[Public-List] Middle of March...

[Gordon Laco]

Well good morning friends, 

George, thank you for stirring the embers… glad to see we’re mostly all still out there.

Spring got a good start earlier in the week, but we’re having a cold snap again which may be the last gasp of winter.  Ya I know I shouldn’t write that but too late, I was already thinking it.

We had a laker over-winter in our harbour which is always a good thing.  That means there will be a CCG ice breaker coming in to bust it out and that’ll speed the departure of the ice from Midland Bay and Severn Sound.   

Surprise wintered over at Bayport Marina next door to the sailing club.  I put her over there again so I could stay in the water till the very last moment.  We came ashore at the beginning of November.   Why stay in so late?  So as to be able to  do the annual Misery Trip of course.   This year’s Misery Trip was a disaster… the weather was balmy and the wind was light… sky was blue… some of you may have seen the video I posted of us gliding into the cove at Bone Island.   Our approach may have looked serene, but what you can’t see is what happened up to when my friend Fred aboard Valiant started the video.  About forty short tacks getting in through the narrow entrance to to the cove.  Well we made it.

I’ve been making up my spring fitting out list and will I am certain be able to get going on it shortly.   I’ve already knocked some items off.   My dinghy winters in my warehouse, so it received its annual maintenance coat of varnish during the depth of winter.    I brought my wooden spinnaker pole over there and stripped it down to bare wood after removing all the fittings (ends, bridles etc)  I worked up ten coats of varnish then reassembled it last week.  With a maintenance coat each spring it won’t have to be stripped again for a decade so long as I keep up with what dings the varnish may get during gybes etc.

The big job on Surprise herself is actually two jobs.  Well actually three.   

The funny one is that during our long voyage last September we had a calamity that needs repair.  We were close reaching up near Lonely Island in biggish lumpy seas… I decided to go to the head.  I was doing fine till the boat came over a wave and I became airborne.  When I came down the bowl of the head, which for years had been showing cracks, shattered.   If any of you heard cursing coming from Northern Georgian Bay in the first week after Labour Day, well that was me.   

I was able to reassemble the porcelain bowl using G4 thickened epoxy (what made me bring that?) and the thing served for the rest of the trip, but I bought a new head and I’ve got to install that this spring.  I suppose that’s not such a big deal.

The second big job is dealing with the last of the hull to deck joint leaks.   Surprise is an apes-400 liner boat, so she’s got molded in toe rails with a wooden cap rail on top of that.   Port and starboard she’s got the usual factory installed stainless steel plate/strip genoa car tracks which are held off the wooden cap rail by a thin strip of wood.    That wood is mostly turned to the consistency of cork, and the cap rail beneath has splits and other signs of the end of its usefulness all over… and because the spacer wood is rotten, the bolts aren’t hard tight and all that plus the insufficient method Whitby used to attach the deck to the hull… there are leaks in both main cabin lockers.   I cured these hull to deck leaks everywhere but under the tracks last year.

So… I have to remove the tracks, remove the rotted spacer and remove the cap rails.  If there’s as split and rotted as I think they are, I’ll make new ones.  If not, I’ll clean them up and glue them back together.   Addressing the hull to deck joint… I’ll drill out the pop rivets and replace them with machine screws and nuts as I did elsewhere… scrub clean the surfaces normally hidden by the cap rail with a wire brush, then caulk up the joint.  I’ll spread thickened epoxy over the heads of the new machine screws.  Then after varnishing, the cap rails go back on (new or repaired old ones) then the tracks will go on top of that, bolted through.   I’ll replace the original wooden spacer with strips of lexan I’ve got in stock here.  A few years ago I did the same for the gooseneck track and spinnaker ring track on the mast.

Ya, that’s a fairly big job.

The last job, Number Three, is to investigate the state of the core in the cockpit sole.  I replaced the core in the after part of the cockpit sole about ten years ago (it was like peanut butter…)   I’ve noticed these past few years the steering wheel pedestal has been getting moveable due to flexing and I think that’s the core going.   I’ve got all the materials I'll need to do that job but will wait for the boat to be in the water so as to not have to be going up and down the ladder, and of course it will be warmer and that’s better for the epoxy.

When’s launch day?  Not sure…    Last year the Royal Canadian Navy appointed me an Honorary Captain and the first sunday of May is the holy of holy days for our service.  It marks the end of the Battle of the Atlantic, which was for our Navy what the Battle of Traflagar was for the Royal Navy.   There will be speeches to be delivered and mess dinners to be had.

One thing different about the Battle of the Atlantic this year is the very evident scarcity of veterans.  We still have some who come out, but fewer and fewer.  Quite some time ago the rate at which veterans of the Second World War were dying surpassed the death rates during the hottest fighting… sad statistic.   

We used to have a veteran of the German Navy attending our dinners… Werner was Chief Engineering Officer of U190 at the end of the war.   He used to sit with ‘our’ veterans at mess dinners… old foes now comrades.    One year an elderly lady joined the dinner as a guest.  After the military toasts and the toast to the Queen, she stood and in a high quavering voice raised her glass and said ‘I want to lead a toast to you brave men over there, who risked all and fought so hard escorting the convoys across the Atlantic to keep food on my family’s table during those terrible years!’  

We murmured and raised our glasses, and she sat down.

The Werner rose, not in uniform of course but his Iron Cross on his blazer quite evident.   He raised his glass and said ’Thank yo M’am, but I feel I must clarify something.  I was one of those doing his utmost to keep food OFF your table during those terrible years’.   And he sat down.   The lady looked confused… the officer sitting beside her whispered in her ear… I saw realization of who Werner was dawn on her.  Her eyes grew round and she looked like she’d just been told Dracula was in the room.

Werner was a good man, caught up in a terrible cause.   After he was captured he went to prison camp outside Toronto… after repatriation he gathered his family and came to Canada to live.   He was grateful for the way he was treated and not so grateful for what happened back in Germany… ugly things which led to the war.

Well onwards toward spring…  

Gord
426 Surprise


Gordon Laco
www.gordonlaco.com
705-527-9612