Sailing – Page 10 – disengage.ca

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?

Interesting.

Heh!

I just got an invitation for breakfast at JT’s place tomorrow morning. The time of requested arrival: 7:30am.

This means I’m going to have to set an alarm to wake up, as I usually wake up somewhere between 8:30am and 9:30am. While musing about this, I realized that the last time I set an alarm was back in June… the last time he invited me over for breakfast. I haven’t set a wake-up alarm in over three months.

Clearly I’m doing something right!

Hmm.

Well, it finally happened: last night, someone tried to steal my dinghy from the dock.

I rolled in from dinner and a movie at around 1:30am to find my padlocked steel cable twisted up around the dock cleat. At first I thought someone had just pulled the cable in and tied it tightly to rein in my dinghy closer to the dock; this has happened once before when the dock was really crowded. When I looked closer however it was apparent that someone had pulled the cable in and used a lever of some sort (perhaps one of my oars?) to twist the cable extremely hard in an obvious attempt to snap it.

I’m surprised at the attempt, frankly – the cable, for one, is just a cable I made from vinyl-covered steel clothesline cable, and it would have been easy to cut with a pair of cable cutters. Furthermore, the cable is only held in place with a bolt-based cleat under some shrinkwrap tubing, so someone with a knife and a wrench could have taken the cable apart with little hassle. These two things tell me that the attempted theft was by someone who wasn’t equipped to steal, as a bike thief or a professional would surely have some basic tools. I also noticed a bunch of new graffiti on the dock, which may have been a coincidence, but which makes me think that perhaps it was just a bunch of kids looking to take my dinghy for a joyride. Looking around the dock, I realized that mine was the only dinghy with oars, so that would reinforce my theory somewhat.

I’m not sure what I would have done if the dinghy had been successfully taken. It’s too late in the year to swim for it, and I don’t particularly want to try swimming in False Creek to begin with. It is clearly time to take the locking of my dinghy more seriously.

Tuesday Morning

Not many big adventures to report, but enough small happenings that I figure I should get caught up anyway.

I’m well-rested, even though I woke at 3am last night to the sounds of an unexpected rain shower just getting underway. To people that live in houses or apartments or condos this wouldn’t seem like a big deal, but for me it meant scrambling out of bed to bring in the two bagged sails still on my bow, and to cover the generator with a tarp. The sail bags aren’t waterproof, and if the sails get wet and don’t get unpacked and hung to dry out they can easily mildew, which is both terrible for the strength of the sailcloth and terribly ugly. The generator is literally a single point of failure in my work life at this time, as my electrical system on the boat isn’t charging the batteries well and the generator’s electricity is the only way I can do my day job for more than an hour at a time.

a brass hank - ten or twenty of these attach each sail to a steel cable, or 'forestay', at the bow of the boat.

Now all that being said, bringing in the sail bags and the generator took about ten to fifteen minutes of work overall – although the sails were in their respective bags, they were still “hanked on” to the forestays with brass hanks, and the sheets still rigged back through the blocks and winches. This is so that I could manage the boat single-handedly; with the sails bagged but hanked on and rigged, preparing to raise the sails would be as simple as just untying the tops of the bags, and then winching up the halyards could pull the sails right out of their bags and up the forestay. Still, it was a full ten or so minutes to get the sails unrigged and put away – I probably could/should have spent the extra two minutes in the cabin finding and putting on some pants, instead of struggling with corroded brass hanks and knotted rigging in my underwear at 3am in the rain. At least it was warm-ish out, and even though False Creek is very well lit at night, I don’t think anyone walked by. I was certainly happy to get back to my warm bed.

I’ve been “home” – or back in Vancouver anyway – for a few days now. I told myself that the weekend would be a few days of rest, but that sure didn’t happen. Friday night I found myself out at the Lotus Sound Lounge enjoying a live-pa set from Ragdoll, and then Saturday back out to the same club to hear live-pa sets from Inkwell and the inimitable LongWalkShortDock. It gives me a great deal of pride to see live-pa really starting to pick up in this city – I’d like to think I had a hand in making the format more known and accepted, but listening to the quality of the music at those two clubnights, I’m thinking it’s not so much about the fact that it’s live-pa, but rather that the guys are actually just giving DJs a solid run for their money.

my "charging station", charging my camera, celphone, razor and Nintendo DS — my ghetto charging station on my charting table, charging my camera battery, cellphone, razor and Nintendo DS

In other news, my battery charger for my digital camera finally came in the mail! Just in time for Burning Man too, so hopefully this year I’ll actually remember to pull my camera out of the bag more than twice. I’ve had a few conversations lately with folks who share the same affliction, though each time they ended more as affirmations than commiserations; we’ve agreed that it is better to live an experience fully and completely in the moment, and that stepping back to take photos and document just detracts from the experience. Still, it’s awfully nice to be able to go back through a series of photos years later and remember an amazing time – maybe that’s why I like hanging around with photographers so much. At least now I can photograph the stupid little stuff that happens and make this blog a little more colourful.

