When we originally cleared customs in Port Angeles, Washington back in September, the customs officer asked how long we'd like the permit to be - we laughed and told him that we intended to be in Mexico before Christmas. He nodded and said

"I'll just give you a couple of extra months anyway, just in case you run into bad weather..."

I guess he must had some experience with that sort of thing...

Anyway! On to the photos!

San Diego at sunset with fog rolling in downtown

San Diego, despite being a bizarre mix of old-money Republicans and impressionable young military personnel from the midwest, had its moments of beauty. Click this photo for the full-size version; check out the sunbeams reflecting off the mirrored buildings and through the early evening fog bank!

a frankenstein part I built for the water maker

At no point did we expect that the water maker install would be simple, but I have to admit I  was expecting all of the parts to be readily available. That wasn't really the case, and I had to build this fitting to attach the product water feed to the tank inlet, while also adding a vent line so that the water maker water feed will never see more than 3psi in back pressure - apparently that would irreversibly damage the water maker membrane, which is a very expensive replacement.

the remains of the impeller

One night just before Christmas, just prior to having the water maker up and running, we decided to make a run to the fuel dock to fill up our water tanks. We made it out of the A9 anchorage and around the corner a few hundred meters when suddenly our engine alarms started screaming...

We blew the seals on one of our freshwater pumps on the way down - it was still working, but leaking coolant. I had a guy in San Diego rebuild the pump ($50 instead of a $400 new pump), but when I reattached the pump I didn't properly bleed the air out of the coolant lines. A brand-new impeller was just spinning away with nothing to pump, and it was destroyed within minutes.

Mostly I'm impressed with myself, that I was able to determine the cause of the problem and fix it within about an hour, without having to call for help or even consult any manuals. That kind of thing really helps with a person's confidence in taking their vessel far offshore.

the bridge to Tijuana

As it turns out, Tijuana is a $2.50 public-transit train ride from downtown San Diego, and so we decided to take a brief day trip south of the border. Tijuana is everything that I dislike about Mexico, condensed into a single city - a stark contrast to La Paz, which is absolutely nothing like it.

a spraypainted "zebra"

Between hundreds of shopkeepers (all bafflingly selling the exact same items for the same prices) yelling at us to come into their stores and restaurant owners offering cheap tequila (followed by "I've got something for your nose, amigo!"), there were random street "displays". This one, a burro spray painted with zebra stripes, was apparently available for tourists to take their photo with... for a fee, of course.

laundry day

The first step to arriving in a new city is to figure out where the basics are coming from - internet, showers, groceries, laundry, etc. Most of the facilities were a good five kilometres away from the anchorage, however, so we made the most of our time and split up the tasks between us. This is Miya, with all of our laundry packed into a series of heavy dry bags and our collapsible pull cart, headed for the laundromat.

one of the acrobatic mackerel

In my last post, I began by describing hundreds of tiny acrobatic fish hurling themselves at the side of the boat. Later that day I discovered that several of the fish had leapt into the dinghy! The internet told us that these fish were mackerel, but unfortunately it also told us that you should never eat fish that you've found dead; there would be no way to know how long the fish had been dead. Pity I hadn't looked into the dinghy earlier, these little guys would have made for a delicious breakfast.

Miya at the masthead

One of the biggest projects I wanted to have completed before leaving offshore was the ham radio install. This required several trips up the mast; one to affix a temporary backstay (length of steel cable holding up the mast) to measure the length of the new antenna, one to take down the temporary backstay, and one to affix the new backstay.

After hoisting me up the mast with our largest winch, Miya decided that it would be easier for both of us if she went up and I manned the winch.

the pelican mafia

The pelicans in San Diego were pretty much completely unafraid of humans, and would regularly surround our boat during their fishing expeditions. A few times they almost appeared threatening...

yup, it's grand

When we realized that the Grand Canyon was a short-ish eight-hour car ride away, and that we'd be unlikely to be anywhere near as close to it every again, we decided to take a few days and go on a road trip. Despite the cold January air, the canyon was everything that television and movies made it out to be: a very large, very beautiful hole in the ground.

pretty steep drop there

obligatory awful tourist take-our-photo shot

This is us enjoying the last moments of  warm sunshine, just prior to the sun falling below the horizon and sending us sprinting for the car and warm sweaters. The desert gets COLD at night!

heiroglyphs in the painted desert

The canyon was nice, but to be honest we preferred the drive through the Painted Desert and the strolls through the petrified forests. If you click this photo and look right at the centre, you can see the 6000-year-old drawings on the side of this boulder, known as "Newspaper Rock".

continuing our world tour

Miya and I have a habit of visiting places with identical names to larger, more famous places; in 2011 we visited Moscow and Paris, both in Idaho.

salvation mountain!

Salvation Mountain, at the entrance to Slab City (as seen in the movie "Into The Wild") was probably the highlight of the epic January road trip. The life's work of a devout born-again Christian artist, the mountain is made from found materials, mostly dirt, hay bales, wood and leftover paint... lots and lots of paint.

Slab City was fascinating as well, though less photogenic - a squatter community in the desert, completely off the grid and self-reliant, on concrete slabs left over from an abandoned military base. I could see myself spending time there, especially if it were with a group of like-minded adventurers.

Rich recording voiceovers

Following the trip to Arizona, we jumped a plane and headed to Vancouver to help throw Sequential Circus 10, an event series that I've been throwing (well, with the heavy assistance of a group of close friends and dedicated volunteers) for the past five years or so. In this photo, Rich Hamakawa is recording voiceovers (in the booth, the vocal talents of France Perras) for use as the introductions on each of the podcast recordings. Sitting in the TopFloorUnderground studios with good friends and a bottle of nice tequila is a fine way to spend an afternoon.

photo by Luke Szczepanski

I have to admit, we do throw a helluva party. This is Drew 'Vespers' Betts performing for a packed dancefloor. All of the performances at Sequential Circus shows are live acts.

another excellent photo by Luke Szczepanski

Much fun was had by all - thanks for the great photos, Luke! Much more of his most excellent work can be found on his Flickr site.

Miya working on the garden

Back to San Diego and back to the grind - with only a few short days left until we left, I had my hands full with important travel-related boat projects, like finishing the water maker install and getting the ham radio up and running and retrieving up-to-date weather info. Miya took advantage of the boat being in "project mode" to make a mess on the deck, building her custom garden boxes. It's worth noting that Miya's blog, http://www.thenomadist.com, has lately been far more up-to-date than my own.

installing the through-hull for the water maker

The hardest part of the install was the through-hull that needed to be installed below the waterline. Normally this would require a haul out, but we decided to try it in the water. I plugged the new brass scoop fitting with a small softwood plug, got all the tools and fittings ready, and then did the unthinkable: I drilled a hole into the bottom of the boat directly into the ocean!

I figured that given the balmy San Diego weather the water would be warm enough to do the install in just my swimsuit, but once I jumped in I quickly changed my mind and switched to my wetsuit. In the end verything went smoothly, and overall we only had about four litres of seawater pour into the bilge.

project day, viewed from above

The project days were fruitful, and if you click into this photo you can see many of them on the go - the flippers on the deck from the water maker install, the detritus from the garden construction, pillows out on the bow nets to air out, the blue bins of winter clothes out in preparation for cold offshore nights, the new Achilles dinghy and the old Zodiac dinghy alongside our venerable folding "beater" row dinghy... so much going on in this photo!

And that brings us to the end of January! One more blog post to go and I should be actually up to date and back to posting about things as they happen, instead of posting about them two months later...

We've entered another one of these infuriating "hurry up and wait" scenarios, as a result of my carelessness while working on the steering system. I was removing a sprocket when it got away from me and clattered down the centerboard trunk and into the ocean. Given that we're anchored in soft mud in about 10m of water the chances of finding a heavy 10cm chunk of dark bronze were pretty slim, but we had a diver go down twice to look anyway. The replacement part is on rush delivery from Ontario and will hopefully arrive in the next few days.

