Watching it now I can see that it's really hard to tell the height of the waves in a 2D video - next time I guess maybe I should get lower to show some perspective.  Suffice to say that at the peak of the storm the occasional wave was breaking up onto my deck, which is unnerving at the best of times, but twice as scary at 3am when everything is cold and black.

Because Tie Fighter is a trimaran she is not vulnerable to the severe rolling, or 'heeling', that a regular sailboat would see in a storm like this. Instead she jumps to the top of each wave, but due to the anchor line pulling her into the wind she often cannot ride gently down the other side as she'd like. In a strong wind, her bows point anywhere from 90º off of the wind, and when she's pointed directly into the wind she'll sometimes ride to the top of a wave and SMASH her bows down into the trough of the next, pressing me bodily into my foam mattress.

Due to their width, multihulls are much more vulnerable to "corkscrewing" in a wave system; this means that one bow will head up the incline of a wave, followed by the stern, followed by the other stern, followed by the other bow, while the first bow and stern are already on their way down the other side of the wave. Think of a bowl of soup, and imagine dipping the edge of the bowl in a circle, causing the soup to slosh in a circular wave. Now imagine that you are the soup. Corkscrewing is hell for people with motion sickness! Nights like last night make me realize just how phenomenally lucky I am that I don't get seasick.

Engine repairs have jumped up on the priority list, yet again. I think it's time to just have the engine pulled out and overhauled; it's something that I really need to be stable, and currently it just isn't. I'm now hunting for a boatyard that will do this for me, ideally one that will let me hang around and watch.

Environment Canada has issued an advisory for tomorrow, calling for northwesterly winds of 20kn to 33kn.  Two weeks ago when the massive windstorm sent seven boats up onto the beach and wrecked several more along the coastline, they weren't calling for much more than that.

really should have rowed over to get a better shot of this

I'm starting to think that Kitsilano Beach might be unlucky for boaters.  On Saturday night I left the boat at about 6pm, heading off into Kits in search of food.  When I returned at about 9pm there was a new sight in the water; at first I thought it was a small tugboat with a boom of logs attached, but at I got closer I saw that the boom was one of those inflatable booms for containing oil spills, and the "tugboat" was actually the upper platform of a luxury motorboat, with the rest of the boat resting on the ocean floor!

I have no idea what the story is, but I watched on Sunday as the tide went out and a few folks in wetsuits went inside, ostensibly plugged the (hole?  burst hose? broken through-hull fitting?) and pumped out the boat.  I didn't notice any oil slick, and the boom was gone by mid-morning.  The police and the Coast Guard also made appearances during the day probably to check out the damage.  I didn't actually see the boat leave, but I did see a couple of tow-boats hovering like vultures nearby, so I assume the sunken vessel was towed away.

this neighborhood is so surreal sometimes!

Tomorrow, bright and early, the forecast is calling for a lot of wind - to put it in perspective, at about 10kn of wind, the waves get up to about 30cm tall and the boat is in constant motion.  At about 15kn, the waves jump to about 50-60cm tall, and rowing out to the boat becomes a little more difficult, and at about 20kn of wind I have to have everything in a drybag, as I'm not going to get to or from the boat without getting wet.  Tomorrow they are calling for 20kn - 33kn of wind, which will mean breaking waves larger than 1m, probably making it impossible to get to or from the boat.

I know - or at least I'm pretty sure - that my anchor line will hold, but it won't be a comfortable time.  According to the weather forecasts, the wind won't entirely let up until the weekend, so if I don't get into False Creek before the big winds start, I am unlikely to be able to pull up my anchor and go until Friday.  My current plan is to get up really early tomorrow morning and motor for False Creek, stopping at the dock at the Granville Bridge so I can fill up my water tanks, wash my dishes and give my engine a chance to cool down a bit before motoring down to Science World to anchor for a week or so.  I guess we'll see what time the wind starts!  If I'm stuck in the waves, I'll be sure to blog about it.

