with on my way bringing it back from where we bought it in Tucson so we had plenty of potable water for drinking, cooking and showers the first few days but now time for a more full time setup and another part of what made this property such a great find for us. These four 1250L/330USG IBC Totes as they are called (Interim Bulk Containers) also came with the property along with a fifth empty one that we’ll use in the future to bring more fresh water from the town water system in Searchlight that is just a few miles away. The pumps you see at the bottom here are now all set up to provide pressurized fresh water to a tap on the outside of the container and a hose from there to the trailer provides all the fresh water we need for day to day living.
It will take us a bit longer to get everything setup and be able to get back to working on books and Lance but we’re off to a great start and new year.
Can’t be all work and no play so in the midst of all this we also took time to celebrate the new year in our new home base. Christine and I adopted giving “experiences” rather than “stuff” to each other for gifts and this year I got us three tickets to go see the “Immersed in Van Gogh” experience in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve which is less than an hour’s drive north from our property.
Then Christine had rented a boat for the three of us to go out on Lake Mohave for New Year’s Day. This shot is looking about due East from our place and off in the distance about center (click to expand any photo) you can see the Colorado River flowing South. Hoover/Boulder Dam is to the North and Davis Dam to the South which creates Lake Mohave in between. It only takes about 15 minutes to drive from our place to the marina on Lake Mohave. I will leave you with this shot of what our humble new abode is looking like with yet another super sunset that Christine loves to photograph.
I know many of you are shaking your heads and wondering what drew us here but perhaps these two days with New Years eve in Las Vegas and then New Year’s Day out on the lake both being minutes away from our otherwise eXtremely remote spot might help you understand a wee bit better what makes this such a Goldilocks place for us.
Location, location, location right??!!
BONUS VIDEO:
As promised, here is a short video that Christine has put together as she dusts off her drone flying skills for this quick flyover what we are thinking of calling “RoadRunner Ranch”. Although we have not yet spotted one here yet I hope this quick flyover part of our 10 acres will help you visualize this location and maybe help you see what we see. In any case do enjoy and thanks Captain Christine!
Hope all of you have 2025 off to a great start as well and I’m looking forward to getting back to regular updates in the next few weeks as I get my new workshop up and running and get back to working Lance. Thanks for joining us on yet another adventure and please leave any questions or comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Yet another week without a lot of visible progress to show you, but all of our various shippers, USPS, FedEx and UPS were certainly busy as the pallets full of boxes with more and more the equipment we’ve ordered for transforming Lance into our new home on wheels continued to arrive here at our workshop/home in Klamath Falls.
I won’t be able to install it all right away but we are hoping to move down to Nevada at the end of December and so we are trying to maximize the benefit of having no sales tax for the remainder of our time here in Oregon. With the amount of equipment required to build a full self sufficient XRV, this really starts to add up to a significant savings and given the size of those bills, we take all the help we can get! Here is the most recent set of pallets that arrived on Friday. These two pallets are from Current Connected with four 420 Watt solar panels on the Left and then the Victron inverter/chargers, MPPT controllers and EG4 batteries on the Right. These are a bit fragile but they all arrived in perfect condition. I unboxed one of the EG4 12V 400Ah server rack batteries to check them out a bit closer and to get the exact dimensions so I can complete the XAL eXtruded ALuminium racks I’ve installed in Lance. There are three of these monster batteries that I’ll wire up in parallel to create our 12V 1200Ah House Battery bank which gives us a whopping 15.4kW of overall capacity. Even though we have gone mostly electric with all our systems other than diesel for our heating, our daily requirement will be much less than this but I’ve gone to this capacity so that we can stay remote for weeks at a time even with long periods of cloudy days with low solar output. These two Amazon boxes contain the new sink and induction cooktop for our new Galley aka Kitchen in Lance. This is the Empava 120V 1800 Watt two burner induction cooktop that Christine chose. It will be built into the countertop but can also be removed and taken outside to create our outdoor kitchen in hotter weather. Christine set this up here in the house and made dinner with it two nights ago and she gives it an enthusiastic two thumbs up! We both much prefer induction cooking after our experiences with it on Mobius. This is the 28 inch dual SS sink. It is a generous 245mm/10” deep as we both prefer big deep sinks. This one has some great features that extend its usefulness such as this wooden cutting board and a strainer that slide back and forth in the groove you can see at the top and bottom. There is also a drying rack for dishes that rolls up out of the way when not needed. While there isn’t too much visible progress I can show you it isn’t for lack of hours and I have been busy with Fusion 360 working through the details in the 3D models I’m building for this project. Here is a quick screen grab that I hope helps you visualize the interior layout. Double sink in the Drivers Side Galley countertop up top and the induction cooktop on the Passenger Side. Dinette is at the rear with lift bed above added in and then the Fridge/Freezer and AirCon in the PS front corner on the far Right here with the shower in the center and the Head on the Left behind the partially open red door. The one bit of visible progress I can show you from this week is that I installed this finished vinyl flooring that I showed you last week.
