Creating something new, day 1
Day 35, 31 July
Going home
Ugh. Far too early. Far too much sun. I really dislike early mornings. But must eat breakfast, then endure the wagonride to the city. I really miss a comfortable, nice car with air conditioning and reasonably quiet cabin. Fucking Seagulls!
Still half zombie when we leave the wagon and board the ship the trip up to my islands. Should atleast make it there during the day, which is the reason for the early morning. Will be gone for 4 or 5 days. Is everyone morning persons? How can Iselin be so damn energetic? Youth?
And now I feel old.
Fucking Seagulls!
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Its somewhere around noon when I wake up from my extra morning nap. There isn't really anything to do on the ship for me, so might as well sleep away some time. The ship glides well through the water, and with good wind we have reached quite a good distance along the way. Southwesterly winds, and the ship handled them well. Lay there in a cabin, just staring at the ceiling. Should have 'invented' folding deckchairs before we left. Even with a big ship like this Cog that have a deck and aftcastle, they havn't understood the value of such things. Then again, except for the few paying honored guests, most work on a ship, and if its a smaller Knarr, even paying travelers are expected to help out.
Kari gives more advice on how I need to behave so I give a dignified impression, especially so I give a good first impression tomorrow infront of my new subjects. Guess I didn't do well this morning.
I really should be more positive and expectant, because we're on our way to look at literally my islands. My little micro nation. My future home. Where we will walk around and see where large amounts of manpower and resources will be invested in my new mansion. My Academy. Why am I not happier?
I want to see the mansion and the Academy finished, but the construction phase itself and everything before is just something that doesn't interest me that much. I want to use the finished building, and the the construction itself its just something that will take time. Atleast a big loghouse should be relatively quickly built, but it's not a prefabricated house raised in a couple of days. I suspect its partly because I can't build it myself, and spending everyday overseeing the construction will be boring, tedious and pretty much a waste of my time, compared to stay in Borgarsandr and doing other work. So it will be better to delegate the construction, and I won't know all the small hidden details. I like working with my hands, figuring out problems, coming up with solutions, doing a job carefully when it interests me, and I dislike leaving small things. Everyone else will never know or notice it, but I will know about it. And it will annoy me.
Maybe that's why my female partners havn't had much to complain about so far, from what I have cautiously guessed. I like to figure out what they like best and try different things. I guess thats why so many of my thought over the last month have been about sex more and more, simply because I have a lot more sex now than before I came to this world, and there's so few things to distract. Had someone two months ago predicted that I would have a fiancée and two concubines and have had sex with several other women? All sexy beautiful women, and most young adults in their twenties? Ha! Yeah. Bullshit.
I would have told them to fuck off because it would be such an blatant lie. Or well, I hadn't really done that. I would have been more diplomatic, and I would probably say that I don't believe them, since it would be so unlikely. But I was certainly going to think to tell them to fuck off.
And there we go on another tangent. Stupid brain. I need something to do; too much free time here without distractions. MP3 player FTW. Just took a while before I figured that out. I must also save on electricity, but my solar panel is fully charged, and the battery bank has also been charged if I need the tablet etc, which is also included in the chest under the bed. I should update the diary log so I keep track of what happened and when.
Really need a way to charge the tablet and phone that isn't sun dependent, as it will only get worse and worse for the next nine months. The fall and winter might have weeks without a visible sun, and an ordinary gray winter day the solar panel might charge with 1/10 of the pace on a sunny day, and combine with only 6-8 hours of sunlight compared to now, which is closer to 16 hours. I also doesn't want the solar panel hanging outside the whole winter. It doesn't matter that I built it to be waterproof and the fabric is durable cordura, it will eventually fail due to handling or environment, and I'm worried about water finding a way and ice forming.
