Author: paulcollister

I’ve noticed some of the people here seem a bit serious

Yet others seem more friendly 😉

Seriously, everyone here is very pleasant, I’ve noticed some of the locals have a reticence to become best friends with visitors on the first meeting, but warm after a while. The Island has a lot of visitors during the summer, and I expect that creates issues, good and bad.

So Monday 6th May arrives, this will be my 4th week on the boat, even though I’ve done a lot, time seems to be racing past, it’s only 7 weeks before I have to head back to the UK, so everything has to be finished in the next few weeks if I want to get the boat back out sailing before then. I am thinking hard now about my plans for the rest of the year.

So onto the engine work. The water pump had to come off so I could replace the faulty seal. I’m waiting for a new repair kit to arrive from the UK, seeing as the one I brought out is still in hiding. The pump came off without much trouble, but no longer turns, I suspect sitting through the winter with water that got past the seal and into the bearings is the problem, this isn’t supposed to happen, but the repair kit will have new bearings, so no big deal.
Next I tried to remove the Oil Cooler, without damaging it further, if possible I would like to repair it, however I couldn’t disconnect the hoses from it, they were well and truly seized tight. So I gave up for the day, squirted WD40 onto the annoying bits and left it to soak overnight. WD40 likes to take its time freeing up seized mechanical things.

Tuesday: I manage to disconnect one hose from the cooler, this allows me to get other hose off the gearbox, so eventually I get it out, but not before it’s had a good bashing. However I don’t think it had any future anyway, it’s pretty corroded.

The engine/transmission area underneath the cooler is looking a bit rough so I give it a good cleaning, it could do with painting, but it’s just too awkward to access.

The oil cooler is a heat exchanger, it intercepts the water coming in from a hole in the bottom of the boat, the engine raw water thru hull & sea cock, and then uses this to cool the oil that passes out of the gearbox (or transmission as it’s often called here) through a load of small tubes inside the cooler, and returns to the gearbox. The sea water continues onto the main engine heat exchanger, where it cools the fresh water circulating around the engine. To complicate matters further, the cooled fresh water in the engine circulates around another oil cooler, cooling the oil for an engine. It’s good that this is all an evolution from a simple engine, because if the original engineers had known this much complexity was required, I doubt they would have bothered developing a diesel engine, instead just going straight to the neutron drive.
I took the opportunity while in this area to start replacing some of the water hoses involved in the cooling system.

An early finish as I had been invited by Jim & Ivana, who had just returned from their epic road trip around Canada and the USA, to pop over to his for a bit of food and to meet Rick.
Rick is a sailor and a pilot, he flew up here in his light aircraft and left it at the airport over at Alert Bay and got the ferry here to check up on his boat. It’s called Resolution and is pictured below. It’s a cracking boat, it has a full size olympic swimming pool, a bowling alley and a cinema. Just kidding, it’s 50ft long on deck, which is 25% longer than Sister Midnight, but inside it’s at least 100% bigger. He has a workshop, a log fuelled fireplace, a lot of space lounging around. It’s a lovely boat, but very heavy, I think when full, his fuel tanks weighs more than our boat, it’s also very beamy (fat) and doesn’t go up wind to well, but he’s happy to drop the hook wherever he is and wait for a wind shift anyway.

Ivana cooked us a lovely meal and we had a great chat about boating and generally sorted the world’s problems out. Rick may be off to Mexico later this year so we may well meet up with him on the way.

Wednesday:
Below is a picture of a railway into the sea. Trolleys go on these and when the tide is in, you motor your boat onto the trolley and the trolley is hauled up the track by a giant winch, until you are out the water and you can then work on the underside of your boat.
These things are called ‘ways’ around here, and when people refer to ‘the ways’ they generally mean the marine workshop, run by Tom, who has a few ‘ways’ in his yard. so it was off to the ways, oil cooler in hand, I had a new oil cooler, but the connections where different to the volvo one, so I was hoping Tom would make me some new ones. I will return next week to see if he managed that.

There are lots of buildings like the one below on the island, most of them are Net Lofts, where fishermen can store and repair their nets during the winter or closed seasons.

Later on I spend time on Rick’s boat helping him tune up his SSB radio. His ATU seems to be struggling on various frequencies, I extend his 1/4 wave vertical by 20ft of wire wrapped around the 4 poster in his stateroom, however although it changes which frequencies we can now tune, it also causes his aircon fans to startup on their own. This not being the solution, we put it back to how it was, and it’s all working fine now. Must have been an airlock 😉

I returned to my problems, and start to hack out the exhaust pipe for the cabin heater, this had collapsed when I tried to find the leak last week, a section had corroded badly. Unable to buy any locally, I am having a new length shipped out from the UK. It looks like somebody had tried to repair it before with a new section attached with a now very rusty mild steel hose clip. This was a messy job, but once I removed the exhaust I gave the inside of the stern of the boat a thorough cleaning. It’s lovely down there, especially as I was able to remove a stack of wires and hoses that didn’t seem to go anywhere or do anything in particular.

I took the raw water filter apart and gave it a good cleaning, I could see water dribbling out of hose disconnected from water pump. This means the seacock isn’t closing off fully, not a lot of water, but it explains why the automatic bilge pump runs every now and then for a few seconds. 

Thursday and a trip to town is called for to see if I can get a few bits from the chandlery I will need next week. First though, as it’s sunny and not windy I throw up the staysail onto it’s track. It’s good to get some canvas out, tie on the sheets and remember how I used to sail this boat ‘back in the day’. The boat has a cutter sail plan, as shown below, and I generally sail with a traditional yankee/staysail rig, although on long downwind passages the yankee is replaced with a huge genoa.

Arriving in town I saw this sign, which took me back to Aisa, of course it’s still the same ocean

Friday was calm and baking hot, so I got the mainsail and yankee up. Then I strung up a hammock on the foredeck, got out the John Steinbeck book ‘The Sea of Cortez’ and had a lazy day. The Sea of Cortez is where we plan to spend Christmas this year.

Saturday was cold so I stayed indoors and did some coding. I managed to teach myself a bit more about programming in a language called Python, it’s not a new language, but it is very trendy these days as it’s handy for doing internetty things, and that was my task. After a few hours fun with version problems, environment variables and the like, I managed to connect to a remote computer in Italy and pull off a load of data, using fancy encoding and encryption, with just a dozen of so lines of code. I was impressed.

These guys below completely filled the pontoons with boat bits, while they painted the hull. They have left now, I expect they are out fishing far away by now.

Sunday: I built a wooden box for storing cockpit bits & bobs in, as the old one fell apart. It’s a bit crude, but should do the job. I washed the starboard side of the boat down and removed all of the junk off that side as Monday is the start of the big varnish job. I intend to start each day at 8AM varnishing, until I have 7 coats of varnish on and the boat is looking stunning.

I may not write anything for a bit, as it would only say,”got up, varnished, went to bed” for the next week or two.

Paul Collister

Mon 29th April 2019
I got to work early, emptied out the lazarette locker all over the cockpit and dived below to dismantle the steering system. Back in the cockpit, I fully dismantled the wheel , sprocket and all the other bits, it seemed sensible to check everything while it was in bits. One thing I spotted when I took it all apart was that the key, which is actually just a block of metal, was missing from the wheel shaft, it locks the wheel to the sprocket and without it all the force of the steering is transferred to a small bolt used to stop the wheel sliding out.
I looked around in case it had fallen out, but I wasn’t surprised it was missing, that explained the extra play in the steering I wanted to eliminate. It was worrying that the bolt could have snapped at any moment we had any rough weather and the steering got heavy. If the bolt snapped, I would be spinning the wheel with no effect, worse if I pulled back the wheel would have popped out of the pedestal all together, and whilst making a great photo opportunity, it might have been a bit upsetting for whoever was on the helm. Whilst relieved it hadn’t been a problem, I decided to get a key made from the workshop.  
It turns out, that the worst case scenario for the sheave failure played out with another member of the baba group who tells me they lost all steering and if they hadn’t had an emergency tiller handy, they may well have ended up on the rocks! 