The big question now is whether or not we've missed our weather window to head out into the open ocean, or whether the big storm winds of October and November are upon us. Traditionally, the end of October is the absolute cutoff time for heading out on an offshore passage south from the Pacific Northwest, but what with the changing weather patterns of the past couple of years it's anyone's guess.

Too much has happened lately to give a full rundown, so I will return once more to a pictorial style of blogging; here are a few snapshots of life over the past few weeks..:

Chad Taylor and Dan Ross jamming on the bows

During the last weeks leading up to the final departure, we spent as much time as possible hanging out with friends, enjoying what little summer Vancouver had to offer up this year. With so many projects to complete, perfect moments like this were rare but treasured.

installing spreader lights, repairing the steaming light

Most of the boat projects were one-man jobs, but Miya had to winch me up the mast several times for minor repairs. The next time we haul out I will likely run a few more wires up to the masthead; it'd be a much better place to mount the Ubiquity Bullet router and high-gain wireless antenna than the current location on the aft cabin roof, for instance, and someday I'd like to mount a webcam up there as well.

Jared and Thu departing on S/V Resolution

Our friend Jared has been working on his boat 'Resolution' for the past year or so, and left about ten days before we did for San Francisco.  He's taken a few different routes than we have; going with a smaller monohull for instance, installing davits and monster solar panels and choosing a SatPhone instead of radio communications. It's been very interesting to watch another geek take on the challenges of living aboard on his own terms.

electrical room overhaul completed!

I've finally gotten the electrical room into a state that I can consider "finished". New features since the last photos - a smart alternator regulator on the far left, and a homebrew fuel polishing system on the bottom left, comprised of a pair of Racor diesel fuel filters and a Reverso fuel pump. The polishing system should help keep our engine Maude healthy even in the third world, where fuel quality can be questionable at best. Incidentally, since the last cooling system overhaul she's been running like a top!

On the extreme left you can see a little piece of the yet-to-be-installed Spectra Ventura 150 watermaker; the next compartment over houses our water system, and that project will be a fun challenge I'm sure... it will require a haulout to finish as the watermaker will need two new through-hull fittings, one for seawater intake and one for brine discharge.

first aid kit, populated

If you're planning to head offshore, you'd best be prepared for whatever may come to pass - and the first-aid kit on TIE Fighter was not exactly anything to write home about. Taking careful notes at both a Red Cross First Aid course and a pair of Bluewater Cruising Offshore First-Aid seminar, I assembled our new kit into a bomb-proof Pelican 1550EMS case which should survive anything that we throw at it. The kit contains everything from happy-face bandaids to hardcore prescription antibiotics and injectable painkillers.

An awesome first-aid kit is only half the battle though; Miya and I have enrolled in a Wilderness First Responder first aid course in San Francisco in October, which is an intensive 80-hour course covering emergency first aid in remote scenarios where professional help might not be coming right away.

the middle of the Georgia Straight at sunset

Once we finally got away, the stress of getting ready to leave didn't fall away as easily as planned. We were off, for sure, but tensions ran a little high while we adjusted to the new state of being. The first night we pulled into an anchorage in the dark, and currents and tides and deadheads made the situation questionable, but once the full moon rose everything came into focus. Waking up the next morning everything was much clearer.

freezing on watch

Neither of us were prepared for the realities of sailing in September; I think we were both spoiled by the 29º temperatures in Vancouver the days leading up to the grand departure. All of our winter clothes were packed away in tupperware containers in the amas, but those were quickly pulled out as it became apparent that gloves, hats and scarves would be necessary. We are very glad to have high-quality foul weather gear, and look forward to soon sailing in warm waters.

raising the courtesy flag

Before clearing customs into a new country, a vessel should fly a yellow flag - the symbol for the letter 'Q', or 'quarantine' - to indicate to the port that the vessel has not yet cleared customs but intends to. After clearing customs, the yellow flag is replaced by a flag of the country being visited, known as a 'courtesy flag'. Raising the courtesy flag of the US is something I had been looking forward to for a very long time, as it marks a huge milestone in this adventure!

morning in Neah Bay

Neah Bay, at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, is the last safe harbour before heading out into the open Pacific Ocean. It is a small Makah indian reservation with a population of about 700 people, but we are still able to steal internet access from several open wireless networks using our high-powered antenna and router. The bay is wild and beautiful, with loons calling in the night and thick fog rolling in regularly.

surface analysis for the eastern pacific ocean

This is a 'weatherfax' transmission, retrieved from the internet. This is basically our window into what's going on weather-wise on the open ocean, and once we have a working HF ham radio rig on the boat we should be able to pull down these images for free from wherever we happen to be on the ocean. Learning to interpret these images is a steep learning curve, but once you get past a few key hurdles the information becomes somewhat fascinating.

One of the things I've enjoyed most about moving onto the ocean is the amount of knowledge about the world around me that I've been forced to learn - it boggles the mind that the tides move in and out with such regularity, yet mere meters away from the ocean Vancouver has a half a million people who have no idea what phase the tide is at any given time. Similarly, I feel like I've been living with the weather for my entire life, looking up at the sky without having the foggiest (heh) idea what I've been looking at. The more I learn about how weather systems function, the more I want to know!

working on the reefing systems

While we wait for the weather to change to a more favourable window there are dozens of small projects that didn't get finished before we left Vancouver. In this photo I'm working on the reefing system; a series of ropes and pulleys and hooks that helps to get the main sail "reefed", or shortened by a third - or two thirds - in case of heavy winds. Now complete, the improved reefing system will help us to sail even when the winds blow at gale force or higher.

out in the zodiac with a local diver, gps in hand

When I dropped the sprocket from the steering system into the ocean, I essentially paralyzed us; we can't steer at all. We're not only stuck in Neah Bay, we're stuck right where we've anchored until we can replace the part or work around it somehow. Miya walked the local docks looking for a diver, and to our luck the first person she talked to offered to dive for us. Daren Akin, a local diver, went down twice to try to find the part - sadly he was unable to locate it, though the attempt was greatly appreciated!

I cannot believe I did this. I really need to rewire my brain to assign more importance to small bits of hardware when working over a big hole that leads to oblivion. You'd think I would have learned that lesson from my bicycle.

Miya playing Nintendo on a rainy afternoon

So now we're stuck, with most of the projects out of the way and a boat fully stocked and ready to travel. The delay has been a blessing in some ways, letting us finish up work that we hadn't had time for and giving us a chance to catch our breaths and adapt to the new realities of life on the road, to sleep in and prepare for the monster ten-day marathon sail down to San Francisco.

Soon the company in Ontario from whom I've purchased the replacement part for the steering column will send me the tracking number for the UPS shipment, so that I might have a better idea of when we'll be out of here - but until then, we remain at anchor.

I've been neglecting the blog, which is something I need to remedy.  In my defence, I've been very very busy.  So, in lieu of posting the ten or fifteen posts that I should have been posting all along, I'll have to just get the queue out in a very condensed fashion.

Returning to the format of the 'What I Did On My Summer Vacation' series of posts, here's a rapid-fire "clips show" of the last two months.

staring down the barrel of a yanmar diesel

I started and finished a two-week class in 'Advanced Diesel Engine Maintenance', in which we tore the above Yanmar 2QM marine diesel engine completely apart and put it all back together.  I'll probably never take the camshaft out of my Yanmar 3HM, but at least now I'm pretty sure I could if I absolutely had to.

notice to move from the Kitsilano anchorage - click for higher-res

This one warrants a blog post of its own - but then again a lot of these pics do.  This is a formal 'Notice To Move' from the Vancouver Port Authority, as delivered by the VPD while I was sitting safely and soundly at anchor just off Kitsilano Beach.  The officer explained that everyone was getting these notices as an advance move, so that if the Port Authority decided at any point to tow boats out of the harbour and impound them, they could do so without warning.  He also explained that the notices were the result of meetings between the City of Vancouver Parks Board and the Port Authority, over just who's responsibility it was to pay for the cleanup of Kitsilano Beach after anchored sailboats were blown ashore and wrecked in windstorms.