Of course, the solar panel is quite good for a hiking panel, and its another of my DIY projects I'm quite pleased with. Sure, you can buy all kinds of solar panels, but I never found any that I really liked. Too big, too small, no internal batterybank, stupid mounting options, untrusting of performance - especially since most are China made - or just worried about something cheap and how it was built. Especially China made, nomatter where it was assembled. Even buying parts can be hard, and I always test what I buy. I've gotten so many refunds, and some things I've just stopped trying to order from all the common shopping sites. It takes weeks to arrive, and then it quite often doesn't work as advertised, and I have to spend time testing, getting my money back and find someplace else to buy it from and having it shipped, so I might just do that in the first place and save time and annoyances.
The problem is when I can't really find it anywhere else. Of course there's good stuff too, but then it will probably cost almost the same as from Europe or Sweden after shipping, toll and taxes have been added. That might add up to quite a lot, and with the newer 'handling fees', it might be quite ridiculous. A pack of ten surface mounted parts might cost about 1-2 euros posted in a small letter weighing less than 10 grams, but then there is a minimum handling fee of 8 euros, so that the nation might get its 0.2 euro. For a palm sized letter way below letter weight limit. And some things just can't be bought in Europe. The market is too small for European companies to store it. Add up five of those packages and the total cost in parts should be about 5-8 euro, plus 40 euros in handling fees. Then the project just isn't worth doing, or it might be cheaper or less frustrating to buy a new one if its used to fix something, since the part arriving might be 'china quality' or something completely different than ordered. Getting a refund only return those 1-2 euros, not the handling fee.
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I've literally talked about this with the Swedish Customs Office, and they know the problem. They just don't care about edge cases, and in this I'm at the edge for all those buying junk stuff they actually could buy from Europe or Sweden. EU should renegotiate the postal agreements with China.
I've also bought a few things for my projects directly from manufacturers, since there sometimes have been just a couple of manufacturers in the whole world. It's quite fun to read those 'yeah, we can send it too you, although we normally only work with companies so you have to do it this way', and unless they ask, I can almost always hear the implied 'what the fuck do you need it for?'. Its quite fun to receive toll inspected big box mostly filled with empty standard foam inserts, since that might be the minimum box the company ships to its normal customers. I wonder what the toll guy thought when he inspected it.
Anyway I built a foldable solar panel, so I atleast could test the parts and know how it was made, and not cheap out on material, waterproofing and taking stupid shortcuts. Its a fold-out with four panels of a total of 10W, with its own battery bank of 3x5400mAh lipo with MPPT charger, and two 3A USB outputs. And it will charge with uneven sunlight or if a panels in the shade. Of course it will be slower, but it will charge, which is what I need if I hang it on my backback and walk around. The panel need to be towards the sun and be mounted well enough that it won't bounce around, but I seldom use it when walking. It only works well in open terrain and as long as I'm walking with the sun mostly in my back. For shorter hikes its just better to bring batteries or powerbanks for the same weight, and much less space and problem.
My thoughs are interrupted by Ciara wanting to cuddle in the shade out on the deck, so I end up on the bench outside, with Iselin and Kari too. Its a bit awkward. Kari avoids taking my attention from Iselin and Ciara, but she seems to want to cuddle too. Or more, as she seem to love kissing. So she awkwardly sits beside - there but not intruding. Iselin knows that I would prioritize her, but she wants to let Ciara have my attention, and she also want to include Kari so she doesn't feel left out. So she mirrors Kari's distance from me, and pose. Ciara seems to miss a lot of those subtile interactions or she just doesn't care, and she just want to spend time with me, while making it awkward for all of us by sitting in my lap - happy and completely content with just letting time go by. Oblivious to the world. She's so skinny and light, but atleast that means that my lap won't be numbing as quickly.