I had removed all the bits on the pedestal including the fold up table which I now started to strip the varnish off, along with the main cabin hatch screens.

Tuesday arrived and I took the broken sheaves up to the local workshop for welding, ordered a new bit of key to be cut, and cycled on into town (town being the other end of the only main road with the co-op and baker as the only shops) for supplies, I climbed back into the lazarette and removed the quadrant from the rudder as it was looking a bit rough, I gave the inside a good cleaning and replaced some of the earthing wires that had corroded. I also checked all the sea cocks and hoses for any sign of wear.

Wednesday, I was crippled, crawling around upside down, inside out, in the locker, is really more of a job for houdini than me, so did some gentle varnishing instead. I have half a tin of very high quality Epiphanes varnish, but it’s over a year since I last opened that tin, and for some reason it doesn’t seem to keep well. But I’m too mean to throw it away, instead I filter the lumps out with a sieve, then add thinner to bring it back to life. It seems to be working well after that.
In the office I help Randy and his wife out getting openCPN running on their macbook, it seems to work well for them. Later Randy calls round with a bag of giant prawns for me.

The thing is they’re still all alive and wriggling around in the plastic carrier bag. This is not something I’m used too, and although I know how to snap their heads off and peel the shell, even de-veining is easy, I’m not keen on doing it while they are looking at me, or watching me kill their mate looking up from the bag. So I put dinner off to a bit later and put the bag in the sink. All the time I can hear them climbing over each other, and I’m working but thinking Im going to have to man up at some point and do the deed. I wait a little longer, and fortunately they seem to have gone to sleep. Just as well, as ten minutes later they are lovely pink lumps of flesh frying in garlic butter, very tasty too.

Thursday, I popped back to the workshop and collected the sheaves. The welding is just fine and the new key looked great,  I noticed a sailboat similar to mine hauled up on the trolley at the workshop and realised that they can haul me out here if needed, that gives me more fleibility

I had to file the key down a little to make it fit, but now it’s very snug. and I felt smug for fixing a major defect!
Ron, over the water on the next pontoon, who had promised me a properly cooked crab shouted over that he would take me out fishing in a few days if I wanted to learn. Even as a master fisherman already, with two catches over the last ten years, I thought it would be rude to say no, so I’m looking forward to that.

I also popped into the post office and found a letter for me had just arrived, it was my AT&T sim card I had ordered, not sure if it would work or be a dud like the last one I ordered online ,I was keen to try it out. I had to hand over the dosh for the first month online before I would find out, and the unlimited data on 4g anywhere in Canada/USA & Mexico for $65 / month sounded like a good deal. It would be a good deal, but they dont allow tethering/hot-spot outside of the USA, that’s buried in the small print. So I have lots of data, but only on the phone, so it’s not that great. However I should be able to do lots of skype/facetime stuff now without any worries about running out of data.

At some point in the week a house motored on into the harbour and starting filling its hull ( basement?) with lumber. So I have seen planes and houses tie up to the same dock as me now, what a place!
I did find out today that Newfoundland is 3:30 behind UTC/GMT. I can never understand why anyone would do this, do they know how much of a pain this is for their computer programmers, if they have any left. I couldn’t cope with that. I had wondered why they kept saying 0n cbc, and the news is at news at 11, or 11:30 in Newfoundland, I wondered why theirs was always later, silly me.

Friday, put all the steering system together and was feeling good about things, when I decided to clean more of the lazarette area. the eberspacher (diesel fired cabin heater) exhaust pipe had a soot mark behind it on the hull, in the area I had repaired back in Borneo. I tried to pull the pipe away from the hull to look at it and it crumbled in my hand with black soot and chunks of sooty matter going everywhere. Not good. There’s also an asbestossy looking material lagging the pipe inside an outer plastic casing. I’m hoping that’s ok. So after an hour of cleaning up and cutting the pipe back, I’m in need of a new exhaust pipe, which may not be easy to get here, before I can use the heater. Not to worry I have the electric one, oh I forgot, they’re shutting off the power to the marina over the next few days. Let’s hope this promise of warmer weather comes through.

Saturday, walk downtown to the shop and buy a fresh sourdough loaf. 

More varnishing, and realise I forgot a clip in the steering brake, so take it all apart again. I try to connect the throttle up and it is out by an inch from where the coupling should be, realise I put a bracket securing the cable in upside down (in fact I put it in the right way, they wanted it to be put in upside down, but that’s a small point 😉 ) So more stripping down and putting it back together. I think it’s almost done now, just need to get the block of wood under the compass varnished.

The battery charger stopped working, so I have been using the solar panels for the last few days. I decided to fix it today and noticed the cables had corroded off. I’m very confused, this is the second time in a year they have corroded off at the switch panel, I wonder if this fine malaysian cable has some problem. Once I had repaired the connections to the switch panel, it wouldn’t power up, I remember it did this before, after a while it started working, it’s like it’s sulky and will only work when it wants to.

So I think I’m close to starting on the engine work, however I went looking for the cooling pump repair kit and I can’t find it. This is the only real fault on the boat, and it’s the reason I bought this as soon as I got home in October, I packed it as soon as it arrived and I can’t remember unpacking it a few weeks ago when I arrived back at the boat. This really is a case of ‘you had one job’ I’m mad about this, did I unpack it and put it ‘somewhere safe’ here, it’s not that big a boat, but I have searched it stem to stern, twice now.
I know as soon as I order a replacement it will turn up. Such a nuisance. I may have wrapped it up inside a tee shirt for extra protection, and it will fall out when we hit tee-shirt weather, losing my memory is one thing I’m not happy about at all. On the plus side, I did find loads of great stuff I had forgot we had hidden in odd places all over the boat, however I can’t remember what they where a day later 🙁

Leaving the cockpit yesterday I tripped and bashed my knee hard, I realised I had to tidy up, and so moved a lot of crap out of the cockpit and threw a lot away. Underneath all the crap in the area where I had left the steering wheel, I found the original key for the wheel. ! Oh well.

Paul Collister

Sunday 21st April

Cold & Rainy, yet I hear it’s unusually hot in the UK for an Easter weekend. 

Fixed the shower sump pump, dismantled it, put it back together and it worked, no idea what was wrong.

Monday, 

More great radio, after a week of programmes on mental health issues, many quite harrowing stories, we have moved onto climate change debates. A great story tonight about Sudbury, now a lovely green city which was once a Chernobyl style hellhole in Ontario. Devastated by extensive Nickel mining with huge piles of sulphur waste that killed off everything in the area. A great example of industry working with residents to help each other. Other phone ins pitting youngsters against older people living in mining towns. One young teenager was saying “But we might all be doomed if we don’t act now quickly”, and a mining resident replying, “ I agree, but why should we do anything when the Chinese aren’t, and what about our jobs”. I can see this isn’t going to be easy.

Later Adam Cohen, son of Leonard was on, he sounds just like a younger version of his dad, a few thousand more Gitannes and you won’t be able to tell the difference. He was lovely and is releasing more of his fathers material that hasn’t been heard before. 

I took a long walk in the rain today, such great scenery here, even in the rain, I love the individuality of every building. I still haven’t taken the ferry over to the main Island yet, perhaps this week. 

I have noticed that one of the reasons for the wifi getting weak/strong is due to the big tides. The boat is so low, I lose site of the office aerial at low water.

Tuesday

Randy, who has the gill netter (a kind of fishing boat) over on the next pontoon shouted over that if I liked crabs he was going to be cooking a few later and I should pop over. He had cooked a load he had caught earlier that day and I confessed to my ignorance of crab eating etiquette, Ron from ‘Ron’s fishing trips’ who has a big motor launch next to Randy offered to teach me, He took a cooked crab and smashed its back on the edge of the pontoon, then ripped out the lungs, and the washed them under the tap. He told Randy that he had cooked them all wrong, but Randy shot back that Ron was from Alberta and how would he know anything about fish! A lively debate ensued, and Ron promised to get me some properly cooked Crabs. All the same they were very tasty.

