Boat Repairs/Maintenance – Page 6

Friday the Thirteenth

I regularly get asked the question “So, how’s life on the boat?”, and I have a couple of stock answers ready. “Ridiculous.” is the usual one, which in my opinion sums up the whole thing pretty succinctly. Sometimes I’ll answer “it’s a constant running adventure!”, depending on the events of the previous week or so, or if it’s been particularly stressful I’ll say “up and down, but mostly up.”.

Well, today marks one of the more ‘down’ days; there were a bunch of factors, but it definitely started with my own stupidity. Technically it “started” yesterday but the turning point was at about 2am last night, at least three beers past the “pint of no return”, when I decided that my baby sister’s suggestion to return to her house with her and some friends for more beers sounded like an excellent plan. That plan involved riding my bike five kilometers in the light rain with a guitar on my back, drinking several more beers, singing songs and laughing for an hour or so and then riding five kilometers back home in the pouring rain, finally arriving back home at about 5:30am. I peeled off my soaking-wet clothes, flexed some blood back into my stiff, frozen fingers, and climbed into an icy bed.

At about 7:00am, I got an SMS message from work – something had broken in the webserver farm, and it needed my attention immediately. Of course, the laptop was in the other cabin, so I had to get out of my (finally) warm bed, get dressed, walk ten feet through the pouring rain to the other cabin where I had left my laptop, and then sit in the cold dealing with a server issue. Fortunately it was nothing terribly difficult and I was back in my bed in about an hour… just long enough for the bed to have gotten cold again. At some point during that hour the rain had stopped and the wind picked immensely, howling in the rigging, blowing the hatches closed and making my halyards slap against the mast with a rhythmic cowbell-like sound.

I had only been asleep for an hour or so more when my phone rang – it was my neighbor Shawn, calling from aboard ‘And-E’, his 26-foot cruising sailboat. “Hey,” he said, “Heads up, that powerboat has dragged his anchor again and just slammed into us, he’s headed your way now…”. I thanked him and got off the phone and started getting dressed, and just as I put on my boots I felt the shuddering *thud* of another boat hitting my hull.

It was *freezing* out! The strong westerly wind coming up the False Creek channel wicked any semblance of warmth out through the weave of my sweater, but I was still a bit too groggy – and quite possibly still a bit drunk – to remember to put on a windproof jacket. I put out a few fenders, pushed the boat off my bows and let out some more anchor rode. Fortunately it seemed that just as he hit me, his anchor found purchase in the ocean floor, and as I moved ten feet or so away, he swung back and forth in front of me but didn’t come any closer.

Now, that’s a really good thing – if you’ve been following along the past few weeks, you’ll know that my engine currently doesn’t start, which means that if I have to move the boat, I’m… well, in the interest of keeping this blog clean-ish, let’s just say it rhymes with “out of lucked”. I have faith in my anchor; the 35-pound Delta on 40 feet of heavy chain and 300 feet of strong one-inch polyester rope has held me in place through rougher conditions than this – but that’s not to say that there’s no stress in wondering if it’ll hold this time. The bottom of the ocean floor can change without warning, and False Creek is notorious for garbage and silt. Recently I helped another friend re-anchor after he dragged, and when we pulled his anchor up we found a one-foot length of steel I-beam lodged firmly in the blades; no wonder he hadn’t gotten a good hold!

I watched the powerboat warily for a few minutes – I’d spoken with it’s owner a few days prior about his constant anchor dragging, but he’d apologized and shown me his brand new 50-pound ‘Bruce’ anchor, which definitely should be more than enough to keep a little boat like his in place, so I was pretty sure that if he’d found purchase he probably wouldn’t be going anywhere. I figured he’d be coming back pretty shortly, and so with the powerboat swinging back and forth ten feet off my bow, I went back to sleep. At this point I realized that it was going to be “one of those days”, so I didn’t bother taking my clothes off; I just took off my boots and jacket and pulled a blanket over myself.

