The Sound of Repair

 Pender Harbour April 7, 2022

a broken forestay & Sail furler

We’re in one of Canada’s most beautiful harbours … in fact it is one of the most perfect harbours we’ve ever visited. But we are not enjoying ourselves on this beautiful day!

It’s a perfect day for travel or for scuba diving. It’s still quite cold out, and as algae relies on the warmth of the sun to propagate tiny seedlings (called Algae Blooms) they're not around to cloud our vision and also wreck the photos Larry takes.

Larry has just announced: “If I were a dentist, I’d be really good at this!” The sound of his dremel fills our small living space. He’s trying to clean the tiny holes in the fuel injector on our auxiliary generator which powers the dive compressor. Without the generator we can’t fill our dive tanks, go scuba diving or take underwater photos.

Boat repairs are a Constant in our sailing adventures. Since we stepped onto Traversay III in 2000, Larry has bought spares and equipment to fix almost anything on the boat. This includes main engine maintenance and repairs, window repairs, generator repairs, toilet repairs, windlass repairs and refrigerator and freezer repairs. 

We normally share cooking and cleaning while we're offshore, but if there's a major equipment breakdown, I take over all the domestic work so Larry can focus on the repair. He’s made many major repairs in the last 20 years while we were away from any outside help with repairs. He has actually repaired the windlass (the motor which lowers and raises the anchor) twice. These did not need to be PERFECT repairs, but they were good enough to keep us going when we were far from land or far from any help. We knew we were in precarious situations both times and we HAD to keep going ... once in Chilean Patagonia in 2010 and once on the Northwest Passage in 2013.  

On December 23, 2004 our forestay broke 400 miles from New Zealand. I was able to help with the forestay failure by circling around the mast about 30 feet off the deck while suspended by a line and sitting in our tiny bosun’s chair. With the heavy wave action, I felt like I was at the end of a clock pendulum making bigger and bigger concentric circles around the mast. I was trying to remove a length of rope which was obstructing a halyard which we could use to temporarily replace the steel forestay in the genoa sail furler. When you consider that the entire rig including the mast and attached sails could fall down, one of us had to be willing to brave the heights. The decision was made that I would go up, because I knew I wasn’t strong enough to turn the heavy winch often to get Larry up there. In order to free the halyard, I needed to use both hands, so I swung like a pendulum … into and off the mast many times before I finished the job. 

the 50' furler had to be stretched across the deck

I ended up with multiple bruises which matched the beautiful sunset photo taken that night. When we got into port after the 46-day 6,000 mile voyage to Opua, New Zealand we got out the replacement metal forestay that we’d stored and we worked together to install the new part.

Larry has a lot of equipment aboard and has been really successful in keeping us going when we have a breakdown. Even with the rare times when we’re close to a Boat Repair service, we've come to rely on ourselves. This is becuase of our despair at the poor service of some 'specialists' we’ve hired over the last 20 years.  Notable in this regard is the mechanic/welder in Iceland who told us that our engine was now 'fine' and that all the engine supports were 'solid'. Imagine our horror crossing the Northwest Passage as each engine mount broke in successive jarring accidents all the way across to Tuktoyaktuk. As we entered the harbour in September with winter fast approaching, we had to keep our speed to a miserly but safe 1.5 knots. At any faster pace, the seawater came pouring in. We could have lost the boat and (for me) it seemed we might even lose our lives. I thought we'd have to 'winter over'and so I started searching for a place to rent ashore.

But this is where the Universe Delivers what it Takes Away. A brilliant Canadian engineer named Radovan Sumara was in Tuk working that summer as an engineer for the Horizon North Barge Company. He came aboard and helped Larry take out and re-install the engine mounts having first taken them to the company workshop to weld them.  

Our 'Hero' Radovan Sumara

Wayne Hodgins

  When possible, Larry buys the needed equipment himself so we can be more self-sufficient. We’ve also been able to help out fellow cruisers in the wilderness who just needed the correct size of bolt to get going again. At Pitcairn Island Wayne on a Canadian boat called ‘Learnativity’ endured a flooded refrigerator. We were able to give him our spare (he later replaced it).

the morning after 

My own talents are more limited. I’m only competent to hand over tools and to use my own ‘auxiliary’ pieces of equipment. I’m quite handy with the pressure cooker, stove and my sewing machine. The original Singer (bought in 1975) was replaced 15 years ago by a Bernina quilting machine. These machines have enabled me to mend sails halfway through a long trip when we needed them.  In the accompanying photo I'm fixing a sail in Caleta Suarez, Chilean Patagonia. I have photos of sail repair in the Beagle Channel and in the Lofoten Islands of Norway.  I have even managed to overhaul our upholstery several times when I got tired of the 'old' colours and style and wanted ‘new’ furniture.

We feel fortunate that to a great extent, we have been able to look after Traversay III's problems ourselves. Afteer all, she's a GREAT vessel and has been equal to any of the sailing challenges that we've given her. 