A hydroelectric power plant require suitable falling or running water, so it will probably have to be a wind turbine, but we will continue to live on the coast and its generally a windy climate. I probably won't finish the power plant before we move into the mansion, so I might as well start planning and building. The wind turbine will attach to the roof ridge, probably on the east side where the wing meets the main building, and only be about a meter above the roof. It needs to work well in normal and lighter winds, so I have too design it for that, but I can prepare so that in strong winds, the guards can just open the attic window and pull a handle to stop and block the rotation. Want to avoid that the power plant destroys itself in a strong wind. Alternatively; I can put it on parallel arms so the wind turbine can be raised above the roof, and also lowered to shelter in case of too strong wind and its also handy for maintenance. That's probably the most practical solution.
The only thing that really matters is that the wind turbine works and provides power, but I want it to be waterproof, handle snow, ice and rain, and I also need to keep the complexity down and how many slip rings for the power transmission there are. So even if I preferred a horizontal wind turbine it will be a less efficient vertical wind turbine.
I accepts inefficiencies in wind handling, mechanical and electrical, if its easier to manufacture, service and its more reliable. Only two bearings, two sliding connectors to convert so it gives DC voltage out, as I expect to have to charge a battery bank, and I can forget about rectification on a larger scale until I might manage to make a rectifier in the future. Probably no choice but to use thin fabric, paper or paint insulated copper wire for coils, and many coils that I stacked together in a circle and many bad magnets above and below that's moved by the turbines wind blades. Electromagnets would probably be more efficient, but it would mean more coils and more slip rings, so I'll have to live with this design principle, and I would honestly be happy if I get 10 watt on average from the wind turbine, as it will be about 2A charging current at 5V that a USB use. 10 watt is more than enough for my main need considering how few things there are to charge. Literally only a low power tablet, phone, MP3 player, a couple of cameras and 'keychain' flashlights, and most won't see much use.
Just have to design all parts and hire carpenters to make the actual aerodynamic blades for a vertical wind turbine and other wood parts, and then do the other parts in copper, brass and iron magnets by myself.
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Its meal time and we eat in the cabin where there is atleast a small table. It's nice, and a bit like when we were on the first boat trip along the coast of Norway. Just the three of us in a cabin, plus Kari. After the meal, Iselin and Kari return out to the deck, as I fall back into my thoughts. Ciara says something, and after my first distracted "Huh?", she repeats that she needs help, and turns around while pulling up her dress over her waist and leaning forward, to stand there wiggling her butt with its plug in the air towards me, and looking at me over her shoulder with an expectant smile. What happened to the meek and modest Ciara? But this is the first time she's done something like this, and she has such a sexy playful smile...
Its a short but quite intense time, with Ciara holding the edge of the other bed and partially pushing her head down into the bed to muffle her pleasure-filled moans from being heard all over the ship. We kiss and just relax a bit, and I would have like to stay like that, but she just takes a deep content breath to calm down and gather herself, wipe me of and calmly adjusts her dress and walks out satisfied and smiling from the cabin as if nothing had happened. A few minutes later when I myself have managed to recover, I follow outside and see Alith and Hillevi guarding my door. Alith discretely giggles, and Hillevi with a slightly too controlled face. Alith barely even tries to hide what she thinks, and I guess that might have been her idea - as it's something I could expect from Alith, not Ciara. But in this light and profile I also see two other things faintly through her armor, so before I go out on deck to just relax I whisper to her;
"Alith, you look cold. Go out in the sun and warm yourself up." Alith stops giggling and looks down. Then she resume giggling as she follow me out into the sun.
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At dusk we've anchored between my islands, and I understand they've talked when Kari just joins me in bed, while Iselin and Ciara use the other bed. They all understands that there won't be more than sleeping - it's just too uncomfortable for me, and then there's the complication that Kari might squirt and she doesn't want others to know. I wonder if Iselin and Ciara knows. But it's nice to feel Kari against me, and she seem to like feeling my hands and arms caressing her body and I don't mind doing it.
Feels weird when I realise I'm literally the ruler of this land and water we're currently in. This is my future home, and I will probably spend most of my life on these Islands, so I will have to make it as nice and pleasant as possible for me and my girlfriends.