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