Epic adventurer - The plan

I have a boat.

It's called Bulwinkle III.

Bullwinkle I was the same boat, but was a 4.3m Sundance sailing catamaran.

Bullwinkle II had the sail removed, and an electric outboard motor fitted. I ran it from my large deep cycle battery, and could cruise at walking pace for 5 hours or so.

Bullwinkle III has a 3.5 HP two stroke petrol motor, a sheet of plywood across the hulls where the trampoline used to be, and can do 17kph flat out with a stack of noise.

Bullwinkle IV will have the original electric outboard, but will be solar powered. It will also have a greenhouse. The plywood floor from memory is 1.8m square, which happens to be the same size as my original growhouse.

The plan, if I can call it a plan, is to drop a clear plastic growhouse over the top of the plywood floor, mount the solar panel over the the front section where there is no floor, rig some steering control to an office chair mounted up the front somewhere, and and run a veggie garden in NFT tubes that pull nutrient rich Murray River water directly from the river into the tubes as I cruise from the mouth in South Australia, through desert, to somewhere else.

Then come back.

At walking pace.

When doing 120 Things in 20 years it pays not to get too bogged down with specifics when planning an epic adventure.

Aquaponics - Constant flood growth

My new constant flood grow beds seem to be working.

And my new constant flood grow bed plants seem to be flourishing.

The spinach has gone crazy.

At least I think the spinach has gone crazy.

It might be silver beet.

But suddenly the words "Silver beet" don't seem to mean anything, so I might be me that's gone crazy.

I think I've thought those words too often during the construction of this post.


I'll stop.

And move on to whatever this is.

This has gone crazy as well.

It's either cucumber or rock melon.

The lettuce in the original grow bed (planted from seedlings) looked like this at various stages of its life, and also seem to be enjoying a good growth rate.

Perhaps the tomato plants were eating all the nutrient. I still have it in a bucket, but it's growth has slowed since being ripped up and cut back to just a few stems.

That blue thing on the left is the bucket with the tomato plants in it.

 All the water for this grow bed goes through the tomato bucket first until I find a proper home for my hacked tomatoes.

I also added two algae eating fish that like to suck onto the side of fish tanks, and eat whatever grows on them. These I put in the old fish tank (now a sump tank) to keep the algae down.

I haven't seen them since.

For some strange reason I didn't take any photo's of them.

As far as I know they are doing fine, but these days there is a stack of plumbing going into and out of the little sump tank, so there are plenty of places for a tiny pair of fish to hide.

I was promised they would love their new home, and grow to be around 10cm long, but I have also been told that there are no cold water varieties of this kind of fish.

Both pieces of advice came from the same aquarium shop.




120 Things in 20 years. Crazy? Growth from my new constant flood aquaponics grow bed? Sucky fish? Only time will tell.