Well, I got a good solid 40 minutes or so of sleep before my phone rang again. This time it was Dale, the owner of the other (and nicer) Searunner trimaran in False Creek. “Drew,” he said, “I just got a call from the police, and they say my boat is up on the rocks – are you on your boat? Do you have a spare anchor…?”. I looked out my front window, and there was Dale’s boat, sitting up on the rocks near Monk’s. I do have a big spare anchor, and so it was back out of bed again and into boots and raingear. I put the heavy anchor into the rowboat and fought the howling winds rowing the 300 meters or so west, dropped the anchor into the water, rowed back to Dale’s boat and climbed aboard. I wrapped the anchor rode around one of the winches, intending to winch him off the rocks, and went to grab a winch handle… nope. No winch handles.

Fortunately at this point there was a small wave system building, and I was able to rock the boat off the rocks and pull her to safety with just my arms, lying on the foredeck with my legs braced on the stanchions, using the two anchor cleats to gain a mechanical advantage. You’d be surprised just how large a boat you can move with just a sustained pull!

Once Dale’s boat was safe, I rowed back to Tie Fighter to try to catch some more sleep – but of course, there were a few emails that needed my attention, so it was another half-hour before I could return to my bed, which was now once again cold. I kept the raingear and boots close and buried my head in the blankets – it took a while to drift off, due to the physical activity, but I was determined.

I had finally nodded off and had been asleep for a good solid forty minutes or so when I was awoken yet again by that now-unmistakable sickening *thud*. I jumped out of bed and threw on my boots, and headed out to find the powerboat crashed into my bows again – this time with a man aboard, doing his best to get his boat untangled from mine. He apologized profusely; apparently he’d come to retrieve his boat, and in doing so his engines had stalled just after he pulled up his anchor, and they were now refusing to start. His problem was cooling fluid, or more accurately a lack thereof. I had some to spare, so we rafted his boat up against my port side and tied him off, and he tackled the cooling problem. In a few minutes, he was up and running again, and we untied his boat. He set off with more apologies, sincere thanks and a promise of a delivery of beer sometime soon.

So that brings me to now, more or less. It’s barely 5pm on a Friday, which usually means the day is really only about to begin. I’m due at a very exclusive techno dance party tonight, but with five hours of sleep and very little physical endurance left I’m not sure how that will go. The wind has died down a lot, but it’s still quite windy out, and the temperature has dropped a few more degrees – thankfully my diesel furnaces are working very well, and the aft cabin is warm and toasty.

Some days are up, some days are down. I spoke once before about the amplitude of the good-day/bad-day sinewave, but I’m still maintaining that the good days outweigh the bad. This blog pretty much only reflects one portion of my life also, and suffice to say my romantic interests lately have been equally tumultuous – actually, way moreso. *sigh*.

I’m almost afraid to have a nap at this point, lest it anger whatever gods govern Friday the Thirteenth and something else comes up – but I think I’m going to give it one more shot.

Engine Battle, Round One, Fight!

As I’ve mentioned here recently, my engine (“Maude”) is not currently starting. This is actually a bit of a hassle, as it means I’m pretty much stuck here in the middle of False Creek until I get her working again – not that I actually had anywhere I wanted to go, mind you. Still, the knowledge that you can’t go anywhere is like a pizza-cheese burn on the roof of your mouth; not really painful per se, but irritating and impossible to completely forget about.

Fortunately, this is also the week that I began my ‘Marine Diesel Engine Maintenance’ class with Cooper Boating over on Granville Island. I’ve been to one class so far, and I can already tell that the $399 spent on the class was a very, very good idea! Three more three-hour classroom sessions and one Saturday-afternoon shop session to go – but even after a single class I’ve gained more understanding of my engine than an entire summer of being around it, blindly trusting it to work when needed.