When I left for Seattle on Saturday afternoon, there were a dozen boats - possibly a couple more - floating just off of Kitsilano Beach.  When I returned on Thursday, there were only two remaining in the water; Tie Fighter and a small, unnamed blue-hulled sailboat that I frankly don't remember whether or not it was here when I left.

front-end loader digging out 'Tuesday Sunrise'

Of the other boats, two (Theresa on 'And-E' and Ryan on 'Helen Kate') escaped to False Creek - but seven of the others were washed ashore, with one of those smashed to pieces on the beach and another holed by the rocks and sunk.  The popular news outlets reported three sailboats on the beach, but by my tally seven boats dragged their anchors and hit the shore.  One boat, a large steel tug, fetched up against Randy's boat and forced her much further up the beach, making it difficult for him to get 'Tuesday Sunrise' back into the water.  The tugboat was apparently gone by the morning, possibly due to help from the Coast Guard, or perhaps it never went too hard aground and they were able to motor off without assistance.  Earlier today I saw this scene; a front-end loader helping to dig out the area under the 'Tuesday Sunrise' keel so that hopefully come high tide she'll be able to slip back into the water.

this used to be a Piver trimaran

Bob's boat, the name of which I cannot remember, was not so fortunate.  His anchor slipped and he was blown ashore, but the waves pummeled his home-built Piver trimaran literally to pieces.  There's no salvaging the wreck; he is out of a home.  Speaking with Shauna this morning, she mentioned that she had run into a girl on Commercial Drive carrying a pirate flag, and the girl told her that she'd taken the flag from a wrecked sailboat on Kitsilano Beach.  Shauna immediately recognized the flag as being from Bob's boat - personally, I think it's incredibly disrespectful to steal from a wrecked vessel when there is obviously a salvage operation going on!  I can't help but compare that girl's actions with someone coming upon a burning house with people running in and out saving as much as they can, and that someone taking a souvenir from the pile of rescued items.  Had I run into this girl on Commercial Drive I would not have been polite, to say the very least.

anchor rode, frayed and broken

Tie Fighter held up to the storm admirably, with the only casualty being the fraying of the anchor rode and the rub damage to the hull nearby.  This isn't as trivial as it would appear, however - the rode itself is a 250' piece of heavy nylon rope worth probably $350-$400 new, but the rubbing has worn through one of the three strands, rendering it pretty much useless.  This could have been avoided by adding what sailors call "chafing gear", which usually amounts to a short length of old, used fire hose, cut lengthwise and lashed onto the anchor rode where it chafes against the boat.  If the anchor rode had frayed through the second and third strands, there is no question, Tie Fighter would have joined the other boats on the beach - or perhaps been wrecked on the rocks!  I rarely have more than 100' of rode in use, so I will be able to cut the rode in half and use the unfrayed portion, but the rode will still need to be replaced in the near future.

Inside Tie Fighter there was almost no sign of anything having happened at all.  The dishes in the sink were sitting a bit differently, but none were broken, the chess set and playing cards were on the salon bench instead of on the windowsill where I left them - nothing serious.  I think partly this is due to my having been bitten once before; sailing through rough weather only to return below to find all of my tools spread over the floor of the cabin, and having to spend twenty minutes repacking my drill bits and socket sets.  Now almost everything I own is compartmentalized using tupperware-ish plastic bins, which fit neatly into the lockers and don't move around much even in the heaviest weather.

Overall, I dodged a serious bullet.  Still, this is twice in a row now that I've been away on shore when the serious northwesterlies have hit, and part of me feels like I've missed out!   However, when the 20kn winds from the northwest blew up again this morning at 5am and the boat jumping around in the 1m waves prevented me from sleeping, I realized that while perhaps it would have been interesting to be out here in near-hurricane winds, it wouldn't have been anything you could call "comfortable".  Sooner or later I'll be forced to face that weather, so there's no sense wishing hardship on myself for no reason.

Brad's boat, 'Gini 2'

I've been down in Seattle for the past few days visiting Miya, and woke this morning to several text messages from friends asking how I fared through the windstorm last night.  Currently I'm on the Amtrak bus hurtling back towards Vancouver, praying that Tie Fighter is still comparatively safe, bouncing around in the waves just off of Kitsilano Beach.

Last week there was another windstorm, but since the wind was from the southeast, I had very little to worry about - I got call after call asking if I was ok, but when Tie Fighter is only anchored 300m from shore, there's hardly enough room for any serious waves to build.  Still, with 45km/h sustained winds and gusts up to 65km/h, I saw wave heights of up to about a foot, and until I actually got into the rowboat and started rowing for shore I wasn't sure if I'd actually make it or if I would be blown out to sea!

a random neighbor, blown ashore

Today, on the other hand, the wind is coming from the northwest - which is the bad direction.  There is no shelter to the northwest!  Actually, there's no shelter from about south-southwest through to about north-northwest, so any winds coming from those directions will mean a bumpy ride.  The biggest waves I've actually seen out there to date were about 1m tall, which were pretty crazy to row my little dinghy through - but on another weekend, when I spent the night at another friend's house in town, we had a northwesterly blow that apparently brought 2m waves and made life pretty crazy for most of the neighbors anchored at Kits.

