[Public-List] Many small calamities and one big one...

[Gordon Laco]

Hello friends, 

We’re back from our week long sailing trip up the coast and back… it was a week of many small calamities and one big one.  Here’s the story.

As usual, we were involved in a big push to get the business, the house and the boat all in shape for departure.  My son Rob has joined me in the business, so part of preps was giving him a crash refresher course on how to ship rope, blocks, deck fittings and Epifanes paint and varnish so he could keep the ball rolling in the warehouse while we were away.

Another push was made to complete our new dinghy.  This project was my winter project.  Back on December 2 the boat was a pile of lumber but last week it was a nearly completed tender.  I say nearly because I didn’t get the sailing rig for it finished in time, but I did manage to get the tuning of the ergonomics of rowing it forward enough that we could use it.

As the pandemic continues to develop, boat shows have started again so on Saturday we were up and talking classic boats at the Gravenhurst Antique and Classic Wooden Boat Society show, first time in two years it happened live.  It was busy and fun… I like doing boat shows, which I suppose is weird but I do.   My wife has often commented that the ‘weird personality scale’ of people who love classic boats is 4 to 10 not 0 to 10 because if you’re less than a 4, you’re not in it.   (I’ve hesitated to ask my wife where I am on the scale…)

So because we were busy Saturday, our friends who we had planned to sail with set off ahead with a plan to rendezvous on Sunday at Christian Island.  The show ran its course and as usual I cruised the marine flea market.  I resisted my usual impulse to buy another anchor, but did see a pair of very weathered spoon blade oars.  They were very old, and beautifully made but with not a spec of varnish left on their grey weathered surfaces…  the price was $350.   Hmm, outside my pain threshold for an impulse purchase.  The end of the show was nearing later in the afternoon, so I said to my son ‘I’ll just take a stroll over to see if those oars are still there’.  They were.  I was examining them, gauging how I’d repair the split in one of the blades, when the seller came up to me.  He said ‘like ‘em?’  I said ‘yup’.  I had $80 in my pocket and was just thinking of how to make a very low offer without insulting the fellow when he said ‘I don’t want to take them home again… How about $70?’   I said ‘I’ve got $80 in my pocket, how about that?’  He laughed and said ’that’s the first time I’ve been offered a tip! Sold!’   So there’s my winter project for next year. I’m going to lengthen the looms about a foot and refit them generally… they’ll be perfect for the new dinghy.  

Sunday morning came… The Girl and I loaded up the car with 4x blocks of ice and a bag of cubes, fresh food and goodies of all sorts and loaded them into SURPRISE.  We motored over to the marina next to the club and gave the holding tank a clearing out and filled both fuel tanks.  We have the central factory-fitted 12 gal tank under the cockpit as well as an 18 gal PVC saddle tank we call #2 up on the shelf to port in that cockpit locker.  I only keep a minimal amount of fuel in #2 so as not to adversely affect racing performance but we fill it when cruising to extend motoring range.

The wind was very light, so we set off under power… 5.5 knots with the A4 purring at 1,200rpm and the new dinghy on its maiden voyage skipping along astern light as a feather.  Perfect.

Later, while heading for Giants Tomb Island, I did my usual scan of instruments and dinghy and noticed that while the revs were the same, the speed had dropped by a couple tenths of a knot… and the dinghy was now riding quite bow-high.  Hmmm.

I slowed down and pulled the dinghy up on it’s 30’ towing line… it felt really heavy.  Once it was close I could see it had a lot of water in it.  The wooden batten I’d clamped over the top of the dagger board slot was NOT keeping water from shooting up into the boat, and I’d not opened the drain plug in the transom.  Damn.

So I climbed into the dinghy and opened the drain to the ‘auto-bailing’ partially open position, and shoved several zig zags of braided rope down the slot.  We resumed speed and I was gratified to see the water draining, with no more coming up the slot. First calamity surmounted.

Away we went, speed creeping back up to 5.5… I decided to switch to tank #2 from tank #1.   The engine normally tolerates the switch without a burp… this time it died after a few minutes.  Hmmm.  

