25-Aug-13
Well, as I have said before, a sailor’s plans are written in
the sand at low tide, and are quickly washed away.
Our late departure
from Vancouver left us arriving into Sydney at 10:00 pm under the light of a
full moon. The three hour wiring job for the
next day stretched to a three day mast pull and re-stepping. Four days later, north of
Nanaimo, our plans were again washed away.
A loud grinding of metal in the transmission set us into a
frenzy of damage control. Fortunately, before the transmission went, the wind
had picked up out of the NW. We were planning to anchor at Jedidiah so we had continued
motoring into the wind until the crunching noises began. We pulled up the
stays’l and ran back to Nanaimo harbour, dropping the hook in front of
Protection Island. During the run south I had phoned my brother Doug in Duncan
to see if he knew of any marine transmission specialists on the Island. With a
radio call to his HAM radio associates they had identified Bent Sorensen of
Viking Marine as the go to guy for marine transmissions and, shortly after
anchoring, Bent had returned my phone call. Not a bad response time for a
Saturday afternoon call. If I could get the transmission to him early Monday he
would start on it immediately.
So, now let’s set the scene: it was Saturday afternoon and
we were anchored in front of the Dinghy Dock Pub, we had all day Sunday to pull
the transmission, life was looking pretty good. Clearly the Pub was calling.
After a great meal, some good beer and a big Margarita for Mags we returned to
the boat to watch the fireworks directly in font of us. This breakdown could
have been much worse; obviously Matsu, Taiwanese goddess of the sea, was
watching over us.
We ended up spending a week at anchor in Nanaimo. It was
Nanaimo’s holiday weekend with a SAR helicopter demonstration on Saturday,
fireworks Saturday night, the bathtub races Sunday and a 45 minute Snow Birds
aerial display on Wednesday, not to mention some beautiful sunsets and several
days of glorious sunshine. It turned out that we had shattered the torsion
damper plate and although we had replaced it by Tuesday I decided to get Bent
to rebuild the gear box while it was out on his work bench.
The Transmission Magician,
Bent Sorensen of Viking Marine in Nanaimo.
After the delays in Sydney and Nanaimo we had missed our
scheduled meeting dates on Thormanby Island with Ross and Betty and Port Hardy
with Deb and Lotar so we decided to return to Vancouver to continue the fit out
of the boat.
Finally the big news: our cast in stone departure date of
mid-September 2013 has been postponed to summer 2014. We will continue the
finishing and shakedown of the boat and a more leisurely trip through
Desolation Sound and the Broughton Archipelago next spring and early summer.
More construction blogs to follow.
More construction blogs to follow.