What really bugs me is that since then, talking with other liveaboards here in False Creek, it would seem that this notice was only delivered to abandoned or unattended/derelict vessels left out at the anchorage, and that I was the only liveaboard sailor to receive a notice.  Strange, especially since I feel like I've proven myself to be a responsible and conscientious mariner, and I have never been blown ashore.

The notice says that I am anchored without having seeked permission to anchor, but as of now the Harbour Master has still not replied to my email requesting permission to anchor.  I really do hope that this notice is the first and last interaction I'll have with the Port Authority, but I can't help feel a bit of foreboding.

goodbye, creamcycle. you were a good bike.

In my ongoing quest to simplify and minimize my life, I finally realized that my beloved bicycle just doesn't fit "indoors", and storing the Creamcycle outdoors all winter was slowly killing her.  There's room for a bike in the starboard ama if I arrange things very carefully but that's a lot of valuable storage space taken up, especially with the prospect of Miya also having a bike aboard.  After much research, I decided that the path forward would be to purchase a Montague Boston folding bike, and migrate all of my pro-grade components from the Creamcycle over onto the Boston frame, and vice versa, and then sell the result on Craigslist.  More on this soon.

snow drifted up against the generator

February 26th 2011 brought the first and last big snowstorm of the season.  This pic is a little difficult to make out, but if you look closely you can see the snow drifted up nearly over the cabin window, with a melted/windshaped cutout around the Honda EU2000i generator, wrapped here (as always) in a white tarp to keep the weather out.

March 4th was my 35th birthday, and we celebrated by sailing the TIE Fighter across the Georgia Straight and over to Pender Island for a weekend-long multi-birthday party with twenty or so friends in a mansion on the highest point on the island.  Seriously swank - a hot tub on the roof, and 360º view of the Gulf Islands!

Miya took this video at a particularly stressful moment during the journey across the Straight - we'd had lovely 10-15kn winds coming out of English Bay, but as we rounded UBC the winds jumped to 20-25kn and we struggled to reef the mainsail, which wasn't rigged properly for reefing.  Shortly after we succeeded, we suddenly lost steering...

The rest of the trip got steadily worse, and by the time we arrived at the west side of the Straight the wind was blowing a steady 30kn with pouring rain and 3m waves occasionally breaking over the decks.  We arrived shortly after dark on Friday night, exhausted and happy to be somewhere warm and dry - I don't think my boots dried until Sunday.

DR spraying the sails down with fresh water

We moored the boat at Otter Bay for the weekend while we relaxed at the mansion.  This pic shows Dan Ross spraying down the sails with fresh water, after being soaked with seawater.  You really shouldn't allow sails to sit with salt on them - the salt attracts moisture from the air so the sails will never really dry out completely, which is really bad for the lifespan of the sails, not to mention the probable cause of the large rust stains visible on the headsail.

new battery charger installed!

I picked up a brand new modern battery charger for a little under half price on Craigslist and installed it, finally taking control over the charging of my batteries!  Prior to this I had been charging the batteries directly from a 20a DC-DC converter, which is effective but inefficient, and very very hard on batteries.  With the new ProNautic C3 50a charger, my time to fully charge the batteries dropped from seven hours to just under three hours.  Take note of the mess of wires in the background - this was taken after I had already pulled two full laundry baskets of unused wiring out of the boat.  Apparently at least one of the former owners of the TIE Fighter had rewired the boat, but hadn't bother removing any of the old wiring!

winch maintenance begins

One thing I noticed during the Pender "sea trials" trip was that the winches on the mast had begun slipping.  I've owned the boat for over three years now and have never serviced the winches, so maintenance was definitely overdue.  I had dropped Miya and DR off at Swartz Bay, and TIE Fighter was now anchored in Sidney, BC, so I had my evenings free to work hard on boat projects.  Servicing winches is messy work but quite introspective and satisfying, much like I imagine cleaning a rifle must be.  This pic shows three of the mast winches disassembled and my first experiments with using 'Simple Green' to clean the components.  Result: 'Simple Green' does not effectively clean winch components.

the daily ritual

Being anchored in a new place makes me quickly slip into a comfortable routine.  I finally got around to repairing the broken Bodum hand-crank coffee grinder that I purchased last fall, and this pic shows my morning ritual in progress - a pot of steel-cut oatmeal and quinoa on the galley stove, with a Bialetti 'moka pot' of coffee percolating beside it, lit by a sunbeam.

new day tank, visible (barely) way in the back

Yet another project that I'd been putting off; the aft cabin furnace needed a day tank.  The hard part about diesel furnaces is that they need to be supplied with diesel fuel at about 3psi - this can be achieved with either a small electric fuel pump, or with a gravity feed from a tank stored at least four feet above the fuel intake.  The problem is that as far as I can tell, very few companies make a diesel tank with an outlet port at the bottom of the tank!  After researching the costs of having one manufactured (about $300), I found this water tank, rated for chemical storage, at the wonderful Sidney Boaters Exchange for a whopping $8.00.  Another $6.00 in parts, fittings and tie-downs and I was in business!

more splicing - the headsail sheets are now 340% better.

Evenings over the next two weeks were slow and quiet, so I got a few chances to move away from the "needs" projects a little and onto the "wants" projects.  Here's a pic of the snap shackles on the headsail sheets spliced into the sheets instead of tied in with bowline knots, and the bitter ends of the sheets backspliced.  This is not only faaaaaar more attractive, but also much smoother for tacking as there is less to catch on the inner forestay while the headsail slips across.

winches, cleaned

More detail on the winch servicing project; the acetone in the back proved to be a failure as well.  At some point a previous owner had serviced the winches by putting grease on the pawls.  Apparently - and this was news to me - putting grease on pawls is a no-no, as the grease tends to thicken and build up, eventually causing the pawls to jam.  For reference, you should only ever put oil on winch pawls; grease is fine (and recommended) for the gears, but the pawls only ever get oil.

The thick, gummy grease is difficult to get off of the components, but the ultimate solution turned out to be very simple: diesel fuel dissolves the grease and an old toothbrush cleans off the remainder. The glass and tupperware in the pic above are both full of diesel, stained an ugly greenish-black by the dissolved grease after soaking the components overnight.

winch 'spares'

While I had the winches apart, I took the opportunity to purchase a 'rebuild kit' from the local marine store, and replaced all of the pawl springs in each winch.  In this pic, the silver chicklet-looking chunky steel bits are the pawls, which are held against the gear sprockets by the little flat circular pawl springs, which causes the characteristic clatter of the winch in use.  Pawl springs wear out over time, but after cleaning the winches and replacing all the springs, my mast winches now work just like new.

mast winch mounts

The winch mounts during reassembly, after cleaning with diesel, brushes and paper towel. During this procedure it was so bitterly cold outside that I had to go back into the cabin after cleaning each mount to rub my hands together to regain feeling in my fingertips!

aft furnace installed and operational!

The aft furnace was critical during this period - prior to having the furnace working I was mostly confined to the forward cabin for pretty much everything except cooking, working my day job from either my bed or the "guest nest", which is what Miya has named the port-side single berth.

Upon first lighting of the new furnace, I nearly burned the boat down! It started up just like normal and worked great, but shortly after this photo the furnace began making a "chuffing" noise and the walls of the burn chamber started glowing red hot - I quickly shut it down, but it kept burning for a good five minutes afterwards. Apparently the diesel metering valve had been set for a much more viscous fuel, and when I measured and tuned the meter it was delivering more than three times the normal amount of fuel to the burner. Since the tuning the furnace has worked 100% as expected, keeping the aft cabin warm for days on end.

the 'boudoir' cubby, painted and shelved

Speaking of the "guest nest", here is a pic of the newly-painted and newly-shelved cubby below the port side berth, which Miya has named 'the boudoir', and we've decided is her personal storage area while she's living aboard with me.  My personal storage space is the opposite cubby, which I have dubbed 'the study'.

the yankee headsail, spread out at the sail loft

In the sail across from Vancouver, we tore the mainsail in no less than five places, mostly due to poor reefing skills but probably the fact that the sail is fifteen years old might have something to do with it.  I brought the sails in to Sidney's Leitch and Mcbride sailmakers to have it repaired and to get a quote on a replacement sail.  I was impressed with their workmanship and attention to detail, and by the personal service I received - they even picked me and the sails up from the boat, and dropped me off again afterwards.

cutting the hole for the new switch panel

The biggest project of all, while living at anchor in Sidney, was to gut and replace the entire electrical system of the boat.  This meant making final decisions on the organization and placement of the switch panels, and cutting into the walls of the cabin to install them.  Here I've discovered that the panel above the stove is only 1/4" plywood, and that I'm able to cut through it quite easily with my pocket knife.