I assumed the old ’spec of crud’ in the carb, so I jumped down and did a carb clearing job… in the earlier days before I put an inline filter on the fuel line I had become very good at getting the carb off, disassembling the carb, blasting solvent through the jets and putting it back together again and on the engine.  I can do it in 15 minutes, which used to be important if the engine cut out in an inconvenient place….

With no particular intent, when I switched the fuel back on, I put it on Tank #1.  The engine fired up and ran sweetly.  I switched it to Tank #2 and it died.  Hmmm

Off came the carb again, this time I paid very close attention to what came out of the float bowl.  Water.  Damn.  

Back under way again on Tank #1 we went along happily, but now more than half of our fuel was inaccessible.  In due course we linked up with our friends and had a very nice evening at Little Sandy Bay, the very one Gordon Lighfoot was in when he wrote ‘Christian Island’ one of his hit songs from the 1970’s.

The next morning, there was a spanking SW breeze, so we sailed off our anchor and sailed up to Black Rock where we entered the archipelago.  Our coast here is called The Thirty Thousand Islands but there are many more than that… lovely intricate and I think the best cruising grounds in the world (doesn’t everyone say that about their home waters?0

At the end of this day, we entered an un-named bay we called Eagle Bay years ago because the first time we went in there we saw a bald eagle eating a crow in a tree, with another crow safely a couple of meters above the meal yelling at the eagle… the chart shows one foot of water but there is eight.  Perfect.   We rowed around in the dinghy, admired the scenery, saw a huge Jurassic-sized snapping turtle and had a gonzo BBQ supper rafted up with our friends.  It poured rain that night and the wind howled, but we were snug and safe.

In the morning after coffee, we started north again, but on our own.  I’d decided I needed to get our #2 tank’s water issue dealt with so we headed for Killbear Marina adjacent to the provincial park of that name while our friends headed for Kilcoursie Bay on the other side of the park.  We planned to meet them after the work was done on our boat.

At the marina, the expert staff boarded us and sucked out the fuel from tank #2… there was a litre of water in it.  We figured we must have picked up the water due to the filler cap not being secured and racing occasionally rail down the week before.  Oh well. I decided to have a proper water-separating filter installed, which I was pleased the otherwise busy mechanic had time to do for us.  All done, we set off for Kilcoursie and in due course made it over there.  We anchored near our friends (no rafting here because this bay is open to passing motor boat wakes)  After greetings, we saw they had long faces.  

They came over for wine and snacks before supper and described that while motoring up from Eagle Bay, their diesel developed the habit of running normally, then slowing down and stalling.  After an interval, the engine would run, but would slow and stop again.   Hmmm

I asked ‘I’ve heard of overheating diesels doing that… were you overheating?’  My friend said ‘I don’t know, I didn’t look at the gauge’.   Oh dear.  I explained how important it is to keep an eye on the instruments…    I asked when he last changed the water pump impeller… he said he’d never done that.  Hmmm.   He opened the face of the water pump and reported he couldn’t get the impeller off.  

I suggested that he should have a mechanic look at his engine… and phoned Killbear Marine to ask if they could look at our friends diesel; they could.   We went back around the parts peninsula and anchored off the marina while our friend went in (their engine would run for short periods, and was indeed overheating.)

The mechanic looked at the engine and found that now there was crank case oil sprayed all over the engine box, and the oil still in the engine was white from emulsified water… and very much overfilled with the mixture of water and oil (our friend said that the day before the oil was normal in both colour and level)  Hmmm.

A diagnosis was made that the water pump and its oil seals had both failed… parts were ordered.  We went back around to Kilcoursie and spent the night there while our friends settled in at the marina… the parts didn’t come the next day, nor the next.  In the intervening time, my friend decided for some reason to disassemble his engine’s air filter… and dropped a nut down the throat of the air intake manifold down into the engine.  Hmmm.  

We had a conference by text message, and decided we should continue our cruise but stay in the general area so they could rejoin once they were mobile again.  We went into Parry Sound and spent  marina night to have showers and a restaurant meal.  Our friends got a cab to take them into town to join us in the restaurant… we had a nice evening together.