My first sign of the problems today came, as I said, from a flurry of text messages this morning from converned friends.  Of course my instinct was to be somewhat glib, but then I started hearing about news stories depicting a sailboat blown up onto the shore.  I checked CBC only to find this story, reporting that three sailboats were blown up on shore, and showing a photo of my friend Bob's homebuilt trimaran up on the shore with one of the outer hulls smashed off!  That got my attention, and I immediately started getting packed up to return to Vancouver.

(Since then there have been several other news stories about the situation: News1130.com, VancouverSun.com)

Randy's boat 'Tuesday Sunrise' (right) and another random boat

That's when Ernst jumped in on the text message flurry, sending me these photos from his iPhone and giving me the straight goods.  In total, six boats pulled anchor and washed ashore, four of them stranding on the beach, one utterly destroyed, and one sunk near the rocks.  I'm not sure who's boat is out at the rocks - I had a bit of a panic when I thought it might be Theresa aboard her sailboat 'And-E', but after getting in touch with both her and Ryan from 'Helen Kate', it would seem they both took the opportunity to move back into False Creek after hearing the weather warnings yesterday.  It would seem that Brad, Bob and Randy weren't so lucky, and ended up feeling the full wrath of the March winds.  Brad later spoke with CBC about the situation.

the saddest photo - an unknown boat sunk near the rocks, only the mast showing

So I guess the question becomes - why did these boats drag while Tie Fighter did not?  There are a couple of things to consider - the main one would be 'ground tackle', which is how you refer to anchors and anchor chain on a sailboat.  Currently I have my delta anchor out as usual, but about a month ago I decided - pretty much on a whim - to add a second anchor in series with the delta.  Now, basically, I have a 10kg "Fortress" anchor, 7m of heavy steel chain, a 15kg "Delta" anchor, 15m of heavy steel chain, and then about 25m of 3/4" heavy nylon anchor rope, or 'rode'.  Argh, I hate having to switch back to the imperial system - ie. 3/4" instead of 19mm)... but anchor rode is sold in imperial sizes!

As I'm typing this on the bus I've been receiving reports via text message that Tie Fighter is still holding strong out in the bay, and that the winds have died down significantly from their former fury.  I'm nearly home, and shortly I will have to try to battle the waves and get myself out to her to see if there was actually any damage done - I sure hope not!  I will update this post after I am home and safe.

Myerchin Navigator Lightknife

The knife in question was a Myerchin Navigator LightKnife; a half-straight, half-serrated blade for cutting rope accompanied by a tapered steel spike called a marlinspike, used in splicing and knotwork - or in my case, mostly used for untying seized knots. Of course I immediately brought the knife to their attention, so that they wouldn't think I was trying to sneak in with a weapon.

"Oh, um, hey - there's a large knife in my right front pants pocket."

The guard stopped searching me and looked somewhat taken aback. "Um. What?" he said.

"It's nothing sketchy, it's just a sailing knife, I live on my sailboat. I forgot I had it with me. I'm happy to check it with my bag or whatever.". I had the attention of the second guard now, who stepped closer.

"You can't take that inside, you'll have to leave it with us..." he said. So long as I could pick it up when I left, I had no problem with that. They both agreed to hold the knife at the door for me.

I also had my Leatherman Kick in my backpack, so I had to surrender that as well, but of course when I got out of the bar I flailed and forgot to retrieve the knives. In my defense, there was the small matter of having to step in and break up a fight between a big guy and the skinny prostitute on the ground that he was kicking, but that's a whole other story. A friend who works at the Lotus is currently trying to retrieve the knives for me, but I'm sure it'll be no surprise to hear that nobody knows exactly where they have gone. *sigh*.

Anyhow. I'd like to say that the Myerchin knife has served me well in the five or so years since it was given to me by an ex-girlfriend, but in fact it is the third iteration of the same knife. The first knife lasted three years, but finally the locking mechanism stopped working. With a lifetime warrantee, I had the knife replaced, but the locking mechanism on the new replacement fell apart within two months! The third iteration has lasted about a year so far with no troubles, but has grown quite dull in a very short time - and I don't own a good sharpening kit.