Pretty straightforward process; peeled off the protective plastic layer with the blue arrows and then starting laying down the 8 inch wide click-lock planks. It is not the recommended practice, but I’ve decided to install this finished flooring first and then put in the framing for all the cabinetry as this will create a much cleaner install of the XAL eXtruded ALuminium framing. We used this same type of industrial grade LVT planking in Möbius and were eXtremely happy with it so we stayed with what we know works. We are thinking of using a darker wood for the cabinetry, Cherry or Walnut and so wanted to keep the floor a lighter colour. If you look closely (click to expand any photo) you can see there is a wee bit of wood grain in this flooring which also provides a very safe non-slip surface that cleans up very well and is impervious to any spills or dropping of heavy objects. Also very “dog friendly”!
Razz and Zoe have been eXtremely busy as well as you can see from this shot of what is at my feet as I type! And that wraps up another week and ………. unbelievably ……… another month!
Thanks for taking the time to follow along with us on this latest journey of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents and be sure to leave your questions and comments in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the whole stack of Cherry planks but these are the ones we pulled out and loaded onto a cart to move down to the boat dock. Why the cart you ask? 
Well, as you may recall Gambier can only be accessed by private boat so we now needed to figure out a way to get these planks off the island and back over to the mainland where Lance was parked. 
After all his years on Gambier, Rick is used to this so he helped load up the planks and drive them from up on the property down to the boat dock, which as you can see is a looooooong way down. 
Rick and I carried them down the last way on the ramp and had them all ready to now load onto his boat. 
Easy peasy as we Canadians say and Rick put his boat into gear and we were off on the 10 minute ride over to the dock and then carried them up and loaded into Lance! 
Christine and I bid them all adieu and headed off on the final leg of our cross North America trip to get Lance back to our place on Saturna Island where I carried the planks on their next voyage into my workshop. You can see some of the planks now standing up on edge to the Left of the yellow table saw. 
A few weeks later my awemazing son Skyler came over for a few days to help me out and after a bit more wood wrestling and we had the first slab horizontally on the sawhorses ready for to be cut down to size. What we needed to do is cut some of these into strips about 20mm/ 3/4” square that would be glued to the edges of 13mm/ 1/2” Baltic Birch plywood and then to cut others into very thin sheets that would be glued on top of the edged plywood to create all the drawer fronts and cabinet doors patiently awaiting inside Lance’s Galley. 
Skyler is a very talented cabinetmaker and woodworker and he had brought over his Fein Track Saw with him which was just the right tool to cut the rough sawn slabs down to more usable size. 
Cherry is a lovely wood to work with and over the years I’ve used it to built quite a lot of furniture and cabinets with. 
These thick planks were a bit of a challenge but Skyler and his saw were up for it 
and along with the table saw we soon had these planks cut into about 150mm/6”wide boards for our next step. 
Which was to move them over to the bandsaw which had a sharp new 1” carbide toothed blade I had just bought and fitted. We made up the wooden fence you see here to guide the planks that were now up on their edge ready to be run through that blade a bit like a meat cutter blade shaves thin slices of ham. 
