Friends!

Days like today make us realize some of the wonderful friends we have.  We're especially privileged to have several of them joining us for a trip departing about a week from now on the Stillwater Canyon section of the Green River.  Unfortunately, it's not possible to arrange it so all our good friends can go. Work, health, and logistics have limited who is actually able to join us but it is going to be a special week with those that can.

Today we were able to get a spur of the moment road trip in to pick up a borrowed kayak from one of the friends who isn't able to join us this time since she has 17 of her friends and colleagues joining her on the same trip starting about 4 days behind us. Helen has probably paddled more miles with BJ and I than any of our other friends over the past dozen years. She now runs a kayak and canoe rental in Bullhead, but was the first to offer when we needed to borrow one more sit-on-top kayak to fill out the flotilla departing next weekend.

One of our other friends is joining us on this trip for the second time. She's wanted to go before but each year would get aced out of vacation time by a person at the office. She wanted to try a sit-on-top this trip instead of her normal touring kayak, and Helen made it possible. And yet another friend will pick up the kayak in Moab when we're finished with it and return it to Bullhead. A whole circle of friends and a fun road trip in preparation for a river trip - made for a great Saturday!  Now to finish sorting gear.

Phlip-It Latches

In compact trailers, every inch counts. While the stock door latches work, the latch post is an obstacle for the vertical opening doors. A friend introduced me to the Phlip-It latch last year but since the stock latches were working, I was slow to see the advantage. My wife really didn't like the stock latch because her organizing bins would get hung up on the post.

I don't have any connection to the replacement latch we're using but love it for the simplicity and ease of installation. They come two (a left and a right) to a package, post paid from the designer / sole source. The picture shows the pieces that make up one latch.

As long as I was fixing "her" door in the loft, I decided to do a latchetomy on the doors over the dinette where my clothes are stowed. The arm is attached with a stainless screw with a flat washer and a split lockwasher. They're super simple to install on the wood cabinets in the Deluxe. It may take a bit of extra effort for the brass stop screw in the standard fiberglass cabinets.

It makes a clean and relatively unobtrusive installation.

Open

Closed

Improved Circulation

Floorplan from the Scamp website

Perhaps the most important feature that led to our selection of the Scamp 19 Deluxe was the privacy of the loft created by the "front" bathroom. One of the downsides of this layout is reduced circulation when using the air conditioner. A number of people have installed muffin fans pulling air through a duct installed in the storage space over the bathroom. In fact, I collected some of the parts to do just that but then realized the amount of storage that was going to get blocked off.

About the time I was ready to start cutting, Caframo marine fans were mentioned on the Casita forum.  A little research led to a highly adjustable fan with very low power requirements - 4 watts on the high speed setting.  Size, adaptability, ease of mounting, and low power were all pluses.  Pricing was not a plus but that's what you get when you're shopping in the marine world.

With the ability to fold out of the way, we decided to mount it as close to the roof as possible at the top of the stairs to the loft.

The mount is a threaded flange that comes with two wood screws for installation.  I substituted a pair of #8 machine screws with flat washers and nyloc nuts in my installation.

The nut that holds the fan to the threaded flange allows for rotation if desired.  The cam lever at the top (at least in our installation) allows the fan housing to be rotated up to 180 degrees and then latched in place.  The fan will be stowed against the wall when not in use.  The grey button is the on/off/speed switch.

Even when the fan is deployed we have adequate head clearance.  Power was tapped from the feed to the light. Given the previous conversion to LED, even with the fan at high speed we'll only draw 1/3 of the draw of the incandescent lamp that was originally installed.

The fan puts out LOTS of air. I'm pretty sure that we'll only use it on the lowest setting. Even at that, we've significantly improved circulation.