Spyderco 'Atlantic Salt'

I mentioned the dullness in passing in a chat with my sister Heather, who lives on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick with her boyfriend Matt, a professional diver for the east-coast fishing industry. He started enquiring about the knives on my boat, and was startled to find out that I didn't have a Spyderco 'Atlantic Salt' knife onboard , and apparently stomped around the house muttering "How can he not have one?!  He lives on a boat!!".  He (and she) promptly ordered me one for my birthday, along with a knife sharpening kit which he insists that all marine-type folks should have. The knife and sharpener are currently sitting in my other sister's apartment waiting for me to come and pick them up. Apparently the Spyderco knife blade is made from "H-1" steel; a "precipitation-hardened steel containing nitrogen instead of carbon, which cannot rust".

When I told Matt that I already had a knife, and showed him a photo of my Myerchin Lightknife, he scoffed and called it a 'city boy knife'. I found this funny, because most of the city boys I know don't carry knives at all, and the ones that do are just as at home in the backcountry as they are in downtown Vancouver.

I quite liked the Myerchin, for several reasons:

• it has a half-serrated, half-straight blade - hard to sharpen, but good for lots of cutting tasks,
• a marlinspike for untying knots - very useful,
• a shackle key in the blade, very handy on a sailboat,
• a basic LED flashlight in the handle,
• decent sized with a pocket clip, fits well in my pocket, and
• it looks and feels good.

What I didn't like about the Myerchin was pretty much only one thing: the build quality. With the warrantee I just have to walk in to any West Marine store to order a free replacement, and the edge is apparently maintainable with a little attention every few weeks, but I haven't had the tools to properly sharpen it.

My friend John Foulkes feels that every man should carry a knife, and refers to this type of knife as an 'EDC' - an 'Every Day Carry'. I don't think the Spyderco 'Atlantic Salt' would make for a good EDC in the city, but I can certainly see how it would be if one were working around boats as a day job.   I am very much looking forward to adding the 'Atlantic Salt' to Tie Fighter's equipment.

the Boye Knives 'Cobalt Basic 3'

I do wish sometimes that I were the sort of person that could get away with wearing a small fixed-blade knife, but unfortunately, due to my social nature and my general clumsiness, wearing a sheathed knife on my hip - regardless of size - is an invitation to trouble either in the form of accidents or unwanted attention from authorities. Perhaps in the future, when I've both calmed down somewhat and moved on from the bustling city life, I will be able to wear a sheathed belt knife. When that day comes, I will purchase the Boye Knives 'Cobalt Basic 3'. The Basic 3 is - in my humble opinion - a *gorgeous* small fixed-blade knife that would be absolutely perfect for life on a boat.

...that is, for older, calmer, less city-living people than I. Furthermore, it's a $300 knife, which is currently out of my price range.

If I don't end up getting my Myerchin back from the Lotus, I think I have decided to purchase the same knife again. I'm fond of it, I'm familiar with it and the list of things I like about it far outstrips the list of things I don't. I've been shopping around the internets for similar knives, and I just haven't been able to find another knife that I like better than the Myerchin.

If you're looking for an EDC, check out these links:

Columbia River Knife & Tool - good quality pocket folders, no sailing/rigging specific tools though.

SpyderCo - excellent reputation and variety.

SOG Speciality Knives and Tools - good variety, though a somewhat difficult site to browse.

Do you have an EDC that you love? Please share a link in the comments!

So, uh... where have I been?

I'm anchored about 300m west of Kitsilano Beach, where I've been since February 1st.  There are no regular police patrols to worry about, the marine traffic is low, the people are friendly and the neighborhood is pleasant, if a bit homogenized for my tastes, and perhaps a bit remote from most of my regular haunts. The scenery is good, and I peacefully weathered the collective insanity that was the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games without incident. I've technically been "legal" to return to False Creek for just over two months now, but in all honesty I've been quite enjoying the change of scenery; all things considered, living on Kits Beach is quite lovely and I haven't felt any strong drive to return to False Creek. I will very likely return to "my spot" near the Cambie Bridge soon, but I am not in any particular rush.

