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.
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.
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.
A few weeks ago I dropped into a show at the Lotus Sound Lounge on a Saturday night, a bit after midnight. I hadn’t really planned on going to a club but I was already downtown and had friends there, so without a second thought I stopped by. When I got to the door the security staff went to pat me down for weapons, at which point I remembered that I was carrying my every-day pocket knife, which is a particularly vicious-looking sailing knife.
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:
Judging by the comments, emails and in-person needling at parties and social events, it would seem that people do in fact read my blog. I’m flattered and encouraged, and I apologize for the quiet stretch; it’s been about a month and a half since my last update, and that one wasn’t of much interest anyway. This posting should mark the end of that dry spell and a return to a semi-regular posting schedule.
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.