LED lighting in the engine compartment

As a part of the electrical system upgrade, I installed LED lighting into all of the under-cockpit cubbies, with the engine compartment getting extra attention as it's probably the one where having good lighting is the most critical.  Amazing how much cleaner Maude looks with good lighting!

cubbies in the forward cabin, lit up with LED strips

The forward cabin cubbies - the 'study' and 'boudoir' - shown lit up brightly with the new LED cubby lighting system.  What a phenomenal difference it makes, having these formerly dark and dirty spaces now clean, white and bright.

a new outlet beside the bed

I only have a 400w inverter on the boat currently, but that's more than enough to run things like laptops and cellphone chargers - I really don't have much else to plug in anymore!  Still, it's nice to have the convenience of being able to plug things in wherever you are, so I've installed GFCI outlets all over the boat.  This one is only temporary - I've replaced it already with a more modern outlet that has a green LED, so that you can tell at a glance whether or not the inverter is turned on.

the finished electrical panel in the galley

The galley electrical panel installed and active! I've since also added a backlighting kit to this panel, so the panel labels glow a soft green at night. It's the little touches that really make the work feel professional, and give me great pride in having done it all myself.

the completed electrical system wiring

I'm very proud of my wiring job - apparently fifteen years of being a network tech has some boat benefits after all!  All wires to the switch panels are cut to length and terminate in double-crimped flanged spade connectors on terminator bars, all grounds are bussed together with appropriately-sized wiring, and every subsystem on the boat has an individual circuitbreaker. TIE Fighter now has a modern, well-installed electrical system, onto which I can build with confidence. Next steps: a much larger battery bank, then a powerful solar array and possibly a wind generator. The "grid" just keeps getting further and further behind me.

propane canister packed up for bicycle transport

On yet another trip to the Sidney Boater's Exchange I found a pair of nearly-new horizontally-mounted propane tanks for $100 each.  This was a great deal, as used horizontal tanks are very hard to find, and new ones are over $400 each - my propane locker can fit two twenty-pound propane tanks, but they have to be horizontal tanks, standard vertical tanks (like on a barbeque) are too tall for the locker.  Packing a propane tank home on my bicycle garnered some strange looks from the locals.

Xantrex LinkLITE installed and operational

I also picked up a Xantrex LinkLITE battery monitor, which conveniently fit into the hole from the ancient (and dead) Heart Interface battery monitor that was installed on TIE Fighter when I purchased her.  Yet another step towards complete mastery of my electrical system - a former boss of mine was fond of saying "that which gets measured, gets managed".  This is absolutely true with regards to battery life; I can now measure how much electricity the boat is using at any given moment, and know at a glance how much battery life I have left before I have to run the generator to charge back up again.

sitting on a stoop on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

After three solid weeks of heads-down work on the boat, a vacation was in order.  Miya's close friend and cousin Stacee was getting married in Puerto Rico, and Miya was the maid of honour so I was invited along as her date.  We flew to Vieques, a small rustic island about an hour east of San Juan.  Vieques is known for beautiful beaches, quiet towns and a large population of unfenced horses running free over the whole island.  At times I really felt like I was back living in Costa Rica again, and within the week my spanish came rushing back to me.

Miya, post-serenade

At some point, walking from our budget hotel towards the posh resort the wedding was being held in, we were flagged down by pensioners in a small bar by the side of the road, invited in for a drink and to listen to the locals playing music and gabbing.  Here Miya has just been serenaded with very decent spanish folk music by the man on the left, and the one-armed man on the right had just finished telling her the story of his being stabbed in the abdomen two nights earlier, on the street a block from our hotel.

first scuba dive!

We took advantage of the tourist industry on Vieques and signed up for a one-day 'Explore SCUBA' course, which took us out to the end of an unused (but heavily secured) military pier for a pair of dives.  The waters under the pier were teeming with life, and I discovered to my great relief that the sinus and inner-ear problems that plagued me as a youth have not in fact followed me into adulthood - I am able to dive after all.

click for a high-res version

I've included this pic because I think it makes an excellent desktop wallpaper; subtle and not too busy.  Click the pic - or for that matter, any of these photos - for a higher-resolution version. We saw many sea turtles, as well as several types of ray and many, many different tropical fish.

ripping around on a little Yamaha scooter

Vieques is fairly small at only about seven miles long, but we soon felt the pangs of not having our bicycles. Renting bikes was an option, but at $25/day per bike renting a motor scooter for $50/day seemed like a much better option. In the three days we had the scooter the island was opened up to us in a way that was impossible on foot, and we explored the tiny back roads of the island.

probably my favourite pic of the whole trip

There's something about the sunshine that makes everything a little easier to take... after a few days on the beach it was difficult to remember why we'd been so stressed out about all the little things back home.  This pic was taken at the "red beach", on our way back from the "green beach", where we'd discovered that tiny, vicious gnats come out in swarms as the sundown approaches.  Miya was strangely unaffected, but bites covered my arms in itchy red welts that lasted for several days.

yet another splice - this time it's rope-to-chain

A month or two ago I visited Miya in Seattle and picked up a 150' length of gorgeous barely-used eight-plait nylon anchor rode at Second Wave, yet another marine consignment store.  I think I might be getting addicted to used sailing equipment - this 3/4" nylon rode was a great deal though, at $50 for 150', compared with $1.60/foot locally!  I spliced the rope to a 40' length of 5/16" heavy steel chain, and this splice is currently holding me at anchor quite handily.

motoring away from Tsehum Harbour

On April the 6th, I left Tsehum Harbour and headed back towards Vancouver.  I missed my tide window for Active Pass that day - with a sailboat you can only traverse the pass at slack tide, and slack tide was at 1pm.  I ended up sailing slowly up the Trincomali Channel and spending the night in Montague Harbour, which is a lovely anchorage but in a complete cellular reception black hole, ruling out any extended stay.  In the morning I packed up and headed out through Porlier Pass to begin my solo crossing of the Georgia Straight.

racing the rainstorm

The weather for the first days sail was a mix of sun and rain, with long periods of spring-like warmth followed by cold rains and wind.  This rainstorm followed me up the channel for several hours, but when it finally caught up with me late in the afternoon it turned out to be an unexpected hailstorm!

sailing ninja self-portrait, about 4km into the Georgia Straight crossing

The only real downside to sailing in cold weather is the long periods of inactivity, requiring you to basically sit outside in the cold wind for hours on end with nothing to do.  Even with proper foul-weather gear, two layers of wool sweaters and wool hats and gloves, it's still freezing.  Pair that with the inexplicable lack of a fly on my overall-style foul-weather pants, and the only real movement you have for the vast majority of the journey is the occasional trip indoors to pretty much completely disrobe to pee.  Still, apart from the puzzling lack of zipper, I am completely pleased with my Helly Hansen foul weather gear.

