Life is Tough

Our life is on hold!

I don't like to complain (all evidence to the contrary), but after another two weeks of cool, rainy weather - Enough already!  At least it is not snowing.
It seems like we are never going to leave the dock, but it is mostly our own fault.  When it is dreary outside we tend to just want to sit back and read a good book, or do just about anything but work on the boat.

On that note, here is a picture of the Dorade box / Vent mismatch that I mentioned in the last post.  And yes I am aware that the decks need painting - worse than ever now.  Since this picture was taken, I have managed to install the 2nd vent (there was an almost 8 hour rain-free window one day).

Right now, we have finished most of the must-do list and the only big job left is to get the boat hauled out so we can paint the bottom, clean the barnacles off the prop and install some new zincs.  Even this has been a problem lately - our travel lift here at the marina cannot haul boats except at high tide and we have been experiencing some of the lowest tides we can ever remember seeing, coupled with the fact that the low tides are persisting for most of the working day.  As a result, we are now scheduled to haul out next Tuesday at 7 PM. when we should have a whole foot of water below our keel at the lift.  I hope they know what they are doing.
In one of these pictures you can see how even the starfish have been caught unaware, and left high and dry (much to the delight of the gulls).

In spite of the weather however, most days we have been able to keep up our habit of walking to one of the nearby (within a 5 km range) coffee shops for our morning java fix.  And sometimes the sun even peeks out for a few minutes.  Even when it rains, it never really rains all that hard, so we usually don't get all that wet.
Being in Nanaimo, there are always interesting things to see, especially in the harbour.  There is a lot more activity as the supposed summer is getting closer.

Last weekend saw the arrival of one of the infrequent cruise ships in the harbour.  This one is the Radiance of the Seas which is much too large to get into the inner harbour and has to anchor by Protection island.  From the harbour side of the island it looks like it is snuggled right into a nest among the trees.

When these ships are here, there seems to be a lot more energy in the harbour - lots of people about and businesses putting on their best faces for the tourists.  Sadly there are fewer and fewer cruise ships stopping in Nanaimo any more, mostly due to the inconvenience of having to anchor out and ferry the passengers to and from the docks.  Apparently the port authority is working on a new floating dock to accommodate the behemoths which may be ready as soon as next year.

We don't always go downtown for our walks.  One of our favorites is the "ravine" route that takes us on about a 15 minute walk to the nearest Tim Hortons.  This is one of the those hidden treasures that most of the Nanaimo residents don't even know exists.

Also, in spite of the weather, the local fowl have been busy too.  It is a sure sign that Spring is well under way when the goslings are leaving the "cute" phase, and the adults are a little less protective.  It is always nice to see the little ones following faithfully wherever mom and dad lead.

I will leave you with one of our favorite boat names found in the harbour.

To sum it up, life is tough!

Technology Update

So, what have we been doing with our time you might ask?
Well, we did manage to get most of the bright work finished - 5 coats of stain and 3 coats of gloss over a period of 8 straight days. We really lucked out on the weather as this is the only 8 rain-free days we have had in a long while. The day after we finished, the rain started in again and, although it is not very serious rain, it does manage to rain a little every day.

Our second big project for this period of time has been to replace the two dorade boxes on deck with some solar vents. This is not because there is anything wrong with the look of the boxes (very nautical really), but we are trying to recover some deck space on which the dinghy can ride, and the boxes were just getting in the way. If you ever want to experience some anxiety, try removing a perfectly good, waterproof fitting from the deck, revealing four bolt-holes and one 4-inch wide mega-hole right through into the cabin. It took the better part of a day for me get the wood box unstuck without making too much of a mess of the deck itself, and the rest of the day to seal up the holes with epoxy and place the new vent. Of course, I got one done just before the rain started, so now we have one nice new stainless steel vent and one old dorade box, making for a very unnatural balance to the esthetics of the boat. I have now been waiting for almost a week and have not gotten another dry 24 hour period to allow me to complete the 2nd vent - not sure when then will happen now.