After a few test cuts we had the fence set just right to give us consistently thick slices. 
This yellow feather jig clamps to the slots in the bandsaw table and keeps the plank pressed tightly against the side of the fence. 
Each slice is about 3-4mm / 1/8” thick and will be the “veneer” that I glue onto all that edge banded plywood drawer fronts and doors. 
Net result was four of these stacks of the 6” wide Cherry veneer. 
For the solid Cherry edging we needed for the perimeter edges of each Baltic Birch plywood blank we ripped them to rough size using the table saw and then fed them through our thickness planer to take them down to be just a wee bit thicker than the 1/2” plywood so I can trim them down to be perfectly flush with the faces of the plywood. 
There are a LOT of drawers and doors each of which needs four solid Cherry edges so we set up a bit of a production run between the two of us using the table saw and the thickness planer and started putting them all into this plastic waste can. 
Easily one of the most used and most important areas for our day to day live in Lance and our 10,000 + mile “maiden voyage” this past summer proved that our design worked well as we used it during that two month test drive. We prioritized large areas of open countertop, dual deep sink, induction cooktop and large fridge and freezer and you can see the basic layout from the 3D model screengrab here. 
Underneath both countertops it is all drawers as we find these much more efficient to use than cupboards and overall we have more than 20 drawers inside of Lance. 
I have always preferred dovetail joints for all drawers given their superior strength that stands up for decades of use and I think they look great too and so that’s what we went with for Lance. I was going to do this all myself but with almost a hundred dovetailed corners to do and SO many other jobs demanding my time and attention I decided to job this out. I found a fabulous company to work with called 
They shipped all the pre-cut drawers to me as flatpacks like this so the whole shipment of all the drawers was not too large and they were all very well shrink wrapped and carefully boxed up so they arrived with no damage at all. 
They also offered a great prices on the the top quality Blum undermount ball bearing drawer slides I wanted so it all came as a single order which made my life easier.
Mounting more than 40 drawer slides to the XAL framework was very straightforward but time consuming to get them all exactly parallel and lined up. 
and some required a bit of Houdini moves to hold in place and tighten up. 
Next, I set up a little workbench on top of the PS Galley counter to assemble each drawer. 
Each set of dovetails only required a few drops of wood glue and they went together very well with two bar clamps and some taps with my little hammer to get the joints to fit together all the way. The dovetails were so precise that every drawer went together perfectly square and were solid as a rock. 
The Blum drawer slides required two slots in the bottom of each rear drawer side so I cut those out next and then I mounted to the Orange locking hardware to the bottom of the front corners. These are where the drawer slides clip into the drawer and make it very easy to lift out a drawer at any time. It’s a great system! 
Installing each drawer was now a simple process of pulling out each drawer slide………. 
………… setting the pins in the rear of each drawer slide into the corresponding holes I had previously drilled and pushing them closed till they clicked in place. 
Et Voila! We’ve got drawers! Sad to say that I wasn’t able to get this done before we left on our big summer adventure so we REALLY appreciate having these now! 
I wanted all surfaces of these drawers to have a tough durable finish and decided to go with this two part Rubi Monocoat finish that you put on by hand with cloths rather than brush or spray. Hand rubbed finishes have always been my favorite and while this was a new one for me I was eXtremely pleased with the end result and the whole process of applying it. 
It was a bit laborious and a good workout but a very satisfying process for me. 
Difficult to see in photos but the Baltic Birch plywood came out with a glowing warm colour and a very tough finish that is also very easy to reapply in the future. 
To reduce the loss of usable space under the sinks I used these low profile P-traps which have turned out to work very well. 
and only required a small cut out on the rear of the two under sink drawers to clear nicely. 
For lighting, I decided to use COB (Circuit on Board) LED strip lights which I set inside lengths of 20mm wide black aluminium U channel which I ran in between each of the White PVC ceiling planks. I like these newer COB strips for two reasons; they provide an uninterrupted line of light rather than individual points of light in the regular LED strips and they can be adjusted from about 2200K (very warm amber) up to 6500K (daylight white). 