Wednesday 

I have spent most of my time this week writing SQL queries and knitting it into web sites.  I had finished most of the work before I came out, but the customer asked for a load of changes at the last moment. It’s kind of OK because it’s been so cold and windy I haven’t been able to do any outside jobs anyway. And it pays for even more luxury down the road. 

I’m making notes about all the jobs I need to do on the boat, a big one I’m looking at is re-wiring to make the boat work well on 110v or 240v as we have a hacked system now but as I’m not likely to see 240v shore power power for a year or more, it seems best to get the 110v working so I can have the heater and the toaster and the kettle all on at once.

The barometer has been around 1035 for a few days now, I have never seen that before, crazy high by my standards. 

Thursday

Took the ferry to Port McNeil today, gave myself two hours to do the shopping and ended up running for the ferry back, only to find it delayed by 30 minutes. It was great to see such a choice of food in the big supermarket. There’s a small chandlers there as well, which was quite well stocked.

Fri/Sat, more programming, with a trip to the Finnish baker for a fresh sourdough loaf. He seemed to really appreciate my comments on how nice his fresh bread was, almost as if I was the first to complement him. He also makes great ciabatta rolls. On the way back I called into the Co-Op hardware store, a branch of the main co-op downtown, a really good range of boat spares, very impressive for such a small island.

More CBC Radio 1 and a great program called Ideas that featured a women called Gareth Peirce who is a 79 year old female  English solicitor and human rights activist. She spoke very powerfully about some terrible breaches of human rights and international laws/treaties being carried out by governments, including sadly, the current British government.

Sunday

More people are arriving every day and opening up their boats, getting ready for the new season. Today actually felt like spring, still chilly, but possible to sit in the cockpit and work.

This morning the radio had a program explaining the problem with relying on quantum physics, and how we have to face up to the reality that great as it is, we are probably missing the point. I’m sure we would all agree with that (could do with a puzzled looking emoji here). 

Either the radio is showing off, or they’re all dead clever here.

People are getting flooded out all over Eastern Canada right now, and they are talking about relocating whole communities away from flood plains and rivers.  Some people who were flooded last year, repaired and rebuilt as they were told it was a ‘one in a few hundred year event’, but because it’s now happened two years in a row there’s lots of talk of Climate change being responsible. I think this is bad science, but great publicity for the cause. 

I uploaded the pictures in higher resolution than normal, as I had some good internet in the week. But I think WordPress is throttling the size back and I can’t be bothered learning how this all works, but hopefully you will get a feel for how lovely the bay is here. I had a great walk around taking the snaps one evening this week.

Paul Collister

I find this new version of wordpress much harder to compose posts than I’m used to. hence a big block of pictures.

Monday 29th April.
I tried to post this yesterday, but no internet, so today I went downtown, the shop was shut, the cafe closed too, no internet available anywhere, but by the time I got back to the harbour, there was a decent wifi signal present, so I did a bit of work and posted this blog. It’s like summer today, so I have a few hours left, I’m going to rip the rest of the steering out now.

Paul Collister, Sointula.

Thursday 18th April.

I had planned to get the ferry to the big city today (well the slightly larger village over on the bigger island). I wanted to stock up for Easter, but it’s raining so hard I put this off until Saturday.

I have spent the last two days writing code, I decided that it was best to get all the leftover bits from the work I was doing back home finished so I could focus on the boat jobs. Also the weather isn’t conducive to working outside.

One job I did do was the leak in the galley. In very heavy rain or big seas water was dripping onto the worktop by the fridge. I had a similar leak on the last baba and it was a sod to fix. The water was coming in miles away and travelling along a secret route, known only to a select clan, of which I wasn’t a member. For this reason I have ignored the leak for over two years now. It was just after a very heavy downfall that I was feeling smug about how all my efforts back in Asia to reseal the chainplates and other fittings had paid off and the boat was so dry when I noticed a big puddle at the fridge and remembered that annoying leak. So I dismantled the headlining to inspect the area for clues as to the secret route this water might be taking, maybe there might be stains leading me to the problem. I couldn’t see anything so had a look directly above the drips on the outside of the boat for inspiration. Right in the spot above the leak was a 3mm hole drilled by Toshi, the previous owner. To say I was gobsmacked is understating things. How had I missed that. To be fair, it had been the route of a small power cable he had added to power a light in the spray hood, the sealant around the wire had failed. I yanked the wire out, cut it off, and then filled the hole with some epoxy. Job done, It’s been chucking it down ever since and not a drop has come in!!
The moral of that story is not to overthink some problems, often it’s a lot easier than you might realise. 

We plan to be in Mexico for Christmas, that’s roughly 2500NM south and back north a little into the Sea of Cortez. If we average 100NM/Day we can do it non stop in 25 days. Say all of November, so really there’s no great panic about anything now, we will likely leave at the start of August and have a leisurely trip down the coast. This is different for me, as since I bought the boat, there have been multiple deadlines to meet, most of them I created to force myself to get the jobs done in time for the passage across the Pacific to North America. Everything is more relaxed, and a lot more pleasant now. I’m enjoying the boat jobs more without the pressure. Having a day where I just read is now possible without any guilt.

It seems the antenna that sends the wifi out over the marina broke during the winter, so I offered my services to go on the office rooftop and fit a new one, however another boater living onboard here also offered the same, so shortly we plan to take the task on together and restore service. This I need to do as I just found out I can’t top up my pre-paid phone card unless I have a Canadian bank account or Canadian Credit Card. Great as I have used up 2.8gb of my 3gb monthly allowance in the first week. Data seems such a requirement these days, it’s worse for me because I need it for work, but I’m hoping I can reduce my dependancy on it, especially once we hit the South Pacific, where I expect it to be very sparse.

I’m picking up a bit of wifi that leaks out of the office, but it’s very slow. We did have AT&T USA SIM cards that worked great in Canada, however I forgot to top it up in January from the UK and it expired. I bought a new one online in the UK, from an eBay seller, but it was too old to be activated so proved useless. I have just order a new one online, via amazon, with a next day free delivery option, but once my postcode went into the system, the delivery time went up to 14 days!, that’s confusing as FedEx got my 25kg Anchor from Portsmouth to the boat in about 5 days! And this SIM card can be sent in an envelope from Toronto.  Well I’m not that bothered as I have a stack of books I really want to read and the internet is such a distraction.

CBC Radio1 continues to produce fantastic programmes. Last night Kieran Conway read from his book about life as an IRA freedom fighter/terrorist. Fascinating to hear his motives and a side of the story that never got a lot of press back in the UK. Alberta has a new party in control, and populism seems strong there, great debates about the climate v oil pipelines, Alberta has oil & gas reserves, but has Quebec and BC on either side, both anti fossil fuel growth, and of course First Nation issues make most news programmes. I’m slowly starting to understand the provincial/federal politics here, a central government based on a model very similar to Westminster, but a provincial model closer to that of the USA, somehow working well together.

Saturday:

Flooding is expected in Quebec, the man from the rescue services was telling people to get out now, he said “unless you have a row boat tied to your porch, you won’t have a way out when the time comes” 

Downtown was gorgeous today, warm, bright sunshine, cherry blossom just starting to appear. Interestingly the Vancouver newspaper I have been reading had a map showing every cherry blossom tree in Metro Vancouver, and the trees in my last blog happened to have been given to the city by the Japanese in 1958, I presume it wasn’t related to my arrival on the planet that year 😉 

It was so hot, I felt I should do some work today, so I have stripped down the steering pedestal, and cleaned it all up. The next step is to disconnect the cables from below and remove the ‘Adjustable Idler’ as I now know it is called. 