In case you are wondering why there are no photos on the post, it is because this is really a test of another long-term ongoing project of mine. I have been working on and off on getting our communications situation sorted out. This post is getting to the blog via our SSB radio and Pactor III Modem and an email service called "sailmail". Basically, I am typing this entry on my laptop in a program called "AirMail". When done, I push the post button and pop up the "Terminal" window, which lets me see all of the latest sun-spot activity and likelihood of talking to a Ham/SSB radio anywhere in the world. Based on my current location (Nanaimo), and other factors that I don't fully understand, it tells me what stations I have the best change of making a connection with (usually in the San Diego area from here). Then, through a bit of trial and error, I attempt to connect via my "sailmail" account on one of the available frequencies. At this point, the Pactor modem takes over and tunes my ICOM 802 radio to the selected frequency, triggering the AT140 automatic antenna tuner to optimize our backstay antenna, and starts to send bursts of digital data. If successful, the receiving radio station will accept the data and forward in on to the internet as an email message to google blogger, which in turn formats it for your viewing pleasure. Pretty straight forward don't you think?

The up side of this type of connection is that I can send and receive emails this way from anywhere in the world, not relying on internet connections or expensive sat-phone charges.
The down side is that it is very slow and will not support anything but text (thus the lack of pictures).
If this works out, I will let everyone know what our email address is on "sailmail" soon.

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radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Working Stiffs

Great weather.

Lots of work getting done - 4 coats of stain so far.

Local supervision (I suspect they love to crap on fresh paint).

Weather Window

At last - some nice weather.
What we in the boating community call a "weather window", normally indicating a good time to leave port for exotic destinations.
In our case, however, it means we can seriously tackle the outside boat projects - primarily the dreaded bright work.

Of course, when the weather is nice, we absolutely cannot skip the opportunity to walk all the way downtown for our morning coffee.

We also need to check out all the visiting boats in the harbour, although it seems it is still a little early in the season for much activity there.  Most of the fishing boats that have been tied up at the docks for the winter are gone now, and the influx of summer yachties has not begun - leaving the docks looking a bit vacant.

When it is nice in Nanaimo, it is really nice!

A sure sign that summer is almost here is the start of the farmer's market at the harbour, so we had to check that out as well.  We find that there is little there that we need - we don't have the room for a lot of knick-knacks and fancy artwork, and there is little produce available as yet.

Meanwhile, the boat work is calling and we have run out of excuses.

At this point, the hard prep work is done, all the stripping, sanding, taping, etc.  Now we are just applying the stain.  Since it will probably require at least 6 coats, and you need 24 hours between each, it is a long, drawn out affair.

And then we have the deck painting to look forward to.  And when all of that is done, we can finally get the boat hauled to do the bottom paint and zincs and such.  At this rate, it will be a miracle if we can get away to do any sailing by the end of May - but hope springs eternal...

The show must go on

After what seems like weeks of waiting for a nice day to work on the boat, it finally came.

Of course this was also a great day to take a road trip to Victoria for the Victoria Harbour Floating Boat Show. Can you guess which we chose?
A quick drive down to Victoria.

Pay the, still not too ridiculous, parking fees at Fisherman's Wharf.

A short stroll along the outer harbour till we arrive at the inner harbour and the aforementioned boat show.

Notice the little sailboat that forced the entire city traffic to come to a halt for the drawbridge - is that power or what?

An almost perfect day for climbing around on other people's boats.

What is it that makes us boat-owners want to spend our time looking at more boats? Probably the same thing that makes some home-owners visit all the show homes whenever there is an opportunity. We want to see if there are any good ideas of what we could do with the boat we have, and also to assure us that there is nothing out there that would suit us better.

Of course, there are always boats out there that we would like, but not at a price we are willing to pay.

Actually, this show it not really that large and the number of sailboats is limited. Notably very few used boats at all - just new, plastic coastal cruisers for the most part - not what we are really into.

Oh, and lots of power boats, ranging from little fishing skiffs to an over 2-million dollar mega-yacht. Nice to look at but not really our cup of tea either.

The only boats we saw that we liked were very similar to ours, except that the bright work was immaculate, which just made us want to rush back to Nanaimo to try and make ours look, if not showroom ready, at least more presentable.

So, when we did get back to Nanaimo, we spent an entire day stripping and sanding the woodwork, before the cool and rainy weather set in again.

Is anybody looking to join Gilligan and company? Here is just the vessel that could do it.