[Public-List] Early Misery Trip

Gordon Laco mainstay at csolve.net
Sun Sep 16 13:17:45 PDT 2018


We didn’t intend it to be a Misery Trip…

With the season marching past, I decided to grab five days to go up the coast with my old friend Fred, who has come on many Misery Trips in SURPRISE and some really horrendous ordeals in TOUCH WOOD, her predecessor.    The lure this year was that I was inviting him to come sailing while it was still summer, for a change.   Bring your swimming trunks, I told him. 

So he made the long drive from his town to ours and in due course we loaded up the boat with supplies for a weeks sail.  Through a bit of confusion over who was bringing the beer, we ended up with about a million cans which got stowed all over the boat.  There was much jocularity about who was hiding a private stock from whom.   One thing I did not joke about was hiding a private stock of toilet paper.  I’ve learned long ago that the worst calamity which can befall a ship’s company is depletion or spoiling of the stock of TP.  One is always only a moment’s inattention away from this dreadful state.  One dollop of water can ruin what seemed like a comfortable supply.   I had a full roll in double zip-lock bags in the bottom of my duffle.

So Monday morning we got up, had a nice breakfast and went down to the club.  The remnants of Hurricane Gordon were blowing through giving Severn Sound a very uncomfortable east wind and rain.  The wind was blowing strongly enough that swells were coming into the club… that hardly ever happens.

My wife, a good sailor-girl, quietly suggested that perhaps we might spend a quiet day at home and leave tomorrow when the weather was forecast to be quite pleasant.  Well that might have made sense to a girl, but not to us men.  We’d planned to depart on Monday morning, and we were certainly going to depart Monday morning.

So into the chop off the club’s breakwater we chomped under power.  I was a little startled by how deeply SURPRISE was sticking her nose into the head sea, but also pleased at how she was able to march along at 5 knots with 1400 rpm on the engine.  Caroline watched us go from the breakwater… after a last wave she ducked out of the weather back into the car.  It’s bad luck to wave a ship out of sight so we never do it.

Once off Midland Point we were able to bear away north, which made the easterly head wind a blasting reach.  We uncorked the genoa and with it set on its own we started galloping north.   This was grand sailing until we got abreast of Gin Rocks when somebody turned off the switch and we found ourselves flopping around in the chop doing less than 4 knots.  Fred had for some time been chanting ‘mainsail-mainsail-mainsail’ anyway, so I announced ‘we shall set the mainsail’.   I headed up into the wind a little and Fred began hauling away on the main halyard.  The luff of the sail rose only about ten feet when Fred called ‘it’s stuck’.  I scrambled forward and gave the luff a tug to bring it down and felt that horrible ‘kachunk’ of the wire halyard jamming well and truly beside the sheave up in the masthead.   It had never happened aboard SURPRISE before, but it did in TOUCH WOOD’s wooden mast and I well recalled that feeling.    

Well the main was out of business, partly hoisted.  Naturally the wind came back and stronger.  The rain resumed.  We decided to motor back to the club and see if we could repair the halyard situation there.  So back we went, around Midland Point then up to the club.  I texted Caroline to meet us at the mast crane because of course I’d not brought my keys.  

At the club, the swells were coming into the club more strongly than ever, the east wind was building, and the rain was steady.  I got into the bosun’s chair and went up to the masthead where of course the boat’s moderate pitching was much magnified by the lever arm the mast was providing.   A quick glance confirmed that there was not a chance of fixing the jam that day.   Caroline said quietly ‘why don’t you guys wait till tomorrow when it’s nice and the wind is gone, we could watch a movie or something and you could leave tomorrow’.   Well that might have made sense to a girl, but not us.   I announced that we were going without the use of the main.  So I went up again and opened the main halyard shackle so we could get the sail down and secured it with a lanyard so it didn’t flap around.   Well soaked and a little frustrated, we set out again… this time putting SURPRISE’s bow under every third or fourth wave as we drove her back out under power.  Once again off Midland Point, we unfurled the jenny again, and started galloping up the sound.   On the way past Midland Point my iPhone buzzed… it was my friend Ken who lives on the waterfront there.  He wrote ‘glad to see you’re out enjoying the wind (again).  I suppose you’re torturing some poor soul who thinks you’re his friend’.    Hmmph   Why would he think I treat my friends poorly?