More great radio (there is only one station here), however I have found one aspect a bit annoying, and that’s if you miss a program then you only need to wait a day to hear it repeated, and should you miss that, it’s probably repeated the following day. Given that a lot of the programs have quite intense stuff, I’m often reaching for the mute on the remote. Saturday night brings a show by Randy Bachman, yes he of Bachman Turner overdrive fame (sorry kids, he was back in the day). His show has ok music but interesting stories relating to a lot of the artists he plays. But what is it about Canadian rock stars from that period, I’m thinking here of Neil Young as the other guy, who just can’t seem to accept the world has moved on since their heyday. What with Neil young wanting to replace MP3’s with something of higher quality, and Mr Bachman wanting Rolling Stone magazine to go back to a print edition and abandon their online publication! 

Just had a shower, tip number 1, always test the shower sump pump before you fill the shower with water. This is the third pump that has failed in the last 6 months, they are all quite old, but at £200+ each, I’m going to be broke soon at this rate. 

Happy Easter

Paul Collister

There’s not going to be a lot happening for at least 2 months as I’m not going anywhere until late May/June, just slowly working on the boat ready for the next trip to Mexico. I’m going to keep a blog going as a diary for myself and Kathy, something to read when I hit the nursing home 😉

Friday 12th April 2019

I spent most of the day cleaning the shower cubicle and head(toilet), exciting stuff eh. It took a bit longer than I hoped for because the toilet pump had been leaking so I took it apart to try and fix it, however the drip of sea water from it, that we had been putting up with for the last year or so became a steady flow after my repair. Plumbing isn’t really my thing, especially seals. Anyway rather than order new parts, I checked the spares bag and found a brand new seal, perfect, no more leaks. I was very pleased with myself for having a spare, but did wonder why I had put up with the leak for a year or more. I was even more disappointed when I remembered one of my jobs is to replace the head with an electric one this year.

I also dug out the electric heater we have had on board since I bought the boat. It’s 110V USA style, so hadn’t been of much use elsewhere, so as the shore power is supplied on a ‘as much as you can eat’ basis, I thought it was worth a try, the boats heater uses a fair bit of diesel. Sadly the heater fan didn’t work, so I thought I would see if it could be repaired. Even sadder, I enjoyed dismantling the heater, then the fan, then the motor driving the fan, then the bearing at the end of the motor. Amazingly after re-assembly, it worked well. So for just 2 hours of my time, I had saved a heater from the skip. Probably not a good deal, but fun.

I’m listening to Canada radio and they just had an appropriate joke.

Three men in a liferaft adrift in the middle of the ocean.
A bottle drifts alongside them and they grab it, once opened a genie pops out
“I will grant you each a wish” says the Genie.
The first man says, “please get me home to my family”, and in an instant he is whisked away to his family.
The second man asks for the same and also disappears to his family.
The last man says, “I don’t have any family, and I’m really lonely now, can you bring my two mates back please”!

The boat is quite tidy now, I cleaned up the quarter berth on Friday and took the opportunity to inspect the rear of the boat behind the engine, from the inspection hatch in the quarter berth. I spotted some damage to the steering system, basically a fastening that holds part of the pulley that guides the steering cable had rusted and started to rip apart. This is a real pain, I’m going to have to take the steering apart, and then remove the steering pedestal to release the plate with the rusty part. To dismantle it will take a few hours, and the same to put back together, plus I won’t know if it can be repaired until I get it all out, If I’m smart, and mark the plate correctly, I can probably get the whole thing welded up locally. It has to be done, as if it falls completely, I may well lose the ability to steer, and this kind of failure only happens when navigating past an expensive yacht in a marina.

I managed to get the bikes up and running, but I soon found out how unfit I had become sitting at a desk for the last 6 months.

Saturday 13th

The co-op which is the main store here closes at 5:30 until Tuesday, so I headed on down at lunchtime in order to get some proper supplies for the weekend. I had just put a loaf into the trolley when the lights went out. Power was out, possibly to the whole Island. The lady on the till shut the shop, put the closed sign up and explained the main till was down, but the other till was ok for cash only and would run for a short while until it’s battery ran out. I quickly filled my trolley with a few more items, made it to the till just as it shut down. That was it, we were all kicked out of the shop. I asked a lady outside how long I could expect to wait for the power to come back, she told me it used to take one to two weeks, but these days it could be fixed a lot sooner. She pointed to a huge dead seagull in the middle of the road under the power lines and explained to me that was the culprit, and the cause of the loud bang a few minutes earlier. 

A trip over the road to the petrol station showed they had no power, and wouldn’t sell me anything, odd really as I had cash, but without the till running they couldn’t serve me. Next I tried the baker, next to the co-op, he had power, he claimed he had a secret supply, he’s Finnish and I’m not quite sure he was telling the truth, but he sold me some bread, and a few cans of soda. Apparently the first chance of power returning is when an engineer might arrive on the next ferry so I will have to wait and hope for the best. Fortunately, we have a ton of tinned Japanese tuna and pot-noodles to keep me going.

Arriving back to the boat I found myself catching the middle of a program on Canada Radio CBC R1, “It’s important that the clitoris is stimulated by the penis” announced the presenter, I listened for a while to x rated detailed explanations before it became clear he was talking about Dolphins mating! It turns out they have a lot more fun than was previously thought, thinking about it, they do always seem to have a smiley face when they swim alongside us. Later on they did get onto sport proper, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear a program about the mathematical basis of Wimbledon’s ‘long play’ game, and how it worked well for a while, but was later shown to be mathematically flawed. All this in just a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. I spent the whole afternoon listening to CBC radio whilst continuing to clean the main cabin and bookshelves, I’m very impressed, they had a great show about the importance of vaccinations, focussing on a women who caught measles on a trip to London, followed by another slot urging people to get sign up as organ donors with some great stories reinforcing the importance. 

A trip back to the co-op at 17:00 found the seagull removed and the power restored. The man at the co-op asked me if I had a number, I believe it’s normal for all islanders here to be members of the co-op and you give them your number at the till, I’m not sure why, I was told you don’t get a discount. My mum worked for the Co-Op in Moreton for many years, as I recall members got stamps which you gave to the nerdy child in your family (me) who meticulously stuck them into saving books. Presumably when you had enough full books you could claim a free onion or suchlike.

Sunday 14th

Double fried eggs on toasted sourdough bread, made by the Finnish baker with fresh coffee made for a delicious breakfast. Again the radio didn’t disappoint with a long in depth program about abuses by the Catholic Churche’s priests here in Canada. 

The next task was to make a list of jobs to do. I have been putting this off for a while, as experience tells me that a list of boat job tasks can never be completed. This list will in effect outlive me, and I hate starting something I won’t complete. Anyway, as it turns out, I surprised myself by just how many jobs I had already completed en route here. The list seems completely manageable, of course it won’t be. The main tasks I have are 

1) Engine Jobs: Fix water pump seals, weld up or replace oil cooler, Tidy up wiring and weld up steering pulleys.

2) Inside jobs: Fix deck wash pump & fresh water pump, Service water maker, Rewire mains side for 120/240V, Fit new radar, clean check chain plates.

3) Deck Jobs: Lots of varnishing, new Bow Platform, repair cockpit seat hinges, repair monitor steering, replace gas hose and fittings, repair gelcoat on cabin top where dinghy wrecked it.

4) Hull: Clean and polish

5) Haulout: Antifoul and replace anodes, hull, prop and bow thruster. Buy liferaft (should have done this last item before we left Japan, don’t tell Kathy)

Looking more closely at the problem with the steering made me realise it’s a massive job to get the broken bracket (for want of a better description) out of the boat, as a load of cables pass through a hole in it, steering, throttle,gear change, gps, bow thruster controls, power, and another fat cable I’m looking forward to finding out where it goes as I don’t think we have been acquainted yet.

The weather seems similar to back home from what Kathy tells me, cold most of the time, and not that spring like. When the clouds lift here it’s lovely, with snow capped mountains in the distance.