Here's a video, taken once everything had calmed down and I was moving steadily forward. After I came through Porlier Pass I was expecting some heavy winds and probably some waves, but the addition of the tidal surges from the pass made for some very, very stressful moments!  I got my second reef into the main, but not before stuffing all three bows into the waves several times, strewing tools from one end of the cabin to the other, and spilling the contents of my cupboards all over the floor, breaking a bunch of dishes and making an awful mess.  The rest of the trip across was spent with the double-reefed main and staysail, which I finally shook out near UBC.  I made an average of about 6kn across the Straight, but once I got the headsail up in more protected waters I reached 9.2kn coming into English Bay.

creamcycle, built up and listed for sale

This is the "new" Creamcycle, built up as a fixie with all the brand-new components from the Montague bike and listed for sale on Craigslist.  Do you know anyone looking for a rad (if well-used) bike for the summer?

off to class, with a 20kg outboard in my backpack

Yet another class with the Bluewater Cruising Association; this time an outboard motor repair and maintenance class.  Here it is Saturday morning at 8am, leaving on my bicycle with the heavy outboard in my backpack.

The outboard, we like to say, "worked really great until it didn't".  In Sidney, during a trip to shore, the outboard very suddenly quit with no warning, in the sort of way that makes you think something is very, very wrong.  Reading up a bit on the internet, I found out that you're supposed to change the gearbox oil regularly, which I hadn't - though apparently when you go to drain the gearbox oil it's supposed to be oil, not dirty water and metal filings.

outboard repair class, saturday morning, 10am

Sitting in class, we learned all about the workings of outboards, stripping out sparkplugs and taking apart carburetors, and I slowly dug down into the problem that had caused the outboard to stop so suddenly.  Clearly the problem was in the gearbox, but could it be repaired?

what came out of the gearbox of the outboard - photo by Jennifer Craig

When I finally got the gearbox opened up and stripped, a few pieces fell out - and some of those pieces were ball bearings.  Well - I use the word "ball" somewhat loosely there; the parts that fell out were anything but spherical.  D'oh!

End result?  The engine is apparently a write-off.  I can probably get a few bucks on Craigslist for it, for parts - but the cost of the replacement bits to get her running again are approximately four  times what I paid for the engine originally, and given that it was quite underpowered for the dinghy it was on anyway, I guess I'm now in the market for a good used 8hp motor.

freshwater system complete!

Lastly, I finally added in and plumbed the third 100-liter water tank to the freshwater system. This has been on the bench for a while, but now the freshwater system is pretty much 100% complete - there's still a slow, weeping leak on the galley sink that I need to tend to, causing the water pressure pump to kick in about once an hour to keep the pressure up. As far as I can tell the only fix for that is to replace the whole faucet assembly it hasn't really been high up on my list of priorities.

 
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Phew! And that brings us pretty much up to current!  So many updates, with so little time. I've got to remember to try to spew this stuff out in smaller portions, but when things are moving fast it's really tough to keep up.

If by some chance you missed the June and July editions, I recommend you read those first.  Without further ado:

up on the hard, repairs proceeding

With the sanding finally finished, it was time to re-tape the hull and apply the primer paint. A darker shade of gray paint was chosen, because while white paint reflects the visible spectrum of light and doesn't absorb heat, it still allows ultraviolet light to pass through which will eventually destroy the fiberglass.  The pigment in the gray primer absorbs the UV light, protecting the fiberglass underneath.

In this photo you can also see the patched hole in the hull near the main bow, where I removed and replaced the oddball old, seized 2" ball valve for the head output with a proper 1.5" stainless valve.  While I had her out of the water I replaced all of the old ball valves with new stainless valves, and removed and sealed up two that weren't used anymore... the handle on one of those ball valves had rusted completely off and the outlet had been capped off with a copper pipe cap.  I have no idea what that through-hull was for originally but it obviously hadn't been used in years and was a liability.

hulls primed!

This is what Tie Fighter looked like primed with the military gray paint.  I loved the way she looked, and if it were possible I would have left her this way - the problem is that as a wooden boat, she has to be painted white.  Anything darker absorbs heat, and causes the wood hull to expand and contract, which will eventually cause the fiberglass to separate from the hull.  If that happens, moisture (via condensation) will form between the fiberglass and the wood, and eventually the whole boat will rot from the inside out.  So yeah.  White.

Pity though!  I wished I could have just painted a big white number on the side and left her this way - she'd look like a Canadian warship!

head and forward locker painted

While she was up on the hard I might as well use some of the extra epoxy paint to update the insides... here's the head, prior to ripping out the toilet, pedestal, floor and... well, everything really.  The head is much nicer now, as you'll see in later photos...

topsides primed

After the first coat of primer went on, the whole boat had to be sanded again and wiped down with solvents before the second coat..  Those sanders went through hell and back, and the solvent fumes made us dizzy and melted several pairs of rubber gloves.

In the background you can see that it's garbage day in the boatyard; all the dumpsters are being lined up right across from Tie Fighter, so that the garbage trucks could spend an hour making a huge racket at 5am.  By August we didn't even hear them anymore - after long hard days in the sun, sleep was deep.

James rolling and tipping in the dark

Once the second coat of primer was on and sanded, it was time to put on the first coat of the finish paint, Interlux 'Brightside' white.  The paint is a single-part polyurethane - which we now know isn't a good thing to put over top of a two-part primer (ie, paint that comes in two cans, a base and an 'activator', which need to be mixed together before application).  Brightside gives a very professional-looking finish when "rolled and tipped"; first the paint is applied with a roller, and then you lightly brush over it with a foam brush to knock out all the tiny bubbles, leaving a sexy, glossy finish.  When we finally figured out how to do it properly we worked long into the night painting the hulls, fighting off the swarms of mosquitoes from the nearby swamps that showed up every night as soon as the sun went down.

Tie Fighter, white!

Within a couple of days, the whole boat was shiny and white.  At this point, however, catastrophe struck - the paint on the bottom and hull was drying properly, but the topsides didn't seem to be drying at all!

I don't have clear memories of the next few days - I do remember being brought closer to tears of frustration than I have been in many years.  Dark times indeed.

At least the paint on the hull sides and bottom seemed to be drying properly... the primer used there had been a two-part epoxy primer by Interlux, but the topside primer was a two-part epoxy from a different company, and as far as we could tell it didn't dry the same as the paint on the bottom, and the off-gassing of the primer drying caused "solvent entrapment", causing the Brightside to still be tacky three days after application.

topsides, sanded down again

We had no choice but to sand all the new white paint off and start over from the primer again.  Two more solid days of sanding nonstop, and we were back to square one.  Sanding gummy, partly-dried paint is way more work than sanding old, dried paint, and we went through hundreds of sanding discs.

forward bilges, epoxy paint drying

Since there were three of us sanding, but only two sanders, we took the time to gut the bilges in the forward cabin and apply a couple of coats of thick, tough Interlux 'BilgeCote' epoxy paint.  Wow - the bilges went from a dark, dirty, scary gutter to a reasonably nice place for extra storage!

hatch covers drying in the sun

I had nearly forgotten about the hatch covers - all of them needed minor repairs, a good sanding and several coats of paint.  A few days of work and they were shiny and new again.

In the background is James' tent, which he lived out of for several weeks.

topsides white

FINALLY, the topsides were painted again - it took far longer than expected, and I got my first sunburn of the summer, working 14-hour days trying to get this goddamned project finished and back in the water!

In this photo you can see the repairs to the front window evident, now that it's all one color; I thought I had spent enough time sanding the area, but I guess it could have used one more pass with thickened epoxy and another hour or two of sanding.

applying the BC vessel registration numbers

The registration numbers going on, for the first time.  The VPD would be pleased about this, since they'd fined me $100 earlier in the summer for not having them displayed.  That was my first police fine since a speeding ticket fifteen years prior!

I love how shiny the hull is in this photo!

masking tape removed

When the tape finally came off, she was looking amazing!  I had many boatyard folks come over to congratulate me on the work, saying how impressed they were.  Dan, James and I had been working on her nearly every single day since the start of the summer, and it was finally starting to show.  Of course, there was still a tonne of work to be done before she could go back into the water - but at least the outside was (mostly) finished...

