Tour of my 25 foot off-grid, boon-docking Airstream International

Syrah is a 2007 Airstream International CCD “Ocean Breeze” 25′ FB (front bed). I bought this trailer for her off-grid and boon-docking potential as I need a comfy place to stay as I build phase two (house!). She came with 400 watts of solar panels, an inverter, cell booster and other such things. Since purchasing this trailer in December of 2025, I’ve made many repairs, upgrades and found new problems to eventually repair and upgrade. FUN!

But let’s go through some of her details now, in 2026.

Why an Airstream?

They’re the prettiest. That’s about it. What can I say, I’m shallow. Because they’re certainly not big. Syrah is 8.5 feet wide and 25 feet long. That’s not much living space for one person and her two clingy Shelties. It is the aluminum shine plus timeless design that drew me in. See also The ‘American Dream’ is my nightmare. Here’s my exit plan…

The interior

There’s plenty of sitting space in the trailer, but not much work space. Or storage, as it turns out. There are a great many things I would do differently with the perfect vision allowed me as I look back. For one, I wish I’d gone a little bigger. A 27 or 28 footer would’ve made a big difference in closet space and how the bedroom is oriented.

Bedroom

In my bedroom, the bed faces the wall. In larger models, the foot of the bed faces the rest of the trailer, allowing for a small walking space on either side of the bed. This would greatly ease the bed-making process. Right now I army crawl back and forth, tossing and tugging my sheets, begging them to obey. Not annoying at all. There’s also little storage in my bedroom, as you can see.

Finding clothes is a bit of a hassle. There may be a better system other than giving up in frustration, wadding up clothes and shoving them away. Don’t tell Marie Kondo.

The only other storage I have is a hall “closet” for my coats and towels.

Kitchen

In the kitchen you’ll notice a small stove and oven powered by propane, and one sink. That be all she got. No microwave, no dishwasher. I can’t say I miss the microwave but I greatly miss the dishwasher. Greatly.

I have one pot and one cast iron pan. Pot goes in the overhead and the pan remains in the oven. There’s not much storage up above either. Using some left over plywood from my dinette table project, I (without measuring a damn thing because where is the adventure in that) I made some shelves to put in the upper bin. This has made me happier than I expected. Suddenly everything fits and is relatively accessible while looking orderly.

There’s some storage under the sink. Some. Almost not worth mentioning, but go ahead and see for yourself:

Dinette

Moving to the dinette, we have a sitting area on the starboard side. There’s one small drawer that pulls out under the settee, which is where I keep my bags. The overhead bin over the table is where I keep tech accessories like my camera, tripod, and cleaning supplies like paper towels, screen wipes, etc. Also a blanket for the rare occasions it gets a tit bit nippily.

The table is new. The original table that came with the trailer was particle board garbage. I broke it pretty quickly. I kept the hardware and after a few months, tired of not having a place to eat and work, made a table. Twas not hard. Birch plywood, a circular saw, orbital sander. Stain. Polyurethane. Viola.

On the port side we have the longest settee known to the RV world, and much of that is a waste of space, now dutifully used by my Bouge RV refrigerator. Classy, right?

My Dometic fridge had worked great and I wasn’t planning on replacing it. That is until the door fell the fuck off.

Oh I tried repairing it. But like having children with Henry Cavill, some things are just not meant to be. The bushing that fits over the hinge is a part of the door. It disintegrated. I’ll be honest, at the time I wasn’t even mad. Of course it would fall right the fuck off. Of course. My life is a series of one step forward, ten steps back. I’d gotten the trailer finally to my own land and off came the door. Obviously.

It’s a 2007 fridge. The model is no longer made. The door is no longer made. I could source a “new” door but it would cost hundreds. For a door. This is what we’d call “chasing good money with bad.” Plus, the fridge would have to run off propane since I’m entirely off the grid. And that would suck.

Ergo this giant ass box sitting on my settee with all the grace of an obese walrus. But it sure beats sashaying outside to the ice chest any time I wanted something below room temperature.