Once I had the layout done and the strips of PVC and AL channel cut to length, the process went quite quickly. I could apply the construction adhesive to each plank and AL channel and press them up into place and then use my super handy cargo jacks and some scrap lengths of XAL to press these all up against the ceiling so they ended up flat and aligned. 
You can buy the COB LED lights in 20 meter rolls which you then cut to the lengths you want and solder three wires to the copper strips underlying the Yellow COB light strips. Takes a bit of practice to get these tight solder joints without any cross connections but all went pretty well after a few practice solders. 
Then I twist the wires to help reduce any electrical interference and slide a clear tube of heat shrink tubing over the joints and shrink them in place for a nice clean and protected connection.
……………. I could now press these clear covers in place. 
Here’s the result at about 6000k. These LED light strips are also fully dimmable so you can adjust both the colour temp from warm to cold white and from off to full almost daylight brightness.
Click to enlarge and read that this is not just any ole ferry, this is the last remaining coal fired steam driven public ferry in existence. And my oh my was it ever an experience. One part of which was that in the photo above that is NOT us driving Lance OFF the ferry, this is one of the ferry crew members BACKING Lance onto the ferry, which was their requirement for EVERY vehicle going on that ferry! I could go on with more stories about that ferry ride but we need to keep driving onward …………. 
However this was all easily upstaged by our overnight free camping spot just a few miles north of Ainsworth at Fletcher Creek Falls.
After making the VERY steep climb up the mountain we wanted to push the bikes harder and see what they were capable of so we headed down and back up another even steeper set of climbs over to the Feral Goat Bistro at Sage Hayward Winery and enjoyed THIS delicious spread along with some flights of wine. 
We both love eggs Benedict and had many of them for breakfasts on this trip but still enjoyed making my own version once we were back home. 
I had a fabulous drive making my way over to Pacific Coast Highway on roads I’d not tried before and
This is already getting long so I’ll condense the rest of our travels since then and just say that we had a wonderful few months on Saturna. 
We needed to get both vehicles down to Nevada so Christine drove Totu and I drove Lance and we found some more new ways to get from Saturna to Searchlight. This time we took the ferry out of Victoria over to Port Angeles, down the PCH and then west along the north or California on fabulous Hwy 36 that I had found on my drive up with Totu a few months previous. 
It was a truly wonderful Summer and Fall for all of us and we are now settling back into life here on our winter base at Road Runner Ranch, out in the BLM lands just north of Searchlight NV. 
To max out volume of storage areas I framed in the space above the Joolca “Gotta Go” separating toilet to create an overhead cabinet. 
As you may have noticed I am working my way counterclockwise around the interior spaces and the last part of the main framing for the primary cabinetry is the currently empty area on the far Left you see here, which will be the Drivers Side Galley. 
The model gives me the precise length of each piece I need to cut on the cut off saw and how each joint goes together. Each of those four vertical spaces will be filled with drawers of different heights and the vertical XAL front and rear provide very strong attachment points for all the undermount drawer slide hardware that I’m about to order. 
Speaking of windows, we have our always alert security guards keeping a close eye on the comings and goings of the various others we share this fabulous area. No need for any worry about our safety with these two vicious watch dogs on the job! 
While we don’t see too many people, which is just the way we like it, there is lots of life to see out our windows including the real life versions of Wile E. Coyote & Roadrunner, rabbits large and small, lots of mice and squirrels on the ground and ravens overhead.
Here is a skeleton view of the XAL bed frame in Blue which will then have a plywood panel spanning across the support bars with the mattress tucked firmly inside the outer XAL bed frame. 
All four actuators plug into this FLTCON-4 central control box which provides the 24 volts for each motor. 
Last piece of this automated lifting bed system is this small set of buttons that is also plugged into the control box. Once the interior panels are all installed this will be the only part you will see and will likely be mounted somewhere out of the way but easily reached when we want to move the bed Down to Sleep or Up to eat. 