Tie Fighter, shiny in the sun

Ernst came out to visit and take a few pics with his fancy camera-on-a-stick rig - a long, extendable monopod with a remote trigger.  He got this shot and the next one on a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Tie Fighter, ready for intergalactic battle

This is probably my favourite shot of the entire summer - she just looks so fast and smooth!  The decks are so shiny - of course, we'd still have to apply two more coats of paint yet, a couple of coats of anti-skid paint so that walking across the wet deck wouldn't result in a swim.

Kym painting the bootstripe

Kym came out and spent a few days in the boatyard to help with the work - she had some time off, and as someone who enjoys working on boats she was happy to help.  I put her to work taping off the bootstripe, a just-for-looks stripe around the base of each hull.  This was a much larger job than either of us anticipated, and taping alone took almost seven hours!

Tie Fighter, bootstriped

With the masking tape removed, the bootstripe looked fantastic, well worth the effort.  The Searunner Construction Manual says that a bootstripe can make the difference between a boat and a yacht.

aft cabin, workshop mode

With all the work on the outside, we had pretty much completely neglected the interior of the boat which was still completely gutted.  If I had any intention of moving back into the boat as my home there would be a lot of work to be done yet!

tearing apart the head

I found a new marine toilet - a Groco 'Model K' - on Craigslist for $200 delivered.  Given that the Model K retails for over $1000, I thought this was a great chance to upgrade my bathroom facilities, and jumped on the deal.  The new toilet was a good 10cm taller than the old one, however, and so the pedestal would have to be lowered - it was as good a time as any to rip everything out and start from scratch.

remasted!

Once the chainplates were reinstalled and the two coats of antiskid paint were applied, it was as good a time as any to get the mast back up.  Michael Flynn took the day to come and help re-rig Tie Fighter - his help was welcomed, especially since he's a professional rigger with a tonne of sailboat experience!

up the mast!

Of course, re-masting the boat left a chunk of rope at the top of the mast.  Someone had to go up to retrieve it, so I tied my climbing harness into the mainsail halyard and Michael cranked me up with the main winch while Kym tailed the line.  This was the first time I'd ever been up the mast.

good riddance, work pants.

During that day, at some point I was pulling some line and managed to tear the entire crotch out of my work shorts.  Last year, I wrecked probably half of my wardrobe when working on the boat - this year, I decided early to designate a single pair of pants as my work pants, and I spent most of the summer in these shorts.  By the end, the legs were so thick with paint and epoxy and sweat that they were stiff, and the pants could almost stand up on their own!

a beautiful art shot from Ernst

Ernst came out again to take a few more shots of Tie Fighter - I finagled him into helping me reinstall the centerboard at this point, which was a brutal job - the centerboard trunk is approximately three meters long by two meters deep, and there's a 3cm hole in the centerboard itself which needs to match up to a pair of 3cm holes found deep in the bilge.  The process of reinstalling the centerboard is much like threading a needle, only with the needle being 100kg and needing a winch to move it.  After several hours trying, Ernst came up with the final solution which was to draw arrow lines radiating out from the centerboard's hole, and to look into the trunk with a flashlight to see the lines.  Once the lines were drawn, we had the centerboard lined up and the holding pin installed within minutes!

Scott laying the traveler

My brother-in-law Scott came out to help with a few of the final rigging tasks, between working and school.  Here he's lining up the bolt-holes on the traveler.

rigged and ready

FINALLY, she was ready to go back into the water.  I was filled with pride - this was by far the largest and most difficult project I'd ever been a part of, much less in charge of.  I took this final photo - you can see my bicycle aboard, ready to go back to living   on the water.

lifting her up...

The dinghy was lifted back up onto the deck by a friendly forklift operator, and the lifting straps were put into place...

carried across the yard...

Across the yard we went!

...and dropped back into the water!

On August 24th, bright and early in the morning, Tie Fighter finally went back into the water.  Fortunately, she floated and all of the hull repairs proved to be watertight.  Unfortunately, we hadn't had a chance to do any engine work yet, and so I couldn't really do much besides motor down a few hundred meters and dock at C-dock, where I would spend the next two months continuing to repair and upgrade the inside of the boat.

the finished head!

At C-dock, I had time to finish the head.  Here's a shot of the toilet installed, with the holding tank plumbed and secured to a shelf with ratcheting tiedown straps.  Technically this photo is from mid-September, but I figured it would be best to include an "after" shot, given the two or three "before" pics.

As the summer came to an inevitable close, I spent a lot of time feeling bitter about the fact that I had spent the entire warm-weather months doing something that I thought would be completely finished before the summer even started.  I had really wanted to spend the summer living the Vancouver lifestyle, bouncing from beach party to afterparty, sailing as much as possible, and having a great time.  Instead it was several months of hard labour ,while paying through the nose for the privilege of doing so.  It was my friend Dan Ross who set me straight; I was complaining about the loss of the summer when he said something like

"Actually", he said, "I have to say, this has been probably the most interesting summer of my life - I've learned a tonne of new stuff, and been a part of a large project that we finished.  I can't say I have a single complaint."

I was broadsided by that statement but when I thought about it I had to agree.  It was the most interesting summer in memory, and at the end of it all I have my home to to show for it.  She still has a tonne of work to be done, but she's solid, stable and floating, and eventually she'll take  me wherever I want to go.  The weakest link in the chain is me, and that's a lesson - paid for dearly - that I'll always have.

Tie Fighter in the snow

Miya and I returned from Oklahoma (she competed in the Route 66 Marathon, finishing in 5:05:24, an excellent time for a first marathon!) on Monday night, but with a -17º windchill we decided that it would probably be best to spend the night at my sister's house.  When we returned in the morning, we discovered the cold had actually frozen much of the plumbing solid, destroying the new galley faucet.  Fortunately the new hoses held up to the ice and the new flexible water tanks didn't freeze, so we didn't have two hundred liters of water in the bilge to contend with but it was still a nail-biting couple of days waiting for the pipes to thaw.  Just to make things interesting, the follow-up to days of bitter cold was a massive (by Vancouver standards anyway) snowfall - Thursday afternoon found me digging out the snow shovel from the depths of the starboard ama and shoveling a solid six inches of snow off the decks.  Shortly after I finished, of course, the snowfall turned to sleet and subsequently to rain, cleaning off the remaining snow and leaving me with a pair of dinghies full of icy water to bail out.

Tie Fighter's halls, decked

The rains haven't really stopped since, but that hasn't stopped us from continuing with boat projects, albeit indoor ones.  I've managed (under duress) to get the diesel furnace in the forward cabin working again, a problem that required the routing of diesel fuel lines under the floorboards and rigging an electric transfer pump.  Now the forward cabin is toasty and warm, though the new propane stove in the aft cabin is turning out to be not the heat source that the former diesel cookstove was.  We've had to run the Honda generator for several hours each day, just to keep a pair of small electric heaters going - it's a disgustingly inefficient way to keep warm, but at least it works.  I'm in the market for a second small diesel furnace.

The cold hasn't stopped Miya from continuing to turn Tie Fighter into a home, and now the aft cabin salon has received some Christmas treatment.  We even have a small Christmas tree fashioned from a live rosemary plant!  The salon doesn't smell like a traditional Christmas, but between the rosemary and Miya's constant baking it definitely smells delicious, a welcome change from the pervasive smell of diesel and the salty sea air.

don't use non-stainless steel cables on a boat.

Miya took the helm, but it was hardly ten minutes before she called out that the wheel was sticking, and that she couldn't turn to the left.  I thought it was just sticking, but when I came to try it myself, the wheel was definitely not moving.  We quickly threw out an anchor, and I started taking apart the binnacle to see if I could spot the problem.  It was immediately obvious when I pulled at one of the steel steering cables; it came up out of the channel easily, and after a few feet of rusty, oily cable came a frayed and broken end!

The ironic part - and I'm quickly learning that the Gods of the Sea are huuuuge fans of irony - was that not even three hours earlier, Miya had been reading my copy of the CYA Basic Cruising Skills manual, from a course I took a couple of years back.  Reading the section on emergency equipment, she asked specifically:

"Drew, where do we keep the spare tiller?"

