Vision Meets Implementation
That keel is cast iron, as I recall, about 600#.
The food, water and battery, that you say has not been taken aboard yet, when loaded on board, is another 500 pounds. You're already down by the stern pretty seriously. You're planning a trip for a 27' boat on a 22' boat. You have to make some compromises.
I totally understand the desire to be self-contained, but this is going to be a challenge on a C22. I admire the replacement rudder/tiller, but having lived/cruised a C22 for two weeks, I can't imagine a smaller living space than I had, and with all your provisions, you will barely have room to turn around.
Overall, I agree w/ Stu: use a cooler instead of the fridge, and leave the generator, its fuel and excess batteries behind. This means that your strategy will include stepping on shore every handful of days for ice. As long as you're going ashore, you don't have to provision for the whole month at once. This solves more weight/space issues, esp. water, which at 8.3lbs/gal., is a lot of weight to try to keep low and centered with that layout.
If you buy block ice, and use a 5-day cooler (strapped down just inside the companionway, and used as a companionway step), it will keep things cold in there 5–6 days, a week if you're not in there constantly. Stepping on shore once a week for food, ice and water still gives you plenty of solitude & self-reliance, lets you get excess weight off the yacht, and solves much of the trim problem that already exists before you're talking about taking on additional weight, i.e., five hundred pounds, the weight of three crewmen!
Without the energy-hungry fridge, 130 usable amp-hours (50% of a 260 a/h bank) will run your VHF and stereo & anchor light for a good while. You could keep the generator and now just use it every few days, and have to carry less gasoline, or rent a transient slip when you need to to take on your water and electricity (that's what they're made for: yachts in transit).
If you use a kerosene lamp lashed in your rigging for your anchor light, which is quite legal and adequate for a small yacht of this size, your battery bank will last much, much longer. That one bulb running for eight hours eats a lot of power. I used to rig mine to hang between the boom and the cabintop. 2/3 cup of kero per night for a month is 5 quarts.
The next piece of equipment to take a good hard look at is the water heater. Consider heating your water with the cooking stove for washing, or invest in a SolarShower (I use on on my 30-footer) or a little of both. That's 140 pounds of equipment and a lot of space saved.
One of the big problems here is that most of the easy storage on a C22 is astern. You can try to move some heavy items into the cabin and secure them to the small decksole, the footwell of the dinette (make sure you can still lower the table) or the starboard settee. That will help your trim issues in general, but those lashings must be bomb-proof, or you'll have things flying all over your cabin when you heel over hard. I know from experience.
The small shelf over the settee can be used for small gear, if the opening is laced in a zig-zag pattern with a long length of shock cord that runs around small, screw-in, open-eyed hooks screwed in about 4 inches apart. Build it as two or three separate sections, so you can un-do one piece without having to have the rest of it come apart.
The forepeak can't take much weight, or you'll be hobby-horsing in a swell (weight on the ends of the yacht). I'd reserve it for clothes (in water-proof bags: don't trust that hatch), bedding (safe from water) and light equipment and provisions, like paper towels, Zip-Loc bags (you'll find many uses for them) and spare parts that aren't too heavy. It's difficult to use it well.
Since you don't mind eating out of cans, you can shift a considerable amount of weight around, as long as you can ensure it is secured beyond a doubt. The beer bottles are a different story, but I'm sure you'll be creative. Again: stepping on land occasionally means you don't have to have three cases on board to begin with, and buying it cold at the store a block from the marina will help spare your ice.
Sounds like a great adventure, but I'm not sure camping out for a month in a C22 will give you much of an idea of what it's like to live on a 30-foot yacht. I had a wonderful time, though, and learned a lot about provisioning, self-reliance, securing equipment, and outboard motors, and have fond memories of the whole unbearable ordeal
Where exactly are you intending to go?
FAir Winds,
Jeff