One interesting part of the class – and in the sailing ‘scene’ in general around Vancouver – is the age group. At thirty-three years old, I am no spring chicken – but I am the youngest person in the class by at least twenty years. I’ve also noticed this at anchorages and marinas; I have to admit it puzzles me a bit as so many people that I talk with express a longtime interest in sailing and the liveaboard lifestyle. Is it really the kind of dream that people put off until retirement, at which point you don’t have the energy or resilience to take long voyages? That makes no sense to me, but would explain why so many sailboats sit in the marina and never go anywhere.

Regardless, I cannot take any voyages while Maude is still not starting. At first I thought it was water in the fuel lines – that still may be the case, but now that I’ve drained the water from the fuel/water separator and opened the air-bleed bolts, I still am unable to feed diesel through the fuel lines using the fuel lift pump. I am beginning to think that perhaps the problem is actually in the fuel lift pump itself; these apparently have a diaphragm that wears out eventually, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if mine has worn out.

This weeks’ class was mostly about the importance of the lubrication system (ie, engine oil) and the workings of the cooling system (ie raw/fresh water or antifreeze), both of which will require my attention in short order – however, neither of those systems can be maintained without first repairing whatever is going on with my fuel delivery system. Fortunately next week’s class is about exactly that – so if I cannot figure out this problem on my own this week, I have a targeted class next Monday to help me.

Maude is the last major ‘mystery’ system on Tie Fighter, and I will be her master – or at least her capable attendant.

Two Steps Forward…

…and one big step back. *sigh*. ain’t it always?

In the ‘step forward’ department, I’ve now got all of my lights installed and wired! This is a huge step; I’ve been bragging to friends and – well ok, anyone who’ll listen, really – that I can finally brush my teeth without the use of a flashlight. Not that light is really an absolute necessity when brushing one’s teeth, but it’s nice to be able to visually gauge the amount of toothpaste used, spit accurately into the basin, etc. You know, the little things.

I think I’ve written about the lighting here before, but I’ll recap anyway. The lights are custom 12v bulbs that I found at Lee’s Electronic Components on Main Street up around 29th Avenue. The owner (Lee?) assembles the bulbs by hand; each one contains three 1w LEDs (read: bright) fresh from China, each having the interesting property of throwing by far the warmest LED light that I have seen yet. The bulbs are around $20 each, though he dropped the price a buck or so each when I ordered eight of them at once.

more LEDs - Ikea ran out of white "Beryll"s

As for fixtures to put these bulbs in – I searched long and hard for appropriate mounting fixtures, and had actually resigned myself to hacking together manufacturing my own fixtures from dollar-store components. The fixtures I wanted would need to be articulated, so as to point the light where I want it, and they’d need to be made of a material that wouldn’t corrode in the marine environment, so stainless steel, brass or plastic. Ideally, they’d also have a switch mounted on the fixture so that I could turn the lights on or off individually. After searching for the ideal fixtures for a couple of months to no avail, I finally stumbled upon the Ikea ‘Beryll’ fixture, which met all of my specs, and weren’t crazy expensive at $24 each. Better yet, the Ikea fixtures actually used a 12v wall adapter, so the bulbs they came with were already 12V and the LED bulbs fit perfectly with no modifications at all!

So, pricewise – thirteen bulbs at $19/ea, thirteen fixtures at $24/ea – simple math says I’m into these lights for a grand total of $559, plus taxes. Let’s call that an even $600 and promptly forgot that we ever did that math – honestly, if you keep too close a track on how much you spend on a sailboat you’d very likely have a nervous breakdown. I placate myself with the knowledge that I’m saving about $1000 on rent, though who knows how long that’ll last. Nothing on a boat is cheap – but having to subject everything to the harsh marine environment certainly makes you aware of how much cheaply made, disposable stuff we use in our daily lives. I’m starting to notice a growing disdain for things that aren’t built to last – my upper lip curls a bit when I see, say, a door handle made from polished but not stainless steel. Why cheap out? That’ll rust in a matter of weeks if you leave it outside. Oh, you, uh, aren’t planning to ever leave your bathroom door outside? Well, I guess that’s ok then…