I answered:

"We don't have one, baby.  There's no place to attach one, and besides, we have thick steel cables for steering, they shouldn't ever break..."

Now, you'd assume that something as important as steering - especially on a boat with no emergency tiller attachment - would be rigged with stainless steel cables… but if there's one thing the Gods of the Sea like better than irony, it's assumptions.  As it turned out, the single exposed section of steering cable was rigged with 3/16ths stainless steel cable, but the rest - the parts impossible to inspect, routed through the walls in rigid conduit - were rigged with regular steel cable.  Which, of course, had rusted completely through after a few(?) years of living in a wet conduit.

Darren with the new steering cable

My good friend Darren was in town on Sunday, on "vacation" from the island paradise in Malaysia where he runs a diving school, and so after a leisurely brunch we tackled the problem of routing the new stainless steering cables.  We rented a large, industrial crimping tool and bought a bag of aluminum crimps, then settled in for the nightmare job of trying to thread the new cable into the old conduit.  To our surprise and delight, the new cable went through the conduit without a hitch, and replacing the entire steering system (including a stopover to lubricate the turning blocks) took around two hours total.

The interesting part is that I think the steering system is actually the final, single system on the boat that I hadn't actually torn out yet.  Every single system aboard has now had my hands in it, either by tearing each system out completely or just removing, cleaning and reinstalling.  All of the water lines, all the hoses, the entire electrical system, the bilge pumps, the galley, the head, the lighting, the sailing instruments - everything!  Only Maude (the big Yanmar diesel engine) looks more or less exactly like she did when I started, and if you've been reading this blog for a while you know that there's been a serious tonne of work done there as well.

leftover cable turned into spare rigging

Anyhow.  The repairs went fine, and the steering is back to 100% again - even better, in fact, as now the turnbuckles turn a lot easier, and without a frayed steel cable scraping the inside of the conduit the steering wheel turns far smoother than before.  We are extremely lucky that the cable snapped while we were only about 300m offshore, still in the Kitsilano Anchorage instead of out in the middle of the Georgia Straight like we were the weekend before - I'm honestly not sure how that would have gone.

For now, we're back in False Creek, and have already survived a November windstorm - though it wasn't even 40kn of wind, we only had out a single 'delta' anchor.  The winds came up suddenly, jumping from a gentle 5kn breeze to a 30kn gale in under five minutes, and that was enough to cause us to drag anchor about 200m east, narrowly avoiding slamming into Erik's boat 'Solgangsvind'.  We fired up the engine and tried to re-anchor several times, but dragged anchor each time, and on the third time dragging we came a little too close to 'Solgangsvind' again and drifted over Erik's anchor line.  I had to quickly tie off our anchor line to a buoy and toss the whole thing overboard, because with his anchor line hooked we couldn't pull our anchor up without also pulling up his, and that would mean multiple boats drifting free in the 30kn winds - it could have been a real mess!  With Miya at the helm we motored back west towards the Granville Bridge, searching for better anchor purchase.

We found a good hold just past Monk McQueen's restaurant, deploying a 35lbs CQR anchor and having that hold for an hour or so... but then suddenly the wind picked up again and we found ourselves dragging anchor east towards boats moored at the marina!  I had Miya take the helm again, and with a panicked look in her eyes, trying to keep a 39' sailboat off the rocks in the dark with howling winds and driving rains lashing us, she kept the boat steady and pointed into the wind while I pulled up the anchor and attached a second anchor, a 25lbs 'fortress', to the end of the chain.  This gave us a 25lbs anchor, 20' of heavy chain, a 35lbs anchor, another 20' of heavy chain and then a hundred feet of thick rope, which - after we set the anchor properly - held us solid for the rest of the night.  Of course we still had the GPS anchor drag alarm set all night, but we were never woken up.

Anyhow - we're technically back in False Creek, but the boat is locked up solid while we're away in Oklahoma for the next couple of days so that Miya can run 26.2 miles in the Oklahoma marathon!

It's been six months since I've updated my blog, and much has changed.  So much, in fact, that the sheer amount of things I have to write about has been preventing me from writing at all!  I've resigned myself to the fact that many of this summer's great adventure stories will have to remain untold, and that I will just have to tell the biggest story - and in the spirit of 'worth a thousand words', I think the story is best told as a series of photographs, with a descriptive paragraph for each.  There are eighty-six photographs in total, and that's after having culled and cut and edited out well over half of them.  Most of these photos are lower quality, all that remains from my iPhone's 'Facebook' application.

The short version: I planned to haul Tie Fighter out of the water for a two-week intensive repair and paintjob session, and those two weeks turned into a grueling sixty-five day slog, working ten or more hours per day in the hot sun with a total of five days off over more than two months.  Fortunately the weather cooperated, if you count blisteringly hot sun as cooperation...

Without further ado, I present to you "What I Did On My Summer Vacation", the June edition.  If you're reading this on Facebook, I strongly suggest you visit my main blog site (http://www.disengage.ca) for the original formatting.

Ernst at the helm

Given the ongoing problems with my engine overheating, I figured it was probably prudent to enlist some help with the travel from Kitsilano up to the boatyard that I'd be working in, Shelter Island Marina in Richmond, BC.  They were chosen because they are the only boatyard in the lower mainland with a travelift capable of hauling out a boat the width of Tie Fighter!

towing Tie Fighter behind the Foulkeswagen

My friend John Foulkes offered to give me a tow up the Fraser River with his powerboat, and so Ernst and I sailed Tie Fighter out around UBC and to the river mouth, then attached a line to John's boat (the Foulkeswagen) and headed up the river.  Aside from a near miss of the banks during a daring coffee-relay mission between the two vessels, the trip was peaceful and uneventful.

approaching the lift

I spent the night on the Shelter Island docks, then in the morning I motored up to the lifting dock...

travelift lifting Tie Fighter out of the water

...where I was lifted up...

out of the water

carrying Tie Fighter across the boatyard

...carried across the boatyard...

washdown guy in hazmat suit

...powerwashed, and...

...finally set down gently on metal stands, ready to be worked on.

At this point I honestly did think that I'd only be out for a total of two weeks, but everyone who asked about it laughed when I told them my schedule and predictions of how long it would take.  One guy, a fellow geek, actually recommended I take all my predictions regarding time and money to be spent, add a worst-case scenario, and then multiply it all by 'pi'.  Strangely his predictions were the most accurate of anyone.

stuck centerboard, meet physics

The first task was to remove the centerboard, though of course it didn't want to come out.  At some point, some previous owner hit some rocks and damaged the fiberglass bottom edge of the board - the wooden centerboard absorbed seawater and swelled up, causing it to stick in the centerboard trunk.  Two days, a lot of rocking, some serious leverage provided by halyards and block-and-tackle, and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil later... she came out.

the centerboard finally out

Six hundred pounds of centerboard doesn't move around too easily!  Ugh, three different layers of anti-fouling paint, old fiberglass, wood fibers and several years of marine growth - this piece of wood was foul.  We drilled a bunch of drainage holes in the board and propped it up on wood blocks "for a few days".  Little did we know, it would be there for almost two months.

One of the first major projects was to repair a "tiny, little 6-inch spot of rot" in one of the port ama bulkheads.  Of course, we quickly learned that as soon as you can spot any rot, there's a lot more that you can't see... and the project turned into a bulkhead, support beams, an inside panel and several feet of decking!

DR tracing out a new bulkhead

My close friend Dan Ross spent a large portion of the summer out in the boatyard with me, helping to repair the boat.  His work ethic and good humour kept me both motivated and sane through the long, hot days on the asphalt.

During this time I also had other friends visiting and helping quite often - here's a pic of my lovely girlfriend Miya working on the starboard bow.  At first we tried to remove the old anti-skid paint with sandpaper and then with an angle grinder, but the sheer amount of work to do so was staggering.  In the end, we found that methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) was the answer - the anti-skid paint dissolved under the solvent!

Above you see the mast step, which essentially collapsed as soon as I applied a little pressure to it.  I'm very fortunate that it never collapsed on me while I was at sail, though I'm pretty sure that I would have had problems if I'd left this project for another year.

