Erin & I set off from Captain’s cove around five on Friday for our first trip of the season. We didn’t have a reliably functioning GPS. I over wrote the chart software last year with some UK road map software, so the GPS screen currently has a car driving across the Georgia Strait and not a lot of detail like islands. As a result, when we got across the strait we completely overshot the inlet for Silva Bay in the dark, which is hard to find at the best of times.
Outside Silva Bay there are reefs everywhere, one of them known as Thrasher Rock. Usually reefs are named after the first boat that sinks on them, so presumably there was a boat aptly named Thrasher at one point. Somehow we managed to weave our way through all that in the dark overcast night. Perhaps the gods of the sea thought it might be funny if a reef in the area ended up being called "Carefree Isle". We tied up by 10:30 on Tugboat Island, one of the islands that form Silva Bay.
One of the engines was not running 100% so in the morning I drained some of the water out that had apparently accumulated over the winter and been collected in the diesel filter glass bowl. I guess in doing this I had allowed some air to get in, which typically will stop your diesel engine dead.
The wind picked up on queue, just as we decided to leave and head for Ruxton Island. Needless to say the engine died at the worst possible moment when we were most likely to get blown onto the rocks. This is the second time in a row that we have almost been blown onto these vary same rocks. Fortunately, we’ve got two engines… Just as we seem to have things under control, and are backing out into the wind away from danger on one engine, the second functioning engine over heat alarm starts making it’s ear piercing screech. Turns out it had decided that this would be a good time to suck some seaweed up its cooling water supply orifice. Fortunately the previous owners had put a hand pump on the diesel lines which Erin hopped down to the engine room and got the first temperamental engine going just enough to get us the hell out of there with the second engine turned off in fear that it would overheat.
We made it to Ruxton, through some narrows, on the one engine with the air in the lines and Erin running down to pump the diesel about 300 times. Good thing I didn’t listen to the guy that told me that I should get rid of those pumps.
Got the air bled out of the Port engine and the seaweed out of the Starboard this morning. Had both running without a problem for about six hours coming back across the strait, so the problem appears to have been solved for now.
Weather was great in the gulf islands yesterday. We had some shitty cold wet whether today coming back. Almost looked like it was trying to snow.
How we got to planning an extended boat voyage, I suppose was the culmination of a series of accidents. I guess from my perspective it started before I was born. Story goes from what I understand, my mom was looking through the local Vancouver news paper. This was in about 1968. My mom found an add by Nanaimo Realty for gulf island property. Waterfront for $20 down, $20 a month for two years. Do the math, that’s $500 and it’s yours. Needless to say they got a piece of property in NaylorBay, Ruxton Island, about 13 miles south of Nanaimo. A few years later I was born and so my life of summers mucking around in the mud with the crabs and the boats, and summer island life began. When we started building a cabin in 1980, which will never be finished, it became apparent that living on a boat vs. living on land seemed to be a better path to take. Sure a boat is a lot of maintenance and all that. Yah maybe if it’s wood. In this climate, a house is a nightmare when it comes to maintenance. What home owner doesn’t spend at least a day a week keeping there house from rotting to the ground here on the north Pacific coast? Yah, sign me up for that… Not! I suppose if you had a welded aluminium house you’d probably be doing alright… I guess everything has its positives and negatives and really there is no right answer, but for me, the right answer has always been that I wanted to live on a boat… Or maybe an aluminium house… I hadn’t thought of that ‘til now…
It’s probably partly why I’m dyslexic. My main source of reading literature growing up started with a publication known as the Buy&Sell – 30’ and over yacht section. If you’re familiar with these publications, it’s actually coming in handy now. With the format of paying by the letter in the add, the result is not unlike text messaging and twitter and all that contemporary methods of communications. I could be a twitter aficionado.
So over the years, I graduated from the Buy&Sell to the internet and Craigslist and to global sites like Yachtworld.com. expanding the boat options… Actually narrowing them really.
Boat choice is a highly personal thing, everything is a sacrifice. There is no question to me that probably the ugliest boat material there is, is metal, but its benefits outweigh the down side and to me that makes it beautiful. I actually don’t really give a crap about sailing. I’m not interested in trying to maximize my speed and get the sails tuned just right and all that stuff, I’m not worried about it as long as I get there at some point. I’m looking for the path of least resistance with the least amount of discomfort. Actually my favourite part is mucking around in the mud with the crabs at low tide.
I suppose people from BC take it for granted, but when we used to go for a walk on the beach at high tide in the gulf island, typically we would not actually be touching the beach at all. Around here logging has been a massive industry. So much so that every shoreline is so strewn with logs, you walked down the beach on the logs, not the beach. If you’re not from here you may think that is strange, but it’s true. The logs break free from the log booms. As a result boating from place to place without hitting a log would be impossible without paying close attention. Last summer I hit a log that was probably 40 feet long and at least 3 feet in diameter. Around here you are going to hit stuff unless you are constantly worrying about it. Commercial boats around here are almost all metal. I don’t want to worry about hitting stuff, so I have a metal boat. If I hit something, I don’t care, with the exception of rocks of course. A fibreglass boat at 6 knots would have resulted in a different outcome. Actually the outcome would have been an uptight captain, constantly worrying about if I’m going to hit a log which is the usual practice. Being that I became a sheet metal welder probably contributes to my relaxed attitude about putting a few dents in the stuff. After all, they call us Tin-bashers. Just so you know, Tin-basher is a derogatory name for a sheet metal mechanic. It’s ok for us Tin-bashers to call each other Tin-bashers, you can call one a Tin-basher behind their back a Tin-basher, but anticipate a punch in the fucking face if you ever call a Tin-basher a Tin-basher in front of their face. Yah, so put a couple dents in it (I mean the boat, not your face), just weld’r up and bash’r back into place and no ones the wiser. So that eliminated a lot of options on Yachtworld.com. Aluminium or steel was for me, not fibreglass. I’ve often thought about trying to do some sort of insurance claim by insuring a cement boat, but I don’t have the balls and that’s a whole other story… I don't think you can insure a cement boat anymore.
I’m a real cheap basted. I want to get from A - B for as cheap. Yachtworld.com query data system – eliminate all power boats, check. [Woo, that sounded like a Buy&Sell sentence. I actually typed it that way and added this little comment after I read this.]
Trimarans are for racers and I don’t care, I want to be comfortable. Mono vs. catamaran: My favourite part about boating is not boating at all, playing around on the beach and not giving a dam. The boat is more of the launching pad; more of a floating deck, flat/roomy/the salon is up out of the water/a room with a 360 degree view of the ocean and the beach out big windows (safer on watch from in the cabin that way)/ Stuff isn’t falling out of the sink because you’re not healing over. Park it on the beach. I’m not talking about shallow draft, I’m talking no draft, I mean park it on the beach and let the tide go out (cheaper hall out fees). Fuck it; I’m a Tin-basher; park it on the frick’n beach. Like a pig in shit with my room on the beach with a 360 view with the mud and the crabs. Find me a wet stinky dog, some waves or snorkel gear and poor me a drink ‘cause we’re not going anywhere! That is my kind of boatin’.
Oh yah, how we got to planning an extended voyage… That was Erin’s idea.