On the Routeburn Track

Welcome to Victoria

Causeway Marina ... our winter home with the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority

You can see Traversay III as you go down these stairs

Summer floral displays

Our sunset view

The Salish Seawolf Visits her home territory

Seawolf at our dock

Our Pandemic Idylls

Traversay tied up behind SV 'Lapse of Reason'

 How wonderful to have a Boat Home and a dinghy and to be able to escape the Pandemic Woes which have ruled Our World. We chose to escape to the Winter Wilderness. The destinations we chose were free in January and February even though they tend to be crowded in the summer.

In January of 2021, we left the dock and made our way to Princess Louisa Inlet. We were shocked when we got there to find another boat at the dock. Duncan, Theo and Andrew were aboard and also escaping the city on a safe, wood-burning boat amusingly called ‘Lapse of Reason’. Instead of being stranded and jobless in the city, They had been exploring Wild BC. When we met them, they'd just been climbing the surrounding mountains, sleeping there in the freezing cold, and free-skiing down. We saw footage of their kayak passages in the Egmont torrents. We got to know them rather well because around the time we wanted to leave the Inlet, it froze over as a result of both colder-than usual temperatures and the large quantity of freshwater emanating from the Chatterbox Falls next to it. Our boats were frozen in, and it was impossible to leave safely so we had a warm and congenial time together ... sharing stories and food.

Frozen Princess Louisa Inlet

January of 2022 mimicked the 2021 scenario and we were lucky to find a similar solution. On Christmas Day, we took down our lights and headed to Montague Harbour where we were the sole liveaboard boat. New Years found us making our way across the Strait of Georgia, wearing many layers of PPE: in this case protective warm clothing and not medical garb. We made our way to the anchorage of Ballet Bay off Jervis Inlet. We had to keep a constant watch aboard for logs because even water-logged telephone poles can be barely afloat like huge and hungry missiles. We endured snow and very cold weather. Despite a number of residences and mooring balls in the bay, we were alone again. 

Ballet Bay

When it was time to re-provision and go home, Larry consulted 3 sources of weather information and determined that IF we wanted to get back to home turf, the only day in the proximate future which cited favourable NW winds on the Strait of Georgia would be January 7th. All 3 weather sites forecast 20-30 knot winds. This turned out to be false, although some later changed these to a more realistic ‘After-cast’. The winds growled at us as we lifted the Main. This unprepossessing sound persisted until we left the Strait. Of course, it was preferable to other strong winds in the course of our travels which seemed to scream like banshees. We started with a double-reefed Main and had to reduce further to triple-reefing as we broached 40 knots. Our speed was well over 8 knots for most of the day going up over 9.6 knots at one point.  At that speed, we were relieved when Winchelsea Control radioed back that they weren’t presently firing off any torpedoes!

With the wind behind or on the port quarter, we faced South for most of the way and the sun blocked our gaze from the overly plentiful supply of water-logged logs which barely grazed the surface of the Strait. We felt lucky to avoid log strike, and exhilarated in the bright shiny day and with the speed, the wind, the spray sheeting off the whitecaps and in the performance of our boat. It was a very cold day … only slightly above freezing temperatures. Hot lentil soup, a double-sided German hot water bottle and diesel heater made it all tolerable for me. As we sailed up to Dodd Narrows, a group of at least 9 stellar sea lions surfaced near us, snorting and frolicking in the waves with their noses above the water.  It was their kind of weather. We decided to start the engine to traverse the Narrows, and let out the full Main to reach our anchorage.

We had to lower the Main and anchor in the intrusive presence of a chorus of bobbing logs and detritus but eventually we succeeded and were rewarded with a beautiful sunset and more welcome loneliness in this beautiful spot on the gorgeous coast of BC. 

January 16 …  under way back to Victoria

The weather moderated, and we were able to take a few photos on our dives near Ruxton Island. 

February 1-24 2022

Cape Beale at the Entrance to Barkley Sound, Pacific Rim Park

We left our dock to re-visit the beautiful peace and quiet of Pacific Rim National Park. There, on the edge of the great Pacific Ocean we found the beauty which is difficult to find in our event-driven lives in modern cities. We had made several previous visits to this area  ... once in September of 1994 on Traversay II and on chartered Dive Tours with the great fish/invertebrate expert Dr. Andy Lamb. This time we were all alone for three weeks except for one short visit by a boat sent out by the DFO (Department of Oceans and Fisheries) which investigated us and found no evidence of fishing gear aboard ... just photos of the beautiful sea stars and underwater creatures we had taken.

Bat Star asteria miniata

Some of the species which are only prolific on the edge of the ocean are the 'Bat Star' which comes in shades of bright red (ahown here), teal blue, green, brown purple/white and mottled purple/red. 

Larry was able to capture photos of the green surf anemones on a dive during the high tide at Effingam Islet. We saw very few fish, a few nudibranchs and many of the beautiful and prolific iconic white plumose anemones which can be seen clinging to the underside of docks all over British Columbia.

green surf anemone anthopleura xantho

  

giant plumose anemone metridium farcimen