I spotted a lot more trees that have been washed up and tied to the shore at high tide to stop them escaping. This is the kind of thing we need to keep an eye out for when on the water.

The boat is finally cleaned up and very cosy now. I have a snippet of free wifi, and have spent today doing programming work, the boat jobs can wait a bit. I fired up the SSB yesterday and that seems to be working fine, but there’s lots of static out there.

Paul Collister

Well here we go again, I’m back on the boat and blogging. However the harbour I’m in doesn’t have wifi at the moment, which is a pain. I’m using my phone, and trying to limit my use, I have about 100Mb / day, but have used 300 in my first 2 days here. We shall just have to take it easy. I actually like the idea of limiting my internet time, and perhaps I can do some proper reading now.

So I left the UK on Tuesday morning, my brother Simon kindly drove me to the airport at Manchester where I flew direct to Toronto. I flew Air Transat, which is a bit of an Easyjet operation, basic, but just fine for an 8 hour trip. I managed to sleep a little. Once at Toronto I had to kill 4 hours before we headed off to Vancouver. Because Toronto was my port of entry, I had to haul my bags through customs/immigration, but I was very pleased how organised the whole thing was, I was interrogated by a customs computer terminal, and when it took my picture to compare with the passport, the camera snaked around to get itself at just the right height to inspect me, a little unnerving, this is how the robots are going to get us I expect, we think we are in control, but they already now where we are and soon they will control all the locks!

I was later stopped by a human who asked me why I had told the computer I had booze to declare, being a non drinker I was surprised, and said I must have pressed the wrong button, she happily waved me on and I found a nice desk with power/usb and free wifi from where I could do a little work.

I worked flat out for most of the time I was in the UK, and I managed to save enough to allow me to cruise for a few more years without worrying too much about the cost. I still have a few more bits of work to finish, but I can do that from the boat at a more leisurely pace.  I’m expecting to spend the next few years heading south then across the pacific to New Zealand, so I will almost certainly be selling my flat back home, or maybe renting it out. The income from that should cover my costs while I’m sailing.

Soon enough we were boarding the flight to Vancouver. It left at 19:30 and arrived just before 10pm, with the 8 hour time difference it meant we landed at 6AM UK time, I slept for most of the 5 hour flight, but the jet lag was now getting to me. A quick trip to the hotel, and I was in bed asleep.

Wednesday morning I slept in as late as I could, then headed off to explore this part of town, I was out by the airport in-between Oakfield and Richmond, quite a leafy suburb, and the cherry blossom was full on, I only thought to take a picture after I had passed the best displays.

I visited the Oakfield , or was it Oakridge? Shopping mall, had a good play on the new MacBook Air, but can’t justify buying one yet, this five year old model I’m using now is still working great, despite being dropped a few times. I’d love to have an excuse to upgrade, mainly for the Retina display, but I just can’t justify it. While in the mall, I bought some basic supplies for dinner ( bread/butter/parma ham/cheese) from Safeway. I also bought a pre-paid virgin mobile SIM card, 3gb/month for $45 CAD/Month, which is about £25/month. 

At 4pm I called for a cab from the hotel to get to Vancouver South airport terminal, this is the smaller terminal on the edge of the river that caters for small planes and float planes, the cab took forever to turn up, with me starting to worry I might be late for checkin, but as usual I was early and ended up waiting for an hour before we boarded the small plane. As I boarded the pilot was at the outside at the stairs, and saw me looking at my boarding pass, he assumed correctly I was looking for a seat number, and explained I could sit anywhere, but then pointed to his seat at the front and said, except there 😉

As we flew out it was striking to see the colour change in the water, you can see in the image it looks like land, but it’s just a change of colour in the water caused by the underlying terrain/seabed. I have sailed through such changes, once just before reaching Singapore , and it’s quite worrying.

Later we flew over many of the places we sailed around last year, I love trying to spot the places from their shape.

I saw Nanaimo and Dodd narrows which I remembered well, I could also see false narrows, which from above looks like a safer route, but is deceptively shallow. Hence the name I expect.

We flew past Hornby Island which was rammed with boats in tribune bay when we visited it last year, you can just make out the long straight beach. 

Finally we flew past Malcolm Island, I could just make out the harbour but we were too far away to make out any boats.

This picture was meant to show the runway dead ahead, I had a ‘pilots eye’ view as we came into land, I must say it reminded me of the early versions of Microsoft’s flight simulator, but scarier. You get to see a lot more forest harvesting from a plane, but it seems to be managed very well here, and most of this is second growth anyway, and will be very responsibly re-planted I understand.

A taxi was waiting for me at the airport and 30 minutes later a very interesting  Berber Algerian driver dropped me off at Port McNeill where I had to kill 90 minutes before the ferry arrived. I saw a very very sad Tayana 40 in the marina, there was another large yacht (42ft+) there with a goosewing boom setup, very interesting, the mast had no shrouds at the side at all, but what might have been a running backstay. I must find out more.

30 minutes on a very pleasant ferry ride saw me stepping ashore in Sointula, I was hoping I might get a lift to the boat from a passing car, but no luck, it was now late, very dark, and all the cars were tucked away for the night, so I dragged my bags the 2kms to the harbour. As I turned the corner I could make out the mast of Sister Midnight, always a good sign!

Once I was down at the boat I could see Jim had done a good job looking after her, she looked just as I left her last October. 

I was soon onboard and pleased to see she was dry and quite clean. There was a  general film of light mildew over a lot of the surfaces, but I soon had my bags on board, the fridge up and running and the eberspacher heater running. Sea cocks were opened and I could now use the sink and the head. I unpacked the bedding, made a bed and went to sleep happy.

I had sent an new windlas out to the boat from the UK and Jim had taken delivery and left it on the boat for me.

Thursday morning, it was raining all day, but I wasn’t bothered, a trip to the office to let them know I was here, enlightened me to the fact that their wifi system for the harbour was down and might be so for several weeks, I’m glad I bought the virgin contract, but will need to find more wifi for the bigger downloads. I spent the day getting the boat habitable, I washed down all the surfaces in the V berth and along the starboard side of the main cabin. I removed the covers off the boat to let some light in and reflated the rather sad looking dinghy. I cleaned the galley surfaces and later in the day walked down to the co-op to get more food in. Finally I dragged the bikes out of the quarter berth, put the sails out on deck to make space and retired to cook a lovely dinner before typing this blog. 

Paul Collister

Finally the time came to leave the laid back island of Sointula for home. It’s a shame as the weather had just picked up and sunshine was planned for the next few weeks. As you can see below the autumnal  colours were just coming into play and I would have loved to spend another month there.

We stowed everything away on the boat, the bikes where the last items to go below, wrapped up in bags I made from the old staysail and we made our way to the airport in Port Hardy.

Jim, who is looking after our boat for the next 6 months kindly drove us and our bags to the ferry port where we caught a boat over to Port McNeill on Vancouver island. From there we took a small 16 seater plane down to Vancouver Airport (south).

It wasn’t easy to catch a plane home the same day due to ferry/plane schedules so we opted to have a night/morning in Vancouver City and check it out. Below is the Gas man, apparently called this because of his long epilogues, I wonder if this has a connection with the Irish term ‘A gas man’ This is the steam powered clock in the city’s Gas district on the waterfront. And these guys must make most Canadians groan in the way I do whenever an American film on the UK has the obligatory red bus/ telephone box and beat bobby. There’s no shortages of tourist gift stores in this area, much like every city we have ever visited. However a lot of the gifts were high quality and if I was richer, everyone might have got Vancouver branded clothing for christmas.So we had a pleasant dinner in a grand railway station building at the Waterfront station then headed off to the airport where we got a budget flight home on Air Transat. The 9 hour flight went quite quickly and we were soon back in dreary Manchester on the train home to Liverpool.