I was told that anchoring out here would get very unpleasant if the weather turned foul, but in reality the only time it's bad is when the wind comes from the west - there's reasonable shelter from the north, east and south, but the open ocean is to the west, so even a light breeze can build up a wave system.  Rowing back home to Tie Fighter can be somewhat exciting when the wind is blowing hard and the waves are 50cm or more and breaking onto the beach!  The first time I tried to row home during a westerly blow, as soon as I pushed off the shore the rowboat was pushed sideways by a wave, where another breaking wave caught her and nearly dumped me completely over, right back onto the beach.  Two or three more waves broke into the dinghy in that row home, and by the time I reached Tie Fighter there was 15cm or so of water around my feet.  Since then I've been making a point of using a massive yellow drybag backpack that my friend JP gave me - whenever the weather report looks dubious I replace my usual Chrome cycling bag with the drybag.  I'm certain this practice has saved my laptop from getting wet at least twice.

completely unrelated: random stuff on my table. whatever, blogs are better with pictures.

Gathering potable water was a big question for a while - during the Olympics, my usual water fill-up spot, just under the Granville Bridge, was blocked by a barge holding a three-story restaurant.  I never did figure out exactly what the point of it was, but the last time I sailed past there were people seated at a table in the window, being served lunch by a waitress; all three waved at me as I went by.  I have been living out of a set of five 4l water jugs for... oh, it must be about three months now.  I fill them up once a week or so; I used to use the faucet on the side of the government building near the Cambie Bridge, but now I've been using one on the side of the Watermark Restaurant on Kits Beach.  The restaurant has "security" faucets, which require a special tool to open an access panel and the same tool to turn the water on and off; neither the panel nor the faucet are any match for my trusty Leatherman tool. Before I figured out the security panels, I had been skulking around in the alleys of Kitsilano looking for an unprotected faucet and feeling somewhat scandalous.

Honestly though, the two biggest problems about living on Kits Beach are both related to the beach itself.  For one, there's really no place to lock my dinghy, so every time I go ashore I have to drag the dinghy bodily up over the tideline.  At low tide, the tideline is a 150m slog uphill in wet sand, dragging a 90kg rowboat, a backpack and a bicycle - some days I have to do this three or four times, and almost every time it's just a warmup for a long, fast bikeride.  I figure this makes up for not renewing my gym membership.

kits beach in the summertime - not my pic

If I leave the dinghy overnight on the beach overnight in good weather, I have to worry about drunken idiots trying to steal it for a joyride.  They usually abandon their mission after they realize the oars are padlocked together and to the boat, but twice now the dinghy has been dragged below the tideline before being abandoned.  If I had been another few hours before returning, the dinghy would most likely have washed away, leaving me with a choice of calling in a couch-favour from a friend, a cold, wet sleep on the beach, or a very cold swim home. This won't be as big a problem in the summer - in fact I'm considering the idea of swimming to and from the boat just for fun.

In the daytime the dinghy faces a completely different problem; several times now I've returned to the beach on warm, sunny afternoons to find children playing in my dinghy. This doesn't bother me in the slightest in principle, but for the fact that the universal game to play with a boat found on a beach appears to be "See How Much Sand We Can Pile Into The Rowboat", followed closely by "Appropriate The Bailing Bucket As A Beach Toy, And Lose/Bury/Keep It". I don't remember these games from when I was a kid, but just for your own reference my dinghy is *very* difficult to effectively clean sand out of, and making a bailing bucket out of an old laundry detergent container has the important prerequisite of first owning laundry detergent.  If you are the sort of person who owns laundry detergent, I would be much obliged if you would save the jug for me.

The second problem is the sand itself - it gets in everything!  Regardless of how much is in the dinghy, walking across the wet beach my shoes are completely coated in the stuff.  I track sand into Tie Fighter on my shoes, then from the salon into the bedroom on my socks, then into my bed on my feet.  I have sand in my bed.  Do you know what it's like to have sand in your bed?  In March?

boiling water serving two purposes - making tea and testing Yanmar engine thermostats

The engine situation hasn't changed even a little bit.  There are three bottles of C-L-R sitting on my navigation table, and one of these afternoons (perhaps tomorrow, actually) I should take the time to run it through the engine block just to see how it fares. I will likely need to use several plastic buckets and re-route one or more of the engine water pumps to get the C-L-R into the appropriate engine chambers. It could get messy.

I did take some time to try to diagnose the problem a little further, and I'm starting to think that at least part of the problem was just that the thermostats had corroded into a partly-open state.  I've got a new set of thermostats in there now, but given that they're still in raw water I suspect that I'll have to replace them yet again before I can call the engine "maintained".  I still have to convert Maude back to antifreeze cooling and get the electronics all hooked up properly, so that I can have alarms and warning buzzers and gauges on the engine again. Soon, Maude, soon.