Prior to getting “home”, I had a lovely day of sailing on Friday – I woke at 7am and was on my way by 8am, and motored two hours north to Porlier Pass after spending the night in Montague Harbour. For future reference, Montague Harbour is lovely but there is no cell service, which meant no internet access! Strange, especially given that it was probably the most populated anchorage that I’d been to yet, with probably close to a hundred boats at anchor. I arrived at Porlier Pass at about 10:15am, giving me a half-hour to idle around waiting for the slack tide at 10:38am, but then I was through and out on the Georgia Straight by 11am. Even at slack tide, Porlier Pass was a series of eddies, whirlpools and standing waves, and Tie Fighter was spun sideways more than once by the competing tidal currents.

The wind on the Straight was lovely, pushing about 25kn which is absolutely perfect for fast, exciting cruising. I found myself whipping along at a solid 8kn for about an hour straight, harnessed in and standing at the absolute back of the starboard wing, leaning back in my harness and hanging on to a backstay with one hand. I don’t think the starboard hull touched the water for an hour; beautiful, amazing sailing – that sort of perfect moment is what sailing is really all about, and I couldn’t stop grinning. Then the wind started to pick up a bit, and then a bit more… and suddenly I found myself with far too much sail up.

To ‘reef’ a sail is to lash it partially down, to lower the amount of sail you are presenting to the wind, so that you can continue sailing despite high winds. There’s a saying amongst sailors; something like “if you’re wondering whether or not it’s time to reef, it’s time to reef”, and I took that to heart, dropping my yankee and lashing it to the deck with bungee cords. Apparently I was just in time – the boat fell to 6kn with the reduced sail, and then the wind immediately jumped again and I went right back up to 8kn under just the main and the staysail! That was a bit scary, but so long as I took the helm manually (ie, without Steve the Autopilot to help), I could keep Tie Fighter carefully balanced with the rig close hauled, just on the edge of being overpowered, whipping across the Straight.

I made it across the Straight in about three hours, much faster than I went across the first time – on the way over the trip across took almost six hours, though admittedly a lot of the first trip was idling along enjoying the perfect summer sunshine, suntanning and reading a book. The last hour or so the wind died down a lot this time, but when I hit English Bay the wind flipped in direction and came right back up to 35kn again! I spent the next three hours tacking my way home between the oil tankers anchored in the Bay; back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Finally I found myself at Kitsilano Point, where I took down the sails, bagged everything up, and motored back into False Creek to anchor.

Oh, and lastly, I got a fantastic SMS message from the awesome (and ridiculously cute) Shauna on Thursday night; she was apparently inspired by my Facebook status update and doodled this pic, which she photographed and sent to my phone. I love random stuff like this, it totally made my day. Thanks Shauna!

And now it’s back to work, getting caught up on a number of dayjob projects that need to be complete before I leave for Burning Man on Friday morning…

Yep, Still Weird.

Another week in Victoria – I can see how this place earned the nickname ‘The Velvet Rut’! There’s just enough fun and interesting stuff happening to keep me hanging on day after day. I know there’s more happening in Vancouver, but overcoming the inertia and just getting up and leaving seems like a huge amount of effort, when it’s so very pleasant here already. Still, Burning Man is coming up fast, and I have a lot of work – both day-job and life – to catch up on before I leave for the desert.

The weekend started off with a bang, at a very sexy house-slash-birthday party hosted by a bunch of the girls from the Cheesecake Burlesque Review – but after that (well, ok, after a lazy afternoon of spinning firestaff in a backyard) I pretty much stayed in and nursed my hangover. Sunday I went and saw ‘District 9’, which was excellent.

Monday and Tuesday were fairly slackful and I got a lot of dayjob work done – Monday night I had a bunch of Victorians out for a sail around the around the Juan de Fuca Straight. It was really nice to have another sailor on board – Sarah is a racer, and it was really cute to watch her constantly watching and adjusting the headsail trim. Such a difference between racing and cruising – I usually just set-and-forget. I dropped the crew off at the docks in Victoria Harbour and made my way back to Gonzales Bay under motor in the dark – note to self: don’t do that. Sailing alone at night is spooky, especially when there’s no moon – you can’t see if you’re about to hit a log or something!

Tuesday night I went to Lehna and Jamie’s for drinks and conversation, then rode my bike back to Gonzales Bay at about midnight. It was after the lovely long bikeride home that things started to get a bit scary. Allow me to set the stage…

By the light of my little LED MagLite, I made my way down the shadowy path towards the pitch-dark beach where my rowboat was padlocked to a railing. I thought I could hear voices from the beach, but they grew quiet as I approached and a cursory scan of the beach did not reveal anyone – it was probably just the wind. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit jumpy, being by myself in a park at midnight with nobody around to help if I were to, say, get jumped by thugs or something. My only comfort was that Victoria doesn’t really seem to have much of a problem with violent crime – but there’s always a first time.