As for my second step forward, both of my furnaces are now working! The furnace in the forward cabin, aka the ‘bedroom and bathroom’ cabin, has been working for about two weeks, while the furnace/stove in the aft cabin shuddered to life this past weekend just in time for Halloween. I had planned to install a low-pressure fuel pump to supply diesel to the two furnaces, but after running the furnace in the forward cabin over the span of a few chilly nights, I realized that my little twenty-gallon main diesel tank might be better left to supply just the engine, and decided to reinstall the respective gravity-feed tanks instead.

the diesel stove poses with the propane burner

The diesel furnaces are equal parts fascinating feats of engineering and twitchy, sullen, temperamental old grouches. With no moving parts, they work by heating up a “superheater” element, which vaporizes incoming diesel fuel on contact. The vaporized fuel is then drawn upwards by the flue draft into a second chamber, where it is fed fresh oxygen from an intake port and burns clean and hot – these machines were clearly designed by someone who really paid attention in physics class! The twitchy part comes mostly from the nature of the task at hand; the ambient temperature, the ambient humidity, the viscosity of the diesel fuel (which can vary greatly from supplier to supplier), the amount of carbon buildup in the burners – hell, for all I know, the phase of the moon – can all affect the superheater performance. Using this equipment is an organic experience, with several knobs, levers and dials to adjust the burn.

Things I have learned since getting my main furnace/stove running again:

the cast-iron stovetop is lovely for cooking, but very slow. I’ll still be keeping my Coleman propane burner around.
cooking eggs and/or pancakes directly on the stovetop is AWESOME.
post-halloween blueberry and Twizzler™ buckwheat pancakes are AWESOME. maybe I’ll post the recipe soon.
just because you season a stovetop grill with lard one day doesn’t mean it’s still non-stick the next day.
the stovepipe may have been cool to the touch all summer, but now it’s VERY HOT. see the toonie-sized burn on my forearm for details.

Probably my favourite thing: the stove stays gloriously warm for an hour or so after I turn off the diesel burner. Gotta love cast iron!

As for the step backwards – apparently my engine is dead again. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her this time – I noticed a little drop in power the last time I had her out to get water, but hoped that it was just a momentary glitch. This, you may realize, is absolutely not the sort of thing one can afford to do when one lives aboard a boat, especially if one is noticing some fundamental change in one’s only method of locomotion. Realistically, it’s the boating equivalent of smelling a gas leak in your kitchen and hoping that it’s just a forgotten egg rotting under the counters or something.

Actually, I have a pretty good idea of what’s wrong – the main diesel tank is made of aluminum, and the temperature has been fluctuating quite drastically for the past month or so. Temperature changes and a not-quite-full metal tank mean condensation, which in turn means it’s very likely that there’s water in the fuel lines. This isn’t too difficult to deal with, but it does mean that I’m going to have to drain the fuel-water separator and bleed the fuel lines, which on my engine is an eleven-step process requiring three different sizes of wrench. I’ve watched a mechanic do it once – several months ago after having almost the exact same engine death happen to me – and with any luck I’ll be able to duplicate his work myself. I hope so anyway, because the last mechanic visit cost me $180 or so.

Of course, there’s no reason for me to have noticed such a problem while sitting at anchor in False Creek, as I don’t often run my engine – my house battery bank isn’t hooked up to the alternator, and I have a fantastic Honda EU2000i generator to charge the house bank up to handle my day-to-day work electrical needs. So of course it took a voyage for me to notice; I had been out of water in my potable water tanks for a day or so, and I needed to travel down to the underside of the Granville Bridge to dock and refill them from the public hose.