Anyhow. Hiatus off. More regular updates to come. I promise.

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.

The problem with being towed out is that I cannot safely anchor out in English Bay in February weather without an engine - if I drag anchor, I could end up on the rocks, or worse.  They can't - or at least, they shouldn't - put me into a potentially dangerous situation.  That leaves one option: they could choose to tow me to the VPD docks and impound my boat.  That would *really* put a damper on my adventures!

Anyhow.  I found the part I need.  Actually that was easy, as I had already sourced and purchased the part a few weeks ago.  Unfortunately, getting another replacement wasn't so easy, as there apparently isn't a single water trap in Canada at this time.  With some calling around and favours called in I managed to track down a water trap at a marine supply house in Seattle, though due to license agreements they cannot sell it to me in Canada.  They did however suggest a shop in Bellingham that they could sell to, who could subsequently sell it to me, and so by way of Sweden to Seattle to Bellingham to FedEx to Vancouver - at significant expense - the part should arrive on Monday.

all the bits I need to replace

The real faulty part, the one that I am 95% sure caused all these problems in the first place, is available in Vancouver.  According to the internet, the raw water injector elbow apparently only lasts about five years before rusting out and clogging up - honestly, I should have predicted this, it would have saved me a lot of time and money.  The injector elbow is attached to the engine block with a... I don't know what it's called, an attacher elbow thing. That thing was seriously rusted, though when I last removed it to check it it seemed fine on the inside, and the guys at the marine store said that they last an awfully long time, so I wasn't worried.  Still, when I went to pull the injector elbow off today, the bit connecting the two snapped off in my hands.  Not exactly the kind of behavior you expect from an ostensibly solid steel fitting!

The results of running the engine without exhaust cooling are evident in the photo; a big hole burned in the water trap, the plastic elbows melted, and the bit of flexible exhaust hosing is now somewhat suspect.  I'll likely replace the exhaust hose at the same time, probably picking up a few new stainless-steel hose clamps as well.  The funny thing about hose clamps is that about 80% of the time they say 'stainless steel' on them but the little screw holding them together isn't actually stainless, so after about a year you come back to find the band is still nice and shiny while the screw is a featureless lump of rust.

Anyhow.  This isn't even close to what I'm supposed to be working on right now.  I have a big webserver rollout with a due-date of Monday, which means I'll likely be working through the weekend.  Back to the grind...

This morning I awoke to a gorgeous, sunny day, an obvious sign that my move out of False Creek would go smoothly.  Of course, I neglected to check on the phase of the moon or something and it all went horribly pear shaped - I am currently still at anchor in False Creek, about 500m west of my previous anchorage.  I've been sitting around doing dayjob work and waiting for the VPD to show up so I can tell them my sob story and pray they don't issue me a fine or tow me.

This morning I cooked a big breakfast, checked in on work stuff, and prepared Tie Fighter for the grand exit.  I fired up the engines - she started (almost) right away!  I pulled the anchor; no small task, with months of False Creek grime and growth along the full length of the rode, and noticeably heavier due to the addition of a thick steel cable that I dragged up from the bottom also.  The ocean floor of False Creek has a legacy of a hundred years of industrial garbage.

I motored away from my anchorage, a bit nervous, and made it about 200m west before I heard a strange 'clunk' and the engine started making a new and different noise - nothing huge, but a perceivable shift, and that's never a good thing.  I went down and checked out the engine compartment, and I could hear a bit of a noise but couldn't see anything out of place.  I later discovered that the secondary water pump - which wasn't hooked up, but which I had bolted loosely to the engine "just to get it out of the way" - had shaken loose of its mounts and was resting against the beltwheel of the primary water pump, grinding into the bronze housing of the pump.

I went back up to the cockpit and throttled up, and things went smoothly for about five minutes - I could almost see the Granville Bridge, and I figured I could dock there and sort any further problems out before making my way out into English Bay.  No such luck; within another minute I felt the engine power drop suddenly, and I saw smoke begin to pour into the cockpit via the engine compartment vent.  I immediately throttled down, dove below and opened the engine compartment hatch, only to be met by a cloud of black smoke.  I killed the engine and waved the smoke away looking for signs of fire, ready to jump for the fire extinguisher at the first sign of flickering yellow and orange.  Fortunately there were no flames, just thick, black smoke pouring out of the dark engine compartment.  I thought at first that perhaps I had over- or under-tightened a belt, but as I looked closer I realized that there was a gaping hole melted into the side of the brand-new water trap I had just installed, and the plastic elbows in the exhaust line had both melted beyond recognition.  $@&%!  The smoke was a combination of diesel exhaust and scorched plastic.