It was nice to be home, but I returned from my one year absence to no telephone/internet, no hot water or heating and a too high percentage of rugs and clothes destroyed by moths.
Communications systems should be back online on Monday when I get fibre installed, the heating engineer should have sourced a new water pump by Tuesday, and I start the Great Moth Recovery program tomorrow.

I still have a view of the water (River Dee/Irish Sea) from my living room, but already miss the scenes from British Columbia.

Kathy may post a final blog, but I don’t think much will happen boatwise/blog now for 6 months.
When I return to work on the boat in April, I will be preparing it for a summer, which I think will mostly be in north BC, maybe even as far north a Juneau in Alaska, then before it gets too cold we will whiz south towards Mexico as previously planned.

Thanks for following our travels and all the positive comments and support we have had.

Paul Collister

 

Sunset last night

Starter Motor Problems

If you’re not likely to get excited by Starter motors or Rust, you can skip this post altogether as it’s really dull

A couple of times in the last week the starter motor failed to start the engine. The Starter motor whirred away very fast, but wasn’t connecting to the engine, so the engine couldn’t start.

The bible on such matters, Nigel Calder’s maintenance book suggested tapping it with a hammer, I had already tried this without any luck, but he wisely suggested to do it while the starter was turning. This worked on two occasions, but today it had no effect.

Being anchored in a very quiet deserted calm bay, with no phone signal, no harbours within 20 miles we were basically stuffed, the only option being to put out a pan pan on the VHF and hope one of the passing boats 15 miles away in the Johnstone Strait would hear. I could just make out the weather forecast on the VHF and they were predicting a gale for later in the day so I had hoped to be at our next port before then.

So it was that I started the task of extracting the starter motor from the engine. Mr Calder had explained the principle of the spiral grove that the cog runs along so that centrifugal force causes it to engage, and that I probably just needed to clean that up and all would be ok.

I took a photo of the wiring, so I could put it all back together, removed the connections, and unbolted the three bolts holding it in. Of course it wouldn’t come out, I tapped it with the hammer, tried to rotate it, but all to no avail. Back to Mr Calders book, and sure enough he says if it won’t come out, give it a ‘smart tap with a hammer to free it’. Obviously I must have been doing ‘dumb taps’. So I returned with the hammer and gave it the smartest tap I could muster and sure enough it moved a little and I could easily yank it out. At this point I could see a trail of dried saltwater/rust all the way from the salt water cooling pump down to area around the starter. I had not been able to see this from other angles, but assumed it was related to the small leak I had spotted on the front of the pump the other day. Minor, but I planned to fix this when I do the engine service next week.

Next my favourite part, stripping it down. I love taking mechanical things apart, but usually this is only when they are disposable, as I can rarely put them back together properly. This time I was careful to mark what went where and to take pictures where there might be doubt / memory loss later.

Looking at the motor it was clear what the book said about rust being the problem. The engaging mechanism, I think this might be called the Bendix, was quite rusty, as was the whole area that sat under the engines big cog (Flywheel?). Mr Calder explains that sea water in the bilge under the engine can splash up and the flywheel can squirt it all around and in particular into the starter motor. More on this later.

I was able to take it all apart quite easily, clean it up, and with a combination of WD40, oil then grease, have the cogs that had initially seemed almost seized, to be whizzing around now with no problem.

It only took 3 attempts to reassemble, just because bolts can all look the same doesn’t actually mean they are!

I was feeling quite confident the job was done, next I had to fit the starter back into the engine, lots of jiggling and it eventually was back bolted to the engine, now the big problem was what to do with the wires. Looking at the photo didn’t help, it didn’t cover the area I needed. There where two studs coming out of the back of the starter that didn’t seem to have wires connected to them, yet I had removed the nuts off them so they must have connections, oh dear. Lots of staring at them, reading manuals and checking in the bible didn’t enlighten me, so I connected the wires I was sure about, i.e. the big red ones that go to the solenoid, and tried the starter.

Voila, the engine spun into life, I shut it down, and then I realised there was a sound of trickling water, as if the tap had been left on, Kathy could hear it as well from the other end of the cabin. Looking into the engine, water was trickling from under the water pump and down the side of the engine. So now I knew the cause of the starter motor rust problem, and felt happier, but what was wrong with the pump?

The Water Pump.
This guy pumps sea water around the heat exchanger which cools the fresh water pumped around the engine, and he was leaking a lot.

I decided to leave it until we reached another port where I could get to help if needed, I figured it had been leaking for a few days, the engine was staying cool, so we could continue.
Once we arrived in Alert Bay, with wifi and shops/ferry to a big town, I had a go at repairing the pump. As always there’s always one fastener that won’t budge, and it was a big bolt that had previously had its head rounded off. It took me an hour to get this out, then I found I didn’t have a spare so had to fabricate one from some studding.

The pump cleaned up ok, but it took a while to find the correct pump in the workshop manual as there are two different types used depending on age.Further inspection revealed that I didn’t have any spares, even though I couldn’t see any wear on the rubber o-ring that was in there, and the diagram didn’t show any other seals. I filled the chamber with water and nothing dripped out. I wondered if perhaps the pipes feeding/taking water to the pump were leaking at the join and the water being squirted to the back of the pump. Unlikely, but it was my only hope for a quick repair.
Before refitting the pump I tried to clear up the areas the salty sea had been spraying. Cleaning the hose that feeds water into the transmission oil cooler saw water squirting out, closer inspection revealed a hole in the cooler, caused I expect by the leak above.

For now I have put some tape over the hole, I’m going to have to replace the cooler at some point soon.
Once it was cleaned and re-assembled I started her up. Usually it takes a while to prime, but this time the water was flowing rapidly out to the exhaust, however it was still running out of the back of the pump as well.

I’m going to have to take the next trip to Sointula, our final destination this year, carefully. When I return in April next year I shall bring a new pump and cooler.
I may need to start thinking about a new engine, but that’s a pricey game I don’t want just yet.

Alert Bay is a fascinating place with a great First Nation Cultural centre, More on that in another post. The town is old and the harbours have some very interesting boats, and a lot of very sad neglected ones too.

Paul Collister

After our trip to Princess Louisa Inlet we returned to Egmont, this time to the public wharf where I messed up the mooring, I had assumed that as the tide was flooding I would be pushed away from the boat we were rafting to, so got really close, as it turned out the tide was running the other way, so my bow was pushed onto the boats quarter, and my stern was soon pushed onto the boat behind him. How embarrassing, I thought I was getting better at this. However the tide wasn’t strong and we pushed off, the fenders prevented any damage, but as always some part of my boat wanted to leave me for the other boat, and in this case it was the barbeque that was trying to merge with some steelwork on the other boat. A good push and we were all sorted. The reason the current was the opposite to what I expected was due to it reversing direction near the shore, I should have considered this especially given the name of the marina next door ‘BackEddy Marina’.
The other thing I have learnt here is that often the top of the water, sometimes a foot or more deep can be freshwater that doesnt mix with the saltwater below, and this can cause confusion in currents. Logs can also float on the saltwater and be a foot or more under the surface, but this boat has such a large and deep underwater surface, that it really can grip the currents there that you often don’t see on the surface.

We decided to spend an extra day and visit the Sechelt/Skookumchuck rapids, which were going to be running at 14 knots, if I couldn’t motor through one, at least I could watch it.
It was a great one hour walk through a forest to get there.

The rapids were impressive, and a few fast motor boats were racing back and forth through them, I guess it can get boring around here.

From Egmont we headed northwest to Lund, the only place with a decent grocery store and fuel supply before we headed into Desolation sound.

Like most places we visited, being in the shoulder season it was quiet and we had a whole pontoon to ourselves. For some reason I don’t understand, there was a Scottish Ceilidh planned for that night in the pub, you can see the musicians with their bagpipes below. We opted for a lovely restaurant the other side of the cove and sadly missed the bagpipes 😉

We stayed an extra night here as well as it was so peaceful and relaxing, but soon enough we were on our way to Prideaux Haven in the area known as Desolation Sound. This is considered to be one of the most beautiful areas in the whole of the inside passage, certainly it looked lovely, but I think we had already been spoiled by princess Louisa inlet. 