Normally when I go for a short trip like this, or head out for a daysail or something, I leave my anchor firmly attached to the bottom of the ocean floor and tie the anchor line off to my dinghy, leaving the dinghy to mark my “spot” in False Creek and saving me the hassle of re-anchoring upon my return. Re-anchoring can be a real hassle, as you don’t really know exactly how your boat is going to swing until you’ve gone through a tide change or two, and if you’ve screwed it up you might end up bumping into other boats. Scratching up your neighbor’s paint isn’t really a great way to maintain a nice neighborly friendship.

So without hesitation, I tied off my anchor line and set off for the Granville Bridge. I hadn’t even made it a hundred meters yet when my engine began to slow down, just a little at first, but then more and more and finally she came to a shuddering stop. I raced down below to restart her, and threw the gearshift into reverse to avoid drifting into a neighbor’s sailboat. The best plan of action at this point would clearly be to turn her around and get back to the anchor, so I could figure out the problem without the stress of drifting, powerless, through the busiest bay in the region! I managed to get her turned about somewhat, but the engine was having none of it, and while she would start she’d die again as soon as I gave her any throttle.

As an aside I have decided that, like my autopilot (“Steve”), the engine is a separate entity, in cahoots with but distinct from “Tie Fighter”, the sailing vessel under which she serves. As such, the engine deserves a separate and unique name; I believe that any machinery that is given great responsibility must have a name in order to have the pride needed to take on that responsibility. I have decided to name my engine “Maude”, a fine Teutonic name meaning “mighty in battle”. “Maude” is also my mother’s middle name.

So, drifting free in False Creek with Maude disabled and cranky, I felt justifiably stresssed – though without much reason as it turned out. The sun was shining, the temperature was lovely, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the incoming afternoon tide pushed me slowly eastwards in a straight line directly back towards my dinghy! When I came within reach I leaned out and grabbed the dinghy with my boat hook, tied off Tie Fighter to the anchor line and breathed a massive sigh of relief. I didn’t have to call the Coast Guard for a rescue!*

(*: well, technically, last time this happened I didn’t have to call them either – I broke down directly in front of their outpost, and they came out of their own accord…)

a rainbow at sunset - one example of why I'm still out here

Anyhow. I have now enrolled in a five-week marine diesel engine maintenance class with Cooper Boating on Granville Island, beginning next Monday evening. Maude is one of the last big ‘mystery’ systems on Tie Fighter, and if I’m planning to do any long-term cruising (more on that soon), I need to become both her master and her servant – or at least her family doctor. Maybe just her trusted friend. Regardless, we need to able to count on one another to perform adequately when needed, and the first step towards that is for me to learn a lot more about what to do to keep her happy.

Overall? The nights are getting colder, but the natural scenery is still stunning. My windows have proven to be mostly weatherproof, and the odd day of sun here and there has allowed me to patch up the remaining leaks as I find them. My list of needed boat “repairs” grows steadily shorter, though the list of needed/wanted “upgrades” stays pretty much the same length no matter how many I knock off. The diesel heat is warm, if a bit smelly, my pantry is full and my bed is dry. My internet works, I’m (mostly) keeping up on my bills, and for some reason I’ve been a lot more musically productive over the past few days.

I believe I will survive this winter.

Windows

Once again I’ve been caught in the trap of putting too much effort into a long blog post, only to run out of steam and set the post on the shelf for later completion. Three times now I’ve updated the first paragraph of that post, from “in the past day, I…”, to “in the past few days, I…”, to “last week, I…”. I will return to that post, but I can’t keep letting it prevent me from other writings.

Much boat progress has been made! I’ve finally replaced all of my windows, a non-trivial task to say the least. To do so I had to remove my former windows for a full day – not all of them, but a few anyway. There are three different types of window on my boat, but seven windows overall; four of one type, two of another, and the final window is the front “windshield” window, which for some reason looks directly in to the bathroom. I would remove three, to be used as pattern blanks by the plexiglass window cutting guys.