With no engine, floating free in the shipping lanes of False Creek, I was in a bit of a bind.  I threw out my anchor and got on my VHF radio.

"Vancouver Coast Guard Radio, Vancouver Coast Guard Radio, this is Tie Fighter, Tie Fighter, over."

"Station calling Vancouver Coast Guard Radio, go ahead, over..."

I outlined the situation - normally the Coast Guard would recommend me contact a towing company, but given that I was about 500m from their station I thought it might be worth a try giving them a call.  About ten minutes later they showed up and offered me a tow, which I gladly accepted.  They tied the massive Coast Guard zodiac - the 'Kitsilano 1' - to the port side of Tie Fighter and towed me the 150m or so to the nearby anchorage, where I dropped my anchor.  I thanked them and sat down to give them all the information needed for their incident report.  They left me a copy of the report, so that I can present it to the VPD when they come knocking next.

Anyhow - the long and the short of it is that my exhaust system has been malfunctioning for a while, and now I am 95% certain the problem is in something called a "raw water injection elbow".  The elbow is where seawater that has been used to cool the engine is injected into the exhaust system, cooling down the exhaust and ejecting the warm seawater from the boat.  These elbows apparently only last about five years, and lacking a decent record of maintenance on my engine, I have absolutely no idea when the last time mine was replaced.

End result?  I'm still in False Creek, albeit closer to the Granville Bridge.  A new water trap is about $330 (I know this well, having just bought one last week, argh), a new injector elbow is $390, the connecting bit which may need to be replaced is about $120 and the replacement exhaust elbows are about $35 each.  Instead of moving on with my great adventure, I'm now out about a thousand bucks and have a bunch of engine work ahead of me.

Someday.  SOMEDAY this engine will be stable and reliable!

a lovely farewell evening on the Creek

It is January the 26th 2010, one day past my due date to get the heck out of False Creek - but here I am, still about two hundred meters from the Cambie Bridge.  I've had visits from the VPD two days in a row, but since I haven't been able to start my engine there hasn't been much I can do.  Yesterday I managed to get my engine started again, and today I blew a large portion of the day working on day-job stuff and reprovisioning Tie Fighter for an extended stay where there isn't a grocery store a block away.  I'm still here, but I'll be leaving in the morning.  Tonight is my last evening in the Creek for a while, so I figured I'd relax and enjoy it.

I thought I'd update the blog with a few notes on what has changed in the neighborhood over the past month - besides the constant visits from the VPD, that is.  As I write this, there is a massive inflatable boom across False Creek, about ten meters west of the Cambie Bridge.  There is a gap of about thirty meters across, and that gap is currently being patrolled by no less than four RCMP boats.  Still, I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's start from the beginning.

denied access to my favourite bike path!

Southeastern False Creek is home to the newly-constructed Olympic Village.  The Village will be home to all the athletes during the games, so of course security is a big question - but the sheer amount of money being spent on this project is astounding.  The most recent roadblock to go up, a block or so from my boat, was being staffed by seven people at last check, including three uniformed police officers and four people in VANOC jackets!  As far as I can tell, there is a similar roadblock on every road adjoining the Village.  The entire area is surrounded by tall steel fences.

Still, this is all stuff you can read elsewhere.  This is my blog, and so I will tell (and show) you what I am seeing from the water. For instance, my favourite bike path - the one from Cambie Bridge down towards Science World, past the shiny new Olympic Village buildings, over the boardwalks and sculpted bridge, past the immaculately landscaped gardens and artificial peninsula built for the wildlife - has been blocked off.  To get downtown I have to skulk my way through five blocks of alleyways and several blocks of fenced-in sidewalk.  I hate riding on the sidewalk.

CFAV Glendyne placing the buoys - intimidating!