Afterward, they walked back to SURPRISE with us for a drink of wine, then the four of us waited up by the road for their cab to return them to their boat.   In order to give the cab a landmark, we waited by the deeply moving bronze statue honouring Francis Pegahmagabow, the gentle Ojibwa man who lived in and near Parry Sound all his life, except for his years as the Allies greatest sniper during the Great War.  His statue is stunning.  It shows the serenity and gentleness that characterized him most of his life, but he is in uniform with his Ross rifle on his back and one of his fists is clenched.  Perfect and as I wrote above, deeply moving.  If any of you have read Three Day Road, you may know that one of the characters in that novel is loosely based on ‘Peggy’ as his compatriots called him.  Here’s his wiki… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Pegahmagabow <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Pegahmagabow>

The wait for the cab grew to 90 minutes, which would have been a nice extended time with our friends if not for the mosquitoes but in due course it came and each couple returned to their boats.   In the morning there was still no resolution to our friends troubles, and I decided to get our own engine looked at due to an odd idling problem it developed.  Engines.

We went in to Sound Boat Works where the talented and generous proprietor Jerry Shipman came aboard and looked at our issue… he suggested that the points were needed work.  He said ‘you can fix that yourself, Gord, clean ‘em and re gap ‘em.'  Well I know how to clean points, but not how to regap them.  Further discussion led me to remember that I was carrying a spare set of points so Jerry installed those; presto, no more idle problem.   

That led to a discussion of electronic ignition vs points… traditional wisdom says ‘points die slowly… when they’re going you’ll know and you can always limp home… when electronic goes, it just goes with no warning’.    I commented that I have an electronic ignition kit at home, uninstalled…. Jerry harrumphed, clearly he is a points man.  Earlier, the mechanic at Killbear had commented that whenever they see points in an A4, they install electronic.  Which way should I go?  Oh I don’t know but I won’t worry about that today.

We had another conference with our friends… they were still awaiting their parts at Killbear, but the weekend was coming so it appeared they’d be there for a few more days.  We decided we’d carry on back to Midland.  Wishing them well, we set sail homeward bound on our own.  We had a wonderful day working our way down the inside passage to a favourite anchorage south of Sans Souci… marvelling as usual at the jam-up of boats trying to cram into the visitors docks at Henry’s, the famous fish and chips place.  Giant motor boats, float planes and even a helicopter were all rumbling and jostling each other… we glided past and on to our evening’s anchorage.  

That evening, the last of the trip, was utterly idyllic. Nobody else was in the cove, the afternoon and evening were completely peaceful and we had a great BBQ on the stern, then retired to the bow to sip gin and tonics while watching the animal life there go about their routines.  We saw a flock of diving ducks of the type which scurry in great agitation on the surface to some group-think place to dive, whereupon they all vanish.  A short while later they come up again, all of them appearing to be completely surprised at seeing their pals in close proximity.  Very humorous.   Not so funny was the sight of the very old beaver lodge, whose inhabitants we’d become fond of seeing ‘going to work’ each evening, completely torn apart and opened up.  I can only guess that a bear or wolverine had done that.  We felt badly for the beaver family till while rowing around the cove found that they’d moved to a new location and build another lodge.  Either the wolverine (if that’s what it was) didn’t get them all, or the beavers escaped and set up again at the new place.  Well that’s good.

The next morning we set off on the last leg of our journey home… there being a glassy calm we motored all the way to Midland, arriving in time to clear up, go home, have showers, then return to the boat for a last BBQ supper aboard.  We laughed that we both had the feeling that the boat missed us.

Sunday morning, yesterday, we drove up to Killbear in the car, traversing two days of sailing in 90 minutes to have lunch with our friends.  They’re hoping for parts to arrive today (Monday) and if their engine’s issues are resolved, they’ll be heading down the coast this evening.  If not, and the boat has to stay there longer, I’ll go back up to bring them to their car by their marina slip here so they can go home and work, returning to the boat some time later when the problems are resolved.

So, there’s our trip… many small calamities and one big one… the big one wasn’t ours but we feel great empathy for our friends.  I’ve often gazed at our engine and thought to myself ‘oh boy, some day you are gunna get me’ and that thought is what motivates me to look after the thing.  So far none of its issues have been big ones.  Yes, I take great care looking after it.



Gordon Laco
Surprise 426