The downside of removing the windows was of course that it is now Fall in Vancouver and the temperature has been dropping pretty sharply. I have been able to see my breath lying in bed at night, and that’s with the windows installed. Without the windows, I would essentially be spending my workday camping without the smores, and since I’ve been more or less camping all Summer, the novelty of the idea was somewhat lost on me. A call to the window fabricating guys told me that they had the time and the materials, and so Thursday morning I pulled out the three windows and dutifully strapped them to my backpack.

After I rode my bike over to the fabricators’ shop near Hastings and Commercial, they told me that they’d have them finished in one business day, ie Friday, so I would have to spend the night essentially sleeping outdoors. This worried me somewhat, but whatever, I’m an able-bodied man in reasonably good health. Despite my broken furnaces I do have a little Coleman propane heater I could use, so while I was a bit choked I figured I could handle it, flu season be damned. The guy told me he’d call back with a quote in an hour or so, but by 4:30pm he hadn’t called and I was starting to get a little bit worried. I called him back and asked for the quote, which he called me back with, but during that call he also mentioned that there would be a good chance they wouldn’t have them done by Friday evening.

Now, let’s reiterate; I’m essentially sleeping outdoors. It is Fall. More to the point, it is Canadian Thanksgiving, which not only means turkey and pumpkin pie, but also that this would be a long weekend. The man was telling me that I would not have windows until Tuesday?!

In the interests of brevity, I’ll spare you the details. A little wheedling, a little explaining of the situation, and the guy managed to make the windows appear by 5pm Friday. On my way back home I realized that three 1/8″ plexiglass windows weigh approximately 1/5th of seven 1/4″ Lexan windows, and that perhaps I shouldn’t be riding my bicycle with 80lbs of sheet plastic strapped to my back.

One thing I learned while installing the new windows: I am terrible at installing windows. Sikaflex 295 is horrible, horrible stuff.

Another think I learned: duct tape residue may be awful stuff to deal with, but the residue from the new clear duct tape – which, I might add, specifically says on the label “No Residue – Easy Clean Up” – is twice as difficult to remove. I had my previous windows held in and patched against the rain with clear duct tape, and will not use that stuff again for that purpose.

Anyhow. The priorities for the boat have shifted rather dramatically from “make her pretty” to “make her survive the winter”, followed by “make her comfortable”. The windows are in, though the caulking handiwork looks a bit like that of a seven-year-old with Play-Doh. The new Lexan windows, unlike the old, opaque Plexiglass ones, are completely translucent – so now I also need to consider some form of curtains if I want anything approaching privacy.

It never really stops, does it?

Long Overdue Update!

Wow. Three of the craziest, busiest, happiest months of my life. How to compress them into one post? WHY compress them into one post? This seems silly, but I think the best way to re-jumpstart my blogging is to get this all out of the way in one post, and then go back to more regular updates. *sigh*.

At my last major post, I was about to speak at the Open Web Vancouver conference at the Vancouver Conference Center. My talk went pretty well, I guess – I mean, I definitely didn’t win any awards, but nobody walked out either. I met some great new folks and had a good experience overall. I know now that speaking at tech conferences is almost exactly like doing live-pa techno in front of a big audience – the more prepared you are, the easier it is to let go and just be yourself.

Since then, there’s been… God. Seriously, where to start?!

I’ve had repeated, profound musical experiences on the boat, jamming with friends. Picture if you will a mirror-smooth False Creek, with the boat anchored about fifty feet offshore. Dan Ross playing guitar and singing, Chad Taylor playing muted trumpet and providing some percussive backup and myself on mandolin and backup vocals – folks walking past, double-taking and sitting down on the seawall to listen, applauding between songs. Making music on the boat with friends has given me far more joy than I ever imagined it could. Actually, making music on the boat at all – I’ve been spending on average about eight to ten hours per week sitting on my deck, playing my guitar and singing. If there is a greater peace than playing music on the water, I haven’t found it yet.