Anyhow, about a month ago, a large, scary-looking navy tugboat pulled into False Creek.  I did a bit of research and found the tug to be the Canadian Forces Auxiliary Vessel (CFAV) Glendyne, a Glen-class tugboat based out of CFB Esquimalt, near Victoria.  The Glendyne put a pair of large, orange buoys in place just short of the Cambie Bridge, complete with orange flashing lights on top.  I knew that this would be the beginning of the promised 'boom' under the Bridge, but I still hadn't seen any documentation about what the end result would look like, and so I watched with interest as they set the buoys in place.  I figured they'd be back in the next couple of days to finish the job, but once they were finished they motored slowly away and never returned.

Off-topic, one of my neighbors has mentioned that he expects to see at least one military gunboat in the Creek, paired up with the RCMP zodiacs and whaleboats currently patrolling the boomed-off area.  I am not convinced, but given the focus on security I wouldn't be shocked if there were some kind of small, fast Canadian Forces gunboat deployed here during the games.

holy crap, a hovercraft!

Anyhow - a few weeks went past without any change to the buoys, but one morning last week I awoke to the sounds of something very large cruising past me.  I popped my head up out of the hatch to see a Department of Fisheries and Oceans and/or Canadian Coast Guard (both were painted on the hull) hovercraft making its way slowly down the creek!  The hovercraft - which later research found to be the CCGH Siyay based in Richmond - was outfitted with a crane and a large cargo of cement blocks.  I figured they were planning to work on the boom somehow, but instead they spent the day lining both sides of False Creek with smaller, lighted channel buoys, indicating the shipping channel in the center of the Creek.  This of course was followed by several days of the VPD visiting any boat anchored too far out into the middle of the Creek, issuing warnings and referring everyone to the notice that anchoring within the commercial shipping lane is banned by Transport Canada.

Personally, I think the buoys are actually a nice touch, and I hope they stay past the Olympics.  It's nice to pull into a bay and have your way clearly marked - it makes everything feel a little bit safer, a bit more professional... dare I say "a bit better-managed"?

mmmm, sausages

Anyhow.  Sequential Circus 7 was this weekend - it was excellent, thank you for asking - and as such I didn't spend much time on the boat.  When I returned, I found that someone had been busy, and there were now several large black inflatable sausages stretched across the Creek!  They're about two and a half meters in diameter and appear to be made of a thick rubber, with webbing straps every three meters or so, tie-down grommets on those straps, and large metal rings at the end to fasten the sausages together, or to the shore.  In other words, the sausages are clearly designed and built to do one thing only: to operate as a boom or blockade over water.

One question we'd be bantering about on the Creek was what exactly they were planning to use for the boom.  One guy thought large logs, another thought a very thick rope - I had no ideas, but apparently the answer was easier than we thought.

While rowing back to Tie Fighter yesterday, I made a short detour out to the opening in the boom, where an RCMP whaler was sitting.  As I approached, he was quick to lean out the window and let me know that the area past the boom is now restricted waters - as an aside, I have gotten similar warnings from the people manning blockades as I approached them on my bicycle.  Seriously?  The huge black barrier, the orange flashing lights and the menacing police boat - or in the case of the roadblocks, the seven people in official-looking uniforms, the flashing lights, the pylons, the big orange-striped barrier sawhorses and the police car parked perpendicularly to the road - do other people really not understand these signs?  Or maybe it's just that the barricades are so universally unpopular that anyone approaching them must be some kind of threat.  I don't know.  Anyhow.

The officer, once he understood that I was just there to ask questions, was quite friendly and explained that the boom would be closed to all boats except official VANOC-approved vehicles.  The boom is apparently scheduled for removal at the end of March, but the officer did not know whether or not the shipping lane buoys would be removed.

Speaking of speaking with officers, I've spoken with two different sets of VPD in the past two days, both of whom were somewhat interested in the fact that my anchoring permit had expired.  Each time the R.G.McBeath shows up there are at least two officers onboard, and often more.  Yesterday there were four officers, none of whom I recognized, and when I explained to the officer doing the talking that I was planning to leave as soon as I could get my engine started, he answered "I'll believe that when I see it.".  He then pulled slowly away without saying another word to me.  In contrast, when they came by today, it was another batch of officers I'd never seen before, and when I showed them that I'd just gotten my engine running again, the officer in charge said "It's almost 5pm, why don't you wait until morning before pulling out, it'll be dark very soon.".  Nice!

Anyhow.  I've only blown my deadline by two days, but it's definitely time to go.  The only thing I know to expect is significantly rougher waters - False Creek is very protected, and I'm really not looking forward to just how bad the February weather can be out in the open.  Rest assured, I'll blog about it as I go.