I started to write a blog post on Friday morning, but by Saturday evening the still-open browser window – the blog editor page with just the word “Stress” written in the title box – had become its own succinct review of the events of those two days. I won’t bore you with the details, but the main point is that after some fast talking, the VPD granted me another couple of days to get my engine going. I spent most of the weekend working on her, and as of now I am reasonably confident (though knocking wood) that she is working well enough to get me the heck out of Dodge.
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.
It’s now been about twenty four hours since “the incident”, and the VPD still haven’t shown up. I’m not much looking forward to their visit; it could really only go one of two ways, and those ways depend entirely on who the attending officers are. I figure they will either let me stay – though they may be angry and/or aggressive – or they will tow me out.
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!
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.
Ok, so I figured I’d write this “tomorrow”, but that “tomorrow” was Christmas Eve and well… you know how it goes.
official notice from the VPD
So! December 23rd, I got a visit from the Vancouver Police Department, in the R.G.McBeath. They were quite friendly, as they often are, but they explained that unfortunately the court battle between the city and a False Creek liveaboard had come to a close, with the judge ruling to uphold the 2006 Vancouver addendum to the Canada Shipping Act. The Act, translated to layman english, says that no person or group can “own” a navigable water – ie anywhere that the tide goes in and out. Navigable water is public land, and anyone can anchor in any navigable water for as long as they like as long as they’re not blocking shipping channels or in military areas.
…or as the Addendum states, “or if it’s False Creek, Vancouver, in which case all bets are off.”.
Anyhow, the officers told me that they were now under orders to enforce the anchoring bylaws, and that I would have to get an anchoring permit if I wanted to stay in False Creek. They gave me an informational pamphlet detailing what to expect in the Creek during the Olympics, and they served me with an official notice saying that I must have said permit by January 4th, or that I’ll be towed from the creek at my expense. That’s not an insignificant expense, either – the towing includes a haulout, which requires a special mobile crane lift to pull the boat out of the water and up onto land storage. Usually a haulout costs around $200 per trip, and the officers made sure to point out there would be added storage fees racking up daily while the boat rests on their land.
Just as an aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if the VPD marine dry storage place didn’t actually have the capability to lift a boat of Tie Fighter’s size out of the water – she’s about 7.5m wide, and most travel lifts can only handle a boat about 5m wide… not that I have any inclination towards putting that theory to the test!
the outside of the VPD's pamphlet
There are folks around in the Creek who have their hackles raised by the ruling. Honestly, I must confess there’s even a little anti-authoritarian anarchist part of me left over from my teens – that part of my mind has built a mental barricade from a burning, flipped over Prius, and is screaming “WE WILL FIGHT THIS!” – but the reality is, I have no intention whatsoever of fighting it. I’ll go. Frankly, I kind of needed the kick in the ass; if you’re going to live in an apartment that can travel around but you don’t actually take advantage of that fact… well, you might as well be living in a trailer park.
If you’re reading this and you’re not from Vancouver, you might not realize that False Creek is pretty much ground zero for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. I am currently anchored just west of the Cambie Bridge, about 300m from the Olympic Village, future home to the illustrious athletes while the games are ongoing, and future snooty yuppy condo village for decades after that. It has actually been a real pleasure to watch the Village rise from the unused industrial plots over the past few months, and the bike ride around the seawall from the Cambie Bridge down towards Science World has become a tour of some the most beautiful architecture in the city. I will deeply miss calling this neighborhood my “permanent” home.
pamphlet, inside
Of course, with the Olympics being a huge political and financial debacle, forethought is critical. I can certainly understand the need to crack down on anchoring given the situation; hotel rooms are pushing up to $5000/night during the games! Anyone within boating range would/should/will jump at the chance to come and spend a few days staying on their boat free of charge, anchored pretty much directly in the downtown core of Vancouver. There’s a serious potential there for chaos, with hundreds or perhaps even thousands of boaters of various skill levels attempting to anchor in the notoriously foul weather of February. A single dragging anchor can mean many thousands of dollars of damage to a boat… or more importantly, to other boats or property nearby. The city would be crazy to stand by and let it happen, which is why I’ve been saying for months that there’d be absolutely no way they’d allow us to stay on, unfettered, through the Olympic games.
So what does it all mean for me? Well, when I first heard the news I took it as bad. After reflection, I have now I have come to realize that it’s just the change of a chapter for this lifestyle; sometimes you get to pick when the next chapter begins, and sometimes you just have to roll with it. I’ve grown very complacent in the past few months, settling in to the easy life here in downtown Vancouver. There are groceries, laundry and many coffeeshops and restaurants within an easy walk. If I want to go to Canadian Tire, it’s a hundred-meter row followed by a three-block bikeride – anchoring anywhere else that could be a two-kilometer row followed by a five-kilometer bikeride, or even much further. I’m already in decent shape, but I suspect that I will be in much better shape by summertime.
When I get my anchoring permit on January 4th, it will be valid for twenty-one days, meaning I will have to vacate False Creek on or before January 25th, 2010. Normally I wouldn’t wait until the last minute, but I have obligations here in town on the 23rd, and I am hoping to travel a bit earlier on in the month.
To be clear, this isn’t the end of an era – the permit only really says that I have twenty-one days in which I can stay in False Creek out of any sequential forty days. I can return to anchor False Creek in March, ideally just after the Olympics finish, but at that time the forces-that-be will have switched over to the summer permit rules. In the summertime one can anchor in False Creek for fourteen days out of any consecutive thirty days with a valid permit. Anchoring permits are free; the only thing that really changes here is my stable, unmoving spot, where I have been squatting at anchor without a permit for the past five months or so.
So now, on top of my usual pile of duties, obligations and stresses, I have a half of a month to finish all of my maintenance tasks, tie off any loose ends in town and find a new place to live for a month or so, and my ability to stay in one place for months at a time has been more or less permanently removed. As of January 25th, I will officially be a nomad!