Lickety split we were up at Minnicognichene and we became a motorboat again by furling up the genny.   Past Hotchkiss Rocks, Lambert Island, Ship Island, Sugar Island and thank heavens there’s the entrance to the Bone Island anchorage.  Rain was steady and cold.   Not surprisingly, there was nobody in ‘Boner Bay’ as it’s known in some circles and we went to the primo spot up at the extreme end.  Down went the hook and I felt it grab hard in the good clay bottom.   

Wet, cold, dispirited; well at least we did get away on Monday morning as decreed.  Down below we changed into dry cloths and got the wood stove going… in no time it was cheery hot and with glasses of rum in hand life seemed to be looking up.   We made a gonzo stir fry and by 20000 I was in my cozy bunk up forward, Fred was snoring in his back in the main cabin.  What a day.

So Tuesday morning we woke up to a new world.  Gone was the crappy weather… instead we had a mild warm morning, still air and the idyllic surroundings of Bone Island.   I got the coffee going and we made ourselves a breakfast of pancakes and bacon.  Yum.

By 0830 the anchor was up and catted… we glided out of the bay under power and headed north up the inside passage.  The wind was too light for sailing at any speed, and besides it was on the nose from the north, so we motored without remorse.  In fact for the rest of the trip the air was so light that we would have been motoring anyway… we didn’t miss the main.   That said, it did occur to me that if we were at the club, I could have dropped the mast, fixed the halyard and thrown the stick back up… but we didn’t stay so best not think about that….

Zoom zoom up we went and in due course we were at Wreck Island.  We had the hook down in our favourite spot by about 1700 and we took turns sailing the dinghy around the anchorage.  Nobody else was there of course.  We barbecue’d two steaks and ate them with mushrooms, corn on the cob and wine… this is yachting.   Mosquitoes descended on us so we retreated below… at one point I counted 60 on the lower washboard screen trying to get at us.  I quoted my friend Tom who mutters ‘I’m going to make them hate themselves’ as he sprayed mosquito repellant on them.  Small pleasure and a vain one of course.   As usual after sunset the bugs went away and we enjoyed a lovely cool evening under incredible stars.  The water was so calm that the reflected stars were almost as clear as those overhead…which prompted me to quote a guy I used to crew for.  One day in Lake Ontario during a long distance race, he came up on deck and looked around at the half moon, the stars, the several yachts in sight all gliding along under spinnaker and he said ‘ya know… there’s not a woman alive who could withstand a night like this… whaddam I doin’ out here with you jerks’.  And he went below again.

We got up before dawn and while sipping hot coffee had the pleasure of keeping a rendezvous with the International Space Station, which shot overhead bright and clear a half hour before the sun came up.  Cool.

So the sun came up and after another hearty breakfast we motored over to Sans Souci where there is a general store, gas dock and pumpout station run by the same nice people for generations.  We talked about the march of ‘progress’ on the Bay… up to a few years ago a 70' wooden tanker named the JUILIE F used to run up and down the coast delivering fuel to the small marinas of the coast.  But the increasing complexity of regulations put her out of business.  And how is the fuel delivered now?  By a tanker truck parked on the flat open deck of a work barge.  Somehow to some land locked civil servant that is safer.  Crazy.

So with more fresh meet in our ice box, empty poop tank and refilled fuel tanks, away we went.    About 45 minutes north of Sans Souci we were chugging along at 5.7 knots up Long Sault, probably one of the most beautiful channels in the world, when we passed a little un-named bay we called ‘Eagle Bay’ after a visit on an earlier trip.  We named it that because there was a bald eagle eating a raven in a tree, with two ravens five feet up higher yelling at it.  Were they pissed off at the murder of their friend?  Did they want to share the meal?  The former I think.   So as we went by I commented to Fred what a fine place Eagle Bay is, and how we’re always half way to somewhere else going by there so we so rarely stop.   ‘Why don’t we stop there?’ said Fred… Good idea, so we did.