I unlocked my boat, put my bicycle in the bow and pushed the boat out into the bay, jumping in as it left the shore. I rowed out to my waiting sailboat, watching the phosphorescence ripple away from me in twin glowing crescents with every pull of the oars. When I reached Tie Fighter, I could feel a little bit of the stress fall away, but it wasn’t until I got inside the cabin and got the lights on that I really felt relieved.

I had settled in with my laptop and was checking email and chatting with Trent and Vince when I heard some splashing directly outside the boat. Ok, that’s normal – it could be another boat pulling up, but the sounds were also not inconsistent with waves lapping at the hull, especially in this unprotected bay. I told myself it was nothing.

Then I heard my dinghy thump against the side of the boat, and some more minor splashing – ok, still normal, waves knock the dingy against the side of the boat all the time. Nothing to be concerned about, just the wake from a passing ship or something. The boat wasn’t rocking yet, but it will any second…

Then there was more splashing, from both sides of Tie Fighter at once, and the unmistakable sound of someone getting into my dinghy. My heart leapt, my adrenaline spiked, and I grabbed my huge spotlight and ran out to the deck, shouting “WHO’S OUT THERE?!?”. I shone the spotlight at the dinghy, and one of the oars – which had been laying across the benches lengthwise with the dinghy – jumped up to a 45-degree angle in response! A bunch of splashing from the other side of the big boat made me turn to look that way, and I saw…

Sea otters. A bunch of them, swimming around my boat.

Scared the crap out of me! I turned back to look at the rowboat and saw one of the otters jump out of it – he must have hit the oar when he jumped in, causing it to lever up against the bench. I watched the otters play for the next few minutes, my adrenaline rush slowly being replaced by delight. They didn’t seem to care at all about the spotlight, and stuck around checking out Tie Fighter for a few minutes, though they would dive at the slightest sound – one of them came right up and looked directly at me (or at the spotlight, anyway) with big, blinking, liquid -brown eyes, but dove instantly when I laughed.

Obligatory link to the famous YouTube video of sea otters holding hands at the Vancouver Aquarium…

a "mud worm" (nereids vexallosa), native to BC - you don't want to meet one of these in the dark.

I counted eight otters in total – as they moved on from playing around my boat, from a distance their eyes reflected the light like cats eyes. Also in the night waters, I saw a large (ie about 18″ across) red jellyfish, dozens of fast moving little water worms, and one of these terrifying creatures, a centipede-like thing about a foot or so long, swimming near the surface – it swam up to my rudder and then disappeared under the boat. I shudder to think of what it would be like meeting one while swimming! A call to a marine biologist friend this morning helped to identify the thing and to verify that I was not, in fact, seeing monsters where there were none.

I’ve only had two interactions with sea otters before last night, one in person and one… well, let’s say I saw the aftermath. While I was anchored in False Creek, something – at the time, I suspected a harbour seal, as there’s one that hangs around the dinghy dock at Monk’s – defecated off the dinghy dock onto (and into) my dinghy. Yep, you heard right – an otter took a crap in my rowboat. They may be cute, but man, the steady diet of raw crabs, mussels and oysters makes for a particularly pungent leaving, and it wasn’t pleasant to clean up. A few weeks later I was stumbling home at 3am to the dinghy dock by the Cambie Bridge; as I came down the ramp I heard a noise, and at the bottom of the ramp stood an otter, sizing me up nervously. I stopped and tried to say something calming (I don’t speak otter), but he bolted, right over the top of my dinghy, into the water and gone.

I’m not sure what it is about my rowboat that seems to attract otters, nor what I’ve done exactly to deserve these crazy, wonderful interactions with them, but I’m really glad I’ve gotten to experience them. Now if only my replacement battery charger for my digital camera would just hurry up and arrive…!

Anyway. The wind forecast for the rest of the week shows the wind turning to southeast late tonight, staying southeast all day tomorrow, then switching to northwest tomorrow evening – that’s just the sign I’ve been waiting for. I think if I can get an early start, I can ride that southeast wind all the way up to Porlier Pass or maybe even Gabriola, anchor for the night in a bay there, and then ride the northwest wind across the Georgia Straight to arrive back in Vancouver sometime Friday evening. Victoria has been wonderful to me, but my Vancouver contingent has gone from friendly requests for my return to mildly belligerent demands, and now on to thinly-veiled threats – I guess I should probably go home for a while. It does raise the question of exactly what “home” means, when your apartment and dayjob are both mobile… but that’s a subject for another blog post someday soon.