As the Canada Day weekend approached, bringing June to a close, the weather forecast showed a prediction of rain.  With a quick run to Home Depot for lumber and a tarp, we built a rain cover over the worksite - which had the side effect of giving us some much-needed shade on what would prove to be the hottest days of the summer.

And so ended the month of June.  I'll try to add the subsequent posts, with the photos from July and August in a timely fashion, but my world seems to be accelerating currently, so no promises.

completely unrelated: Friday morning I was woken up by yet *another* hovercraft. how awesome is this photo!?

I think I actually know what's going on now.  At some point, X minutes after pushing the engine hard, the cooling water ceases to flow into the exhaust and the superheated exhaust burns a hole in the tubes.  There are a pair of thermostats that redirect the water flow from the exhaust manifold and into the main engine block once they heat up, though the water should then flow into the exhaust manifold and out the exhaust.  I now suspect that the engine block has become fouled with calcium scale, and now water no longer flows through it.  Fixing this will likely require a heavy-duty descaling solution, or perhaps straight-up muriatic acid.  It's a touchy procedure, but there is hope - I may have finally sorted out a way to barter myself some time with a proper diesel mechanic!

More soon.  I simply have too much work to do to write proper, long blog posts right now.

UPDATE: Swapped in an edited version of the hovercraft shot, with levels and curves tweaked by Jason Sims.  Nice one!

A quick highlight reel - in the past three days, I:

• bicycled over forty kilometers and rowed over eight kilometers in total,
• borrowed a truck and drove to Bellingham and back for engine parts,
• had my oil filter spring a leak, leaving me with a couple of liters of used engine oil in my bilge,
• spent over $700 on a new exhaust system, and assembled and installed it,
• ate six cans of sardines and probably over a pound of sliced ham,
• drank most of a bottle of Sailor Jerry, and
• went out dancing.  Twice.

Tomorrow morning I try once more to escape the Creek.  My first destination will be Kitsilano.

Ok seriously, it's fracking cold out here.  The past few days the temperature has dropped further and further, and as I write this it is 6pm, pitch dark outside and -6°C.  I know some of you are reading this from the Prairies or the Maritimes, where the ambient temperature has been hovering around -20°C, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that you also have furnaces and insulation and such.  Tie Fighter is made of 3/8" marine-grade plywood over cedar stringers, with an R-value of... god, I have no idea.  Not enough, anyway.  It's COLD.

click to view larger - can you spot the outline of the (heated) cabin vs. the outline of the (unheated) closet?

I've had some questions posed about insulating the boat, and the short answer is:  I'm still researching.  One school of thought says that the only way to insulate a wooden boat is to use foam rubber, and bond the foam directly to the wood, being careful not to leave any air gaps between the wood and the foam.  The reasoning is that if you leave air gaps, you're inviting condensation, which to wood means mildew or eventually rot.

The other school says that you should never bond anything to the wood, because that makes it much more difficult to notice problems, and a helluva mess to work with.  They say to rather allow it to breathe and stack insulation over top that can have air forced in behind it via fans or blowers, so that the condensation can dry up on its own.

What am I going to do?  I have no idea.  I'm still soliciting opinions from various liveaboard forums and fellow False Creek denizens.  For now, I'm toughing it out and burning several different forms of fossil fuels at the same time trying to stay warm.  When I woke up this morning I had to break up the ice in the sink dishes before I could make breakfast.

Cold aside, I HAVE A WORKING ENGINE AGAIN!  The diesel engine theory class paid off in spades, and I was able to diagnose the problem, correct the situation, and get Maude started.  This was a huge boost to my confidence and self-esteem, especially given the nature of the problem and my previous (complete lack of) experience with engines.

To recap; Maude had started to lose power at some point during my last run up to fill my water tanks.  The change was gradual but immediately noticible; the engine dropped in power without my touching the throttle, which is up there with "sounds different" or "emitting smoke" or "smells funny" on the diesel engine scale of uh-ohs.  Not quite 'explosion', but definitely not good.

The most immediate difference between my response to this problem after having completed the diesel theory class vs. my response before the diesel class is that I now have any response at all other than ignoring the problem and hoping that it will resolve itself.  Carrie once said to me "I don't deal with little problems anymore.  Little problems either go away on their own, or they become big problems.  I deal with big problems.".  I took this somewhat to heart, but I have come to realize that that philosophy can only apply to some aspects of life; in other situations - diesel engines being a noteworthy example - it's best to deal with little problems immediately and with extreme prejudice.  Don't just solve problems, smash them out of existence with the largest hammer you can find.

the fuel lift pump, source of my woes

Maude had started to lose power, and I ignored it.  The next time I tried to go for water,  Maude died about four minutes into the voyage.  Fortunately the incoming tide pushed me directly back over my anchoring spot, or I would have had to radio the Coast Guard for assistance.  Attempting to restart her seemed to work intermittently, she'd start but die as soon as I applied any throttle, which is exactly the behavior one would expect from water in the fuel lines.  The answer there would be to drain the water from the fuel lines, bleed the lines of any newly-introduced air, and then restart the engine - bearing in mind that the "bleed the lines" portion of that answer is an eleven-step procedure requiring three different sizes of wrench.

Needless to say, I was unsuccessful with the bleeding of the lines.  For the life of me, I could not seem to get the air out of the lines; I must have pushed that little fuel lift pump lever tens of thousands of times, blistering and scraping my hands in the process.  Nothing seemed to work!

Fortunately I had signed up weeks before for the Cooper Boating 'Advanced Diesel Theory' class, and so I went to class and paid close attention, asking so many questions that I'm sure the teacher is glad to be rid of me.  Each week I returned from class with fresh resolve and a new set of hints, and spent a few hours poking at the engine trying to figure out what part of the bleeding process I was doing wrong.  Each week I was unsuccessful.

After five straight weeks trying to perform the relatively simple process of bleeding the lines, I decided that I was doing it right and that there must be something actually wrong with the process.  I decided to take each part in turn and track out the problem, just like I'd do with a computer issue.  Eventually this led me to a conclusion:  the fuel lift pump just wasn't lifting fuel.

source of the problems, click for closeup

Long story short, I pulled the fuel lift pump off the engine and disassembled it on my kitchen table.  I found that the input valve assembly was clogged in the 'open' position with a motley assortment of plastic scraps, gelled diesel and hair(?!), which I removed.  This was clearly a result of the stock fuel filter having been removed by a previous mechanic and a third-party fuel filter installed instead, after the fuel lift pump instead of before it.  I cleaned up the pump, tested and reinstalled it, changing the location of the fuel filter along the way - but still I had no fuel flow!

Finally, after putting together a bit of critical information from the instructor along with a tidbit from the guys at Stem to Stern, I realized that the copper washers in the banjo bolts connecting the fuel lift pump to the fuel lines must be letting air into the lines.  I replaced the copper washers, tightened up the banjo bolts, and suddenly fuel began to flow.  I performed the rest of the air-bleed procedure, cranked the engine, and low and behold Maude shuddered to life.

Anyhow.  I have an engine again, though I haven't yet installed the secondary fuel filter I purchased, nor replaced the belts, nor replaced the exhaust tank.  I have yet to change the oil, either in the engine block or in the transmission.  I haven't even begun to reroute the cooling system, changing it over from raw seawater to antifreeze - but all of these projects will come.  I have a working engine, and with a little luck I can keep it that way.  I am no longer afraid of Maude.  The engine is no longer a black box.

Just to add to the stress of the bitter cold, the police have just motored past in their 'R.G. McBeath' policeboat, which is the one they use to enforce the anchoring bylaws - they didn't stop by to chat, but they're weaving in around the anchored boats, making their presence known.  I don't have any idea what is going to happen to those of us squatting here in False Creek.  I suspect we'll all be kicked out prior to the Olympics, but I don't have any good ideas on where to go after that - there really aren't any other good, sheltered anchorages around Vancouver.  The hard winter might shortly become much, much harder.