We anchored in a deserted spot at the end of the bay, whith a couple of yachts off in the distance.

The next day we headed over to Pendrell Sound, this is supposed to be one of the warmest waters around. Partly as it isn’t flooded by the pacific waters every day, also as it’s a dead end, but has a shore, the water heats up more. I needed warm water as I planned to dive on the boat and clean the prop and bow thruster, the prop is not working 100% and the bow thruster hardly works at all. I did dive, and I don’t know who said the waters were warm, presumably an eskimo, as it was freezing. I couldn’t find my wetsuit which didn’t help. The prop didn’t look too bad, but was too deep for me to work on in the cold, so I focussed on cleaning the bow thruster prop with a bent teaspoon which allowed me to get around the back of the prop blades where all the growth was. That worked out well and I have a lot more thrust from it now.
The hotter and very clear water is great for oysters and besides the oyster farms lining the coast here, there were zillions of shells covering the shoreline rocks.

I was worried about slicing the dinghy on them when we went ashore, but it wasn’t a problem 

We dinghied around the head of the inlet amazed at how deep and clear the water was. The cliffs are very fiord like and go down to the water quite steeply and continue down just as steep.

The next day we headed off to Teakerne Arm, Captain Vancouver spent two weeks anchored here recuperating from the horrendous time he was having in Desolation Sound, he gave it that name more because of his mental state at the time, we thought it was a fantastic place, but it was sunny for us, he was there in storms, and couldn’t find anywhere to anchor, eventually getting into Teakerne Arm. My main reason for for visiting this Arm was simply because if he spent so long here, it can’t have been that bad. As it turned out it was a great spot with wonderful waterfalls at the head.Anchoring was fun, three boat lengths from the shore it is 60m deep, two boat lengths off it’s 20m. so we dropped the hook in 30m and reversed until the anchor gripped the side of the near vertical wall below us. We ran a stern tie ashore, tightened up on the chain and the anchor seemed happy. 

We had towed the dinghy for the first time since Malaysia, and headed off to explore a trail that leads to a large lake up above  that feeds the waterfalls, it was a good climb and at the top of the waterfalls we spotted this winch, used, I presume, for pulling logs from the lake over the top of the waterfall and down to below to be rafted up in log booms.

In a small cove beside the waterfall we spotted a house that seemed to be in trouble.The following morning we pushed on to Blind Channel, this was slightly challenging as we had to pass through three sets of rapids, Yaculta, Gillard & Dent, each about 2 miles apart. We were going against a flood tide, so to make the first rapid at slack water meant we would be 30 minutes late for the last rapid. So we aimed to get to the first on the end of the ebb, and race through arriving at the middle rapids just before slack and the final and most dangerous rapids at Dent at slack water. I spent an hour working out tides and passage planning, we ended up having to leave at 07:30 and we arrived just 15 minutes early at 11:38, we dawdled for 10 minutes then went for it. Everything went well right up until the last set of rapids, Dent, featuring the scarily named ‘Devils Hole whirlpool’, which the pilot says “Those who have looked into the Devils hole won’t ever want to revisit it”. Just as we approached I saw a tug emerging but couldn’t yet see its tow. The tugs rarely are pointing, or even travelling in the same direction as their tow, and require a very wide berth. I had to steer to starboard a lot to miss him and that put our course directly over ‘Devils Hole’, looking through the binoculars I couldn’t see any holes in the water so we pushed on, I was soon able to scoot around the back of the tow and hugged the coast, just missing the hole, which just looked like flat water to me. Yet again, my timing worked out well, except for the fact we had another 2 hours of sailing to go, and when I looked on the chart 2 hours later, I saw Greene Point rapids coming up in a few minutes. I hadn’t even realised they were there. Kathy took the helm, slowed us down, while I scanned the pilot books and found out they can be quite dangerous on spring tides, and we were bang on the highest tides and arriving at maximum flood, the worst time. I couldn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about as we approached and decided we should give it a whirl anyway, we turned into the turbulent waters and headed for the resort we could see in the distance. Everything worked out well, besides one bit of a shove and a splash of waves on the boat we were through. It was only later that I worked out the chart was wrong and the rapids were over to our starboard side as we turned to port, missing the worst of it.

Arriving at Blind Channel was easy enough, despite a strong current from the rapids running through the pontoons, the manager here helped us with our lines and we were soon tied up and basking in the lovely hot sunshine. The resort is family run and you can see they have put a lot of love and effort into making it a gorgeous relaxing place. The restaurant was shut as we are well and truly off season now. One other yacht was stranded here waiting for a water pump to be shipped, but besides them we had the place to ourselves.

A walk along the beach revealed this old winch, again used for logging. A trip through the forest led to a 600 year old cedar tree. I sent a postcard to an old friend from here, and the very next day the postman turned up in their plane to collect the mail and deliver new mail. We really are in the middle of nowhere here, It’s a big island, but has no electric, water or telephone. Electricity comes from a generator and a water powered turbine that makes use of the strong currents here. Water from a brook. Amazingly the internet is very good, but I think that is via satellite. I had wondered how you tie up a plane to a dock?It seems a round turn and one half hitch is all that’s needed!

We saw a few creatures on the way here and around the marina. I dropped them into a little video below.

Tomorrow we head of towards Siontula, taking in a few more towns and anchorages on the way.

Paul Collister

Tuesday the 11th of September saw us leave Port Townsend for Canada. We crossed the Straits of Juan de Fuca and headed into the safety of the San Juan Islands. These are a group of islands close to the Canadian border, they belong to America, but could have easily have been Canadian if the circumstances had been slightly different. I believe the USA thought of them as a very strategic place to control the waters around the straits and the routes north towards Alaska.
We anchored in Parks Bay, a lovely secluded spot and very secure from wind and waves, however there is nowhere to go ashore, as in so many places around here, the land bordering the water has been bought up and built on. I think there may be a right to access below the high water mark, but that would just allow you to walk up to the “PRIVATE- GO AWAY” signs you see along the way. To be fair, both Canada and the USA have an amazing amount of very well kept public marine parks in this area.

From Parks bay we left the San Juan islands and motored over to the Canadian coast on Vancouver Island to the town of Sidney. Here we could clear into the country. We had checked on the restrictions again for what food is allowed in and what is restricted, potatoes being the main problem. Kathy always travels with a few handy spuds, so these had to be consumed. We ate a lot of potatoes that morning. Kathy was also a little over on the wine quota so she put a good effort into that issue the previous night. As it turned out, we arrived, called customs on the dock phone and was asked a few questions and then told we were cleared in and to enjoy our stay. No visits, no searches, Job done. (Just realised I’m repeating a bit of the last post)

I loved this boat, looked like it had sailed through a time vortex into this century from some distant past.

They like to keep their boats out of the rain here in SidneyAfter two days in Sidney, a town with a lot of book shops, we had to leave as the marina was booked up for a regata, we had gone there to have a break and enjoy Kathy’s birthday, we had hoped to find a good Indian restaurant, but the only one there had closed down. So we had to move along the coast to Van Isle marina which was also quite a posh affair, but a few miles out of the main town. It did have a lot of marinas and boat repair yards, I wandered around and found two chandleries, one with a load of Sikaflex (Marine Sealant) at a silly low price, I had to buy two tubes, even though I don’t think I can use them before their ‘use by date’

That night we celebrated Kathy’s birthday in the plush restaurant overlooking the marina.