The Up/Down buttons allow you to move the bed Up/Down to any position you want and then you can save this position into memory of button 1, 2, 3 or 4. 
I work hard to maintain my well deserved reputation as a pack rat and so I had kept ALL the wires, materials, nuts, bolts and hardware when I fully gutted the original Horton ambulance box and took it down to the bare AL frame. One of the pieces of aluminium I kept was this C-channel and it turned out to be my just right Goldilocks solution for building the saddle blocks I would bolt to the cars on the actuators. 
I cut the C-channel into four short pieces that were the same length as the Black Cars on the actuators. 
The width of these Black Nylon Cars was just a wee bit larger than the inside width of the AL C-channel so I carefully guided each actuator through my table saw and trimmed off about 2mm from each side. 
Which allowed them to be a slight press fit onto the Car. 
The inside corners of the C-channel have a radius to them but it was easy to file the corners of the Nylon Cars to match and Voila! A perfect fit. 
Progressive Automation manufactures the thick Black Nylon Cars with three threaded mounting holes on each side which go all the way through the body of these Black Cars; a large M10 in the middle with two M6 on either side, so I drilled out matching holes in the sides of the AL C-channel saddles so I could very securely attach each saddle its Black Car mate. 
…….. to make these matching L-bar mounting brackets ……….. 
………. which I then bolted to the C-Channel saddles with the Heim Joint sandwiched between the two “ears” of the brackets and through bolted. 
Worked very well and I could then bolt each Heim Joint Saddle to its matching Nylon Car. I then bolted each linear actuator to the vertical XAL support posts using some AL bar stock that I cut to be thick enough to keep the inner surface of the AL saddles spaced clear of the inside of the XAL posts and they moved up and down.
The sides of the bed frame are made from lengths I cut from 3” x 1” XAL and carefully clamped each one in place so I could precisely mark the center of each SS insert and then I drilled undersize holes through the XAL. As you can see in the photos above these SS inserts are tapered so I used my handy dandy Dremel tool with a rotary carbide cutter to enlarge these holes and carefully hand fit the SS inserts to be a slight press fit into the XAL. 
I
I allowed about 5mm / .2” clearance between the moving bed frame sides and the XAL posts so it is a very close fit that was relatively straight forward to adjust by turning the threaded SS inserts with a wrench on the flats I ground on each one (see photos above). 
The power/comm cables on each actuator need to be extended but I was able to just plug each cable into the control box and hang it in the center which allowed me to test out the whole assembly. 
Christine has been getting her drone flying skills dusted off and this shot she grabbed a few days ago from up above the spot we’re setting up to live on for the next few months will give you an idea of the layout. Those two big white rectangles are 40 foot “High Cube” (9’6” high) shipping containers that came with the property along with a lot of great items inside that you’ll soon see. The other white rectangle is the 2012 25 foot travel trailer that will be home for us for now.
As Skyler and I unloaded the crates of our belongings and coolers of food, Christine got to work storing it all away and organizing our new home. As sharp eyes might notice, she even baked a loaf of banana bread! 
Looking aft in the trailer you can see that we’ve got everything we need with a nice U shaped settee and an adjacent full bathroom & shower. Then a separate bedroom in the rear with a Queen bed and even an office for Christine to work at just out of sight in the rear left corner here at the foot of the bed. And check out our views out the windows! 
Skyler started unloading all the crates and materials from Lance and I started to figure out where to put them for now in the two containers. The one you see here on the Left will be my workshop area and the other one out of site in this photo over on the far Right closer to the trailer provides storage for everything else AND houses all our fresh water and electrical power equipment that allows us to live 100% off grid. 
Could not have been a better present than all the time we got with Skyler and all the hard work he so cheerfully gifted us with to make this latest transition of the Nauti Nomadic Grandparents so memorable. 
Thanks Sky!
It will take me awhile to build workbenches and storage racks but for now all my tools and equipment are very safely stored away inside the two containers.