I’ve gone on three epic sailing adventures, the third of which is still ongoing – as of this writing I am anchored in this lovely little bay, surrounded by million-dollar waterfront houses and a beautiful cliff infested with rock climbers. More on that in future posts – but suffice to say this ongoing solo-sailing adventure is not without its trials and tribulations.

The first of the three epic sailing adventures was with a beautiful woman named Miya who I met at Burning Man in 2008, and who had come to visit me several times over the past year. Her confidence in my sailing ability was appreciated, though perhaps unwarranted, as we left Vancouver and immediately ran into eight-foot breaking swells just off Point Atkinson, enroute to the Sunshine Coast. The sailing got a lot better after the first day, but we still had to spend a few days on Bowen Island with engine trouble – mostly waiting around for a mechanic, until we tackled the problem head-on with the manual and some elbow grease, finally solving it ourselves and getting the engine back up and running. We then cruised up the coast to Secret Cove and Smuggler Cove, where we spent a night before returning to Vancouver. It was an amazing trip; the ocean opened my eyes and put a good fear into me, and the company was exquisite. The parting of ways at the end was wistful to say the least.

Drew and Laurel spinning fire on Tie Fighter — Drew and Laurel spinning fire on the boat at Diversity

The second sailing adventure was with yet another beautiful woman, Carrie, who joined me on a trip to the Diversity Festival on Texada Island. Technically we were supposed to sail with a crew of six, but Vancouver being the city of flailers that it is, the crew slowly called in to cancel until it was just the two of us. The winds were against us the whole way there and back, forcing us to motor around 90% of the tip, so it’s debatable whether or not we actually saved any money travelling by “sailboat”. We did get the sails up once or twice, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. The festival itself was excellent, with us arriving in full pirate regalia to great fanfare, spending a weekend surrounded by beautiful people and great music, and rolling out again on Monday with a grand exit. Sunday was a bit crazy, as the wind suddenly went from 5kn up to 25-30kn, and Tie Fighter danced in four-foot swells for the night – I now have a lot more faith in my anchor than before. Another boat nearby actually did slip their anchor, and came within a few feet of hitting us, but we held steady and Monday was much calmer. Another thing learned: rowing a dinghy in calm waters is one thing, rowing through four-foot waves as they break on the beach is another thing entirely! I made very good use of the drybags my sister gave me for my birthday.

The next weekend after Diversity was the Emrg-N-See Festival just outside of Salem, Oregon. I went to this festival with Trent last year, and it was probably the best festival I’d been to to date – it was as though someone had sent a personal invitation to every single gorgeous, blonde, dreadlocked, dubstep-loving yoga instructor on the west coast. I cannot express how many times I had to stop and shake my head at the sheer beauty surrounding me. This year was similar, though somewhat diluted, as though every guy who went last year went home and explained the situation to every guy he knew. I know I did, which is why I was surprised that the crew going down fron Vancouver was much smaller this year. Regardless, I definitely got my fill of amazing dubstep and bassline music, on very excellent soundsystems. I also got to take a tablespoon of dancefloor dirt out of my nose every morning, which I am choosing to look at as preparation for this year’s Burning Man expedition.

The weekend after Emrg-N-See was Sequential Circus 5, an electronic music event that I guess I’m sort of in charge of. I say that with some reservation, because the show couldn’t happen without every one of the seriously talented and driven people involved – we’ve got the whole thing pretty much down to a science now, and even with six live acts on a small stage, we continue to be efficient and competent, and we still have a good time doing it. This SeqCirc was probably the best music to date, though we were up against some very stiff competition. The capacity of the venue is about 180 people, and we had about 100 people, so while it was never packed, it never felt empty, and nearly everyone who was there at midnight was still there at 3am when we turned the lights on, so I count that as a win. The next Sequential Circus, SeqCircSix, will be in January.

After recovering from SeqCirc, having a few sailing missions out and around English Bay, and basically settling down and focusing on dayjob work for a while, I took off on my first big solo-sailing trip, headed for Victoria…