The next morning we left early and headed out to Pirates cove marine park which I had hoped to be a bit deserted as it’s a very small area and quite shallow. when we arrived it was chocca, we motored around pondering what to do, passing between the anchored boats so close that we had a few conversations with those sitting enjoying the peaceful surroundings from their cockpits. Eventually I decided we should try out the new rope I had bought specifically for this scenario where we need a stern tie. This setup can be achieved in several ways, but we decided to drop our anchor, get it to set, then reverse over to the shore and tie the boats stern to a metal chain and ring thoughtfully provided by the park. Some people do it the other way around, but I can see problem with ropes getting tangled up that way. The big problem was getting the anchor to set, there was so little room to manoeuvre, and a boat lay just in front of us and another already stern tied on our side that we could only get about ten metres of chain out in 5 metres of water with about 2 metres for us to reverse and test the anchors set. We did this but I was not convinced how well we had set. Thankfully our neighbour jumped in his dinghy and motored over and took our line ashore, passed it through the ring and returned it to us, saving me the bother of lowering our dinghy. here you can see how close to the shore we got, at low water the next morning we were about ten foot from the shore, with about 40ft in front to the anchor, yet we held, even with a good breeze in the night.

The main reason for going to Pirates cove was that it was just an hour from Dodd Narrows, as I mentioned before, a quite scary pass where the currents run fast and dangerous. we needed to pass through around 9am so this was a great spot to leave from. As it turned out, there was no drama, passing through at slack water makes life very easy.

From there we scooted north west to Boho Bay on Lasqueti Island. A beautiful picturesque spot. very calm and shallow so I was able to anchor in 5 metres of water between a rock face and a big rock with a fish farm thing just off to the side.

Early the next morning we were on the move again, Lasqueti is about half way across the Strait of Georgia and we needed to get right over to the North eastern side in order to visit Desolation sound and the other back channels that we had heard so much about. Around this time I asked Kathy to check out if there was anywhere she really wanted to see, or could find any ‘must see’ places on the net, she quickly came up with the idea to visit Prince Louisa Inlet, a small inlet of outstanding beauty with a giant waterfall at the head called Chatterbox Falls. Looking at the chart, this was an easy diversion from here, so we headed north and cut through the Agamemnon channel up to Jervis Inlet which lead to our inlet.
Going up  Agamemnon meant we had to pass under two sets of overhead high voltage power cables, the chart said 35 metres clearance, now I need 14 metres so there’s no problem, unless I’m getting confused and I need 35 and they were 14, and what about the height of the tide. I knew there was no issue, yet I still checked my numbers and then double checked, it was only the next day that I read you should leave at least 5 metres gap as the voltage can jump that far from the cables to your mast. The idea of the mast hitting 100,000 + volt cables doesn’t bear thinking about.  As we passed under the cables they just seemed to get lower and lower, I really don’t think I could ever do the intercoastal waterway up the eastern side of the USA as so many of the bridges there are just a little bigger than my mast and I think I would freak at each one. However we passed through and looking back felt a bit silly as for some reason now they seemed to be about a mile up in the sky. Around here we passed another sailing boat who was making about 1 knot under sail, there was next to no wind. I admired him for not rushing and burning fuel like us. He was sitting in his boat saying to himself “Sister Midnight, I know that name…??”

Turning to starboard at the top of Agamemnon we made to the government wharf at Egmont, thinking it would be the cheapest option. I took the time to check the pilot books about entering the bay and was shocked to find it right next to the Sechelt rapids or Skookumchuck Narrows, a very serious stretch of water as I will explain later. I checked my tables and saw that the current would be flowing at ten knots through the rapids and wondered how bad the current would be at the wharf. Sideways currents can be a pain when docking. We were passing a small marina / resort in Backeddy with fuel just before the wharf, so pulled over to fill up, while there they told me they were in the ‘shoulder season’ now and rates dropped, so we tied up there for the night and walked down to Egmont which had a shop, and the smallest post office in Canada. On a side note I have noticed a tendency for many countries to have multiple instances of the smallest whatever all over the country, I have visited the smallest house in England while in Cornwall and also in the lake district, I’m sure there are other contenders too. While we were at Egmont checking out the wharf we had intended to visit, we saw a yacht arriving, in fact the one we passed under the pylons. I watched to see how he would cope with the pontoons being full and nowhere to raft on the public visitor side. He wandered around a bit then rafted to a fishing boat in the private area. We went to the shop and waited for it to open to get some supplies. kathy sat outside on the bench which seems to be a bit on the ‘well made’ side.We headed down to the pontoons to see how it all worked when we met the sailor heading up to the shop, I stopped and asked him if he was the skipper on the yacht that just arrived, he said yes and we chatted, I told him we had passed him under the pylons and he told us he  was down from Sointula and I explained that we were heading up there. At this point he realised why he thought he knew Sister Midnight, he asked my full name, then introduced himself as Jim the guy I had been emailing with over the last few months as he was going to be looking after our boat while we returned to the UK. he had just sailed down here for a few days exploring. Quite a coincidence. We bumped into him later in the grocery store, but that was less of a coincidence as the grocery store was the only shop for 5 miles and there was nothing else to do 🙂

Walking around the dock we saw a lot of very sad neglected boats.

We walked back to Backeddy and had a lovely meal in the resort restaurant.

When we arrived it was lovely and sunny but in the morning the fog had descended and I worried if we would be ably to make the 35 miles up to Princess Louisa Inlet, but a local arrived in a small skiff and he told me the fog was only around the marina and was caused by the colder water you get around the rapids. We set off and sure enough the fog was very isolated around the marina, the pic below is looking  back to the marina from about a mile away.

We now headed north up Jervis Inlet, a long 35 mile fiord like passage that ends in a small bay. Captain Vancouver had traversed this route in the late 18th Century looking for the north west passage to the Atlantic. He was disappointed yet again, but he also missed the inlet to the Prince Louisa Inlet which as you can see below is not very wide. The entrance leads to the Malibu rapids, again not recommended at full flood. We arrived at slack water and passed through into an even more striking fiord like passage. 

 

Hard to believe this fills and empties through that little opening

At the head of this inlet is the famous chatterbox Falls, in June the sheer mountainside vertical walls all along the inlet are flowing with waterfalls We found space on a public dock maintained by the park authorities. I’m not used to having to moor next to planes but I just treated it like a boat and all went wellThe small float plane had just arrived with a bride and groom and photographer for some wedding shots in front of the waterfall, after those shots they pranced around on the pontoon for ages before shooting off in the plane. Watching the plane go round and round in circles to gain enough height to clear the mountains made me realise just how high these granite walls reached. The next day a big motor launch $4.5Million dollars worth, arrived and I helped the skipper by taking his stern lines, we chatted and he had seen my “Liverpool” reg on the hull and explained his guests on the boat were two ladies from the UK, so later we were surprised when two giggly northern women turned up, banging on our hull and insisting we join them for drinks on the mega yacht, one of them was from Preston, the other frm Nottingham. We had a nice time chatting with them and a few other guests on the boat,  a very luxurious affair, I noted the kitchen was way better than my own, and I’m talking about the one in my house!

Later that evening we all went over to the hut on the shore, set-up for people to have barbeques, the ship’s crew built a great bonfire, using lots of petrol on the wet wood they found.  Today we left Princess Louisa Inlet early to pass the rapids at slack water, this time at low tide, making the channel even narrower. On the way out we saw some new waterfalls that had been dry on the way in.

This time we went back to Egmont Public wharf, and tied up to the same fishing boat that Jim had tied up to when he was there. One reason he had gone there was to take the 5 km hike to the rapids from the wharf, he had timed it to see the rapids flowing at 12 knots, we are going to do the same tomorrow, but the rapids will be running at 14 knots and the wind will be up so it should be impressive. Many lives have been lost in these rapids, just a few years ago the local search and rescue volunteers, an organisation like the RNLI did some exercises in the rapids and lost two of their crew when the boat capsized and the two women were trapped underneath. More details are here .

Oh I nearly forgot, I celebrated my 60th birthday in the Inlet to the sound of chatterbox Falls, with some lovely presents from Kathy.

Paul Collister