We had lunch at anchor then again sailed the dinghy around (great fun) and read books, sipped rum… made up a sumptuous feast then retreated for the bug hour.   We’d planned to come out again to look at the stars, but I didn’t wake up from my ‘nap’ until morning.  I guess I needed the rest.  That was Wednesday.

Thursday morning we got under way early, retraced our way south to O’Donnel Point and from there went out into The Void, open water.  Nothing much happened but we were able to motor sail under genny for a few hours, which was nice.  We steered for Hope Island, then bore away for the channel between Beckwith and Christian Islands.  I’d thought we’d go to Little Sandy Bay on Christian because that’s the one Gordon Lightfoot wrote his sone ‘Georgian Bay’ in… but the Canadian Coast Guard weather bulletin called for an east wind again and Christian is open to that wind… so we went to the bay on the western side of Beckwith.  What a marvellous anchorage.   This time there were no bugs at all, so as the sun went down we sat in the cockpit after our BBQ’d sausages and watched an incredible northern lights display.  We’d had a swim earlier, so clean and full of good food and a beer, we told each other stories from when we were room mates in university back in the 1970’s and laugh and laughed.  

Fred told of how vividly he recalled the night I brought a date home to our apartment….  I’d gathered my courage and asked a girl who lived down the hall out for a date.  Naturally between when I asked her out and the approached night of the date, I forgot her name.  But I recalled her room mate’s name.   Thinking swiftly, I phoned the girls when I knew the girl whose name I knew was at her part time job.   My prospective date answered the phone.  I said ‘Hello Cathy?’  She said ‘Cathy’s not here.  I said ‘oh, who’s this?’  She said ‘Sheila’.   Sheila.  Great.  ‘Any message?’  ‘Oh not, I’ll see her at school’.  Click.  Phew, now I had her name again.   We had a nice date, in due course we got up to the 7th floor of the apartment building we both lived in… I started saying good night as we got out of the elevator.  My date dug in her purse (not very deeply but I only noticed that later in memory) and said ‘oh no I’ve locked myself out of my apartment and my roommate isn’t home’.  I suggested getting the superintendent but she said she’d bothered him a few times and he’d be upset with her.   Hmm… what to do.  ‘Well you can stay at my place’, I said gallantly.  We went into my apartment, I made us a coffee which we drank while we talked… then I got a spare pillow and sheets and said ‘I’ll make you a bed on the couch… see you in the morning, I’ll make breakfast’.  I went to bed.  Not long after, I heard our apartment door slam open, footsteps stomping down the hall and a door down there opening and closing.  My date was gone.    Fred, over in his room, who I thought had been been asleep but had been listening to my progress with critical interest, called over to me ‘GORD YOU ARE AN IDIOT!’  Ah, thought I, just realizing what unknown to me but obviously to Fred, had been developing.  I spent the rest of the school year trying to avoid her out of embarrassment…

So we laughed and laughed, eventually turning in.    Friday morning we got going again and in a dead glassy calm motored back to Midland.  What a great trip.  We’ve known each other for 43 years… how wonderful to have such a good friend.

Today, Sunday, I went down to the club with a couple of friends, dropped SURPRISE’s mast at the club crane and laid it on saw horses.  Sure enough, the halyard was well and truly jammed.  I unbolted the top end of the shrouds and knocked out the large bolt the main halyard sheave spins on.  I saw that one of the guard plates was loose to the point where a screw had failed out, I guess that’s what allowed the flogging mainsail to yank the wire out of the true path over the sheave.  I put the guard plates back on, adjust both forward and after ones so that the integrity of the set up was what it should be.  I bent the side plates a little to make up for the decades of wear the wire halyard had dealt them, them snugged everything up again.   I also changed the bulb in our steaming light, something I’d forgotten to do before the stick went up in the spring.    The work took about half an hour… so when the mast was standing again only an hour had elapsed from, when we motored over to the mast crane.  Everything is ready to go again, better than before..

Onwards.

Gord Laco
#426 Surprise






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