Part of what made this property such a Goldilocks just right find for us was that one of the things inside the containers was sixteen 305 Watt solar panels and so Skyler and I got to work setting those up in two different locations to try out for now. Eight of those solar panels we propped up against the wall of the container as you can see here which made it a short run for the power cables to go into the MPPT controller inside. 
The other eight solar panels we propped up against the south facing side of the trailer to try out that orientation as I monitor the daily production to see what generates the most power to keep our big new battery bank fully charged every day.
In that previous post you may recall seeing this pallet full of boxes that had arrived at the Klamath Falls workshop which contained the other two key components of our off grid power system. 
this 15 kWh 54 Volt upright EG4 lithium battery and ………. 
…….. this EG4 6000XP all in one MPPT solar charge controller, inverter charger. 
The battery weighs a svelte 128kg/282 lbs. but Skyler and were able to get it wrestled out of Lance and into the container and get the 6000XP mounted above it and all secured to the steel walls of the container. 
These two smaller vertical boxes I mounted on on the side at the mid point are the isolation switches and circuit breakers for the high voltage power coming in on the Red and Black wires you see here which come from each of the two strings of solar panels (8 panels in each). We soon had everything wired up and in this shot I’m busy configuring all the settings before turning it on for the first time. Just amazing how far these kinds of off grid systems have come and we were able to go from no power at all when we arrived to having a full 240VAC split phase power system in less than one day. 
These four 1250L/330USG IBC Totes as they are called (Interim Bulk Containers) also came with the property along with a fifth empty one that we’ll use in the future to bring more fresh water from the town water system in Searchlight that is just a few miles away. The pumps you see at the bottom here are now all set up to provide pressurized fresh water to a tap on the outside of the container and a hose from there to the trailer provides all the fresh water we need for day to day living.
I will leave you with this shot of what our humble new abode is looking like with yet another super sunset that Christine loves to photograph.
These two pallets are from Current Connected with four 420 Watt solar panels on the Left and then the Victron inverter/chargers, MPPT controllers and EG4 batteries on the Right. These are a bit fragile but they all arrived in perfect condition. 
I unboxed one of the EG4 12V 400Ah server rack batteries to check them out a bit closer and to get the exact dimensions so I can complete the XAL eXtruded ALuminium racks I’ve installed in Lance. There are three of these monster batteries that I’ll wire up in parallel to create our 12V 1200Ah House Battery bank which gives us a whopping 15.4kW of overall capacity. Even though we have gone mostly electric with all our systems other than diesel for our heating, our daily requirement will be much less than this but I’ve gone to this capacity so that we can stay remote for weeks at a time even with long periods of cloudy days with low solar output. 
These two Amazon boxes contain the new sink and induction cooktop for our new Galley aka Kitchen in Lance. 
This is the Empava 120V 1800 Watt two burner induction cooktop that Christine chose. It will be built into the countertop but can also be removed and taken outside to create our outdoor kitchen in hotter weather. Christine set this up here in the house and made dinner with it two nights ago and she gives it an enthusiastic two thumbs up! We both much prefer induction cooking after our experiences with it on Mobius. 
This is the 28 inch dual SS sink. It is a generous 245mm/10” deep as we both prefer big deep sinks. 
This one has some great features that extend its usefulness such as this wooden cutting board and a strainer that slide back and forth in the groove you can see at the top and bottom. 
Here is a quick screen grab that I hope helps you visualize the interior layout. Double sink in the Drivers Side Galley countertop up top and the induction cooktop on the Passenger Side. 
Pretty straightforward process; peeled off the protective plastic layer with the blue arrows and then starting laying down the 8 inch wide click-lock planks. 
It is not the recommended practice, but I’ve decided to install this finished flooring first and then put in the framing for all the cabinetry as this will create a much cleaner install of the XAL eXtruded ALuminium framing. We used this same type of industrial grade LVT planking in Möbius and were eXtremely happy with it so we stayed with what we know works. 
We
Razz and Zoe have been eXtremely busy as well as you can see from this shot of what is at my feet as I type!
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