Moving onto the shower…

Smallest shower made, I’d bet. It’s microscopic. Since I am not on city water with city water pressure, my water flow is at the mercy of a the water pump. Whenever the pump comes on it sounds like a mixture between machine gun fire and a wet fart. It splutters water our at a rate of maybe a gallon and a half a minute. Not great if you want a plentiful shower but pretty fantastic if you want to get the job done and conserve (which I do).

Bathroom

Moving to the bathroom, we have a horizontal mirror so I can’t see if my butt looks fat. Yay?

Then we have the smallest little sink you ever did see, exactly one outlet, and an AirHead composting toilet. This I had installed to make the trailer completely boondocking friendly. The original toilet was, I believe, original and used water to fill the bowl to flush the crap.

I have a whole TedTalk about how stupid it is to use fresh potable water to flush shit, but that can be for another time.

What I didn’t want to do was have to either haul my trailer to a pump out station, or have a pump out station come to me. No thank you. A composting toilet solves this problem by simply separating the tinkle from the turds. Every day I get to dump my pee pee bottle outside, gracing a chopped buckwheat with a golden shower. The crapadoodle-doos get churned with coir and peat moss to be broken down. Then a fan vents the air outside the trailer, drying the poopies and eliminating the stink. Once the bin is full, the dried manure goes out and is to be buried or used as fertilizer for non-edible plants. Recycling.

Bet you didn’t think you’d get a paragraph full of fecal explanation did ya? Lucky, lucky you.

Solar power

For the electrical I have a Frankensteined solar system. 400 watts of solar panels (4 panels each 100 watts), two brand new lithium ion batteries, and a mish mash of units designed to run on the original AGM batteries which I dumped since they up and died on me. Now I get to slowly replace one thing after the other. I’ll be first replacing the solar charge controller. It’s a pain point right now, as the Commander believes the batteries are fully charged when they are, in fact, not. So nearly every day I toddle outside, open the hatch, disconnect the solar, wait 30 seconds, disconnect the batteries, wait thirty seconds, and reverse the process so the Commander can see that oh, the batteries aren’t full, better take the charge the solar is sending in.

Yes. Please be doing that.

The system is under my bed, if you were wondering.

The (known) flaws

Syrah is my first Airstream. I thought I’d done a fairly decent job inspecting it prior to purchase. Survey says… no. After likely overspending for it, I discovered a soft spot in the dinette area. Key here was that the table was no longer with me, so I could step there freely. What I hoped was delamination is likely floor rot.

This wasn’t great to learn. I may or may not have had a small tantrum.

The second problem I discovered during a bout of rain was a window leak in the front of the trailer in my bedroom. Twas not the window that leaked. Instead the rivets in the outside panels were raised, allowing water to seep into the trailer and drippy drip down the window. That was a $1000 repair. Fun times.

I’ve also discovered the rear window has a leak. Hopefully this just needs to be resealed and re-caulked and I shan’t be taking it to Airstream who will charge me $210/hour.

I’m sure there are other issues. The trailer is 19 years old. I knew it would have problems. I didn’t know it would have such expensive ones, but I’ve beat myself up enough over this and I’m uninterested in continuing with the self-flaggelation any longer.

Tech stuff

Aside from the toilet, which was the biggest upgrade so far, I got a new TV. The original was, again, new in 2007. It was crap. No wifi, hooked up only to the DVD, which is also crap.

I took it out and replaced with a 32 inch TCL Roku TV. So I could stream like it’s 2026.

For internet I use, for now, the T-Mobile Gateway. Which I hate. Will it work? Who knows. Say nice things to it and it might. Will it stream consistently? No way, it has shifts and working hours like it’s in a union.

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I’ll be making more additions and repairs as we go on, but hopefully we’ll make even MORE progress toward a house. I miss a washer dryer so much you don’t even know. We’re in planning and permitting stages with the county, so hopefully Syrah can be a guest house sooner than later.

Be sure to also check out Goodbye, Texas and Burning down my old life to start anew.