By Marc on December 30th, 2010
We’re finally back aboard, after nearly a month in Victoria. It’s been a whirlwind of family and baby-related errands. Gabrielle has been passed around, and plenty of people have been giving us baby well wishes.
The night of the 28th was pretty stormy and our boat was rocking quite spiritedly. In fact, we were gyrating against the dock so forcefully at times that we blew up one of our fenders. Luckily the tires we having lining the dock are much more stalwart.
Brie has been loving the life on the water as our boat rocks her to sleep. Mewes the cat has accepted her, but only pays her passing interest.
The other exciting thing that Christmas has brought to the boat is a stove top espresso/cappuccino machine. I’m very pleased with this.
By Marc on December 12th, 2010
Say hello to our baby girl Gabrielle, born December 9th at 22:25.
For all the details, keep an eye on Amanda’s blog.
By Marc on November 21st, 2010
Yesterday we got our first snow dump of the winter. There was a pretty good blow from the north (gust around 40 knots), but we’re pretty sheltered from that direction so we barely felt it. We woke up to a slightly darker cabin than usual though, as our skylight doghouse hatch was buried.
This is the view outside our cockpit.
There’s a hatch and dinghy under there somewhere.
The crew gets some shore leave.
Making the most of the stormy weather.
But the day finishes off beautifully.
By Marc on November 17th, 2010
It’s the middle of November, and things are coming along on the boat. Our galley is finally back together, and we’ve got our freshwater foot pump working. Yay !
All it took was half dozen trips to three different hardware stores to get all the right parts. It’s really amazing how many different types of tubing there are, and how each uses a different sort of fastener. It’s less than amazing that various previous owners have used myriad of these tubing types all together on our boat. The other irritating thing is that there tend not to be readily available adapters between the different types of plumbing. I had to machine three custom parts to get the different tubings to play nicely together. I don’t know what boat owners do if they don’t have access to a lathe. Though I suppose most of them don’t have four types of pipe in their galley.
Our other accomplishment this week has been to get the ‘closet’ space behind the settee in the saloon paneled in. It was just bare foam insulation (which Mewes the cat delighting in scratching). This is where our propane on-demand water heater is going to be going. At the bottom of this cubby the pressurized water lines and propane line all run side by side.
This cupboard still has lots of wiring I’m working on cleaning up as well. Since the switch panel at the nav table is at one end and the galley is on the other side of the bulkhead, the majority of the wires that run the length of the boat go through this space. Fortunately most of them are in a nice bundle at the bottom of the cupboard. But as you can see from the photo, there are some that aren’t.
Our boat rode out its first gale on Monday night since we’ve had her. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) we were in Victoria for a midwife appointment. We’re lucky to have amazing friends who checked on her though and tied some extra lines on for us when one of our spring lines was chafing and damaged the toe rail. Redoing the toe rails is on the list of projects for next summer, so the damage isn’t a concern, but the broken spring line would have been if not for gallant Tim and Pirate Nick.
While in Victoria we went to Canadian Tire and picked up some nifty solar powered LED Christmas lights. They have a little panel about 15cm square that has a light sensitive diode in it to turn the lights on when it gets dark outside. We’ve put the panel outside on the south side of our mast and run the the lights around our galley and dinette. Since we didn’t get them put up today until it was almost dark, we won’t know how they do until tomorrow. But overall the technology of them is pretty neat.
We’ve got midwife appointments every week now until Amanda has the baby, so we’re in town a lot. Our boat is getting more and more cozy though as the weather is getting cold and blustery. Lots of library books are getting read. Mewes has been getting plenty of attention. And mornings have been focused around hot beverages and fresh baked scones.
By Marc on November 4th, 2010
With Amanda being in her last month of pregnancy, we’ve got to go off island a lot more now. We have midwife appointments every week, and there are more ultrasounds and blood tests that need to be done. On top of this BC Ferries has taken the regular ferry that does our gulf islands run out of commission for the next two months for refit. It’s created quite a backlog on traffic going on and off island, and that’s made it so that we spend evenings over in Victoria more to avoid missing our appointments.
The last few days I’ve been doing work for a friend of ours to get his boat ready to go back in the water. It’s been dirty work grinding and sanding the hull below the waterline, and chinking the seams between the planks with putty. The up side is that his boat is half the size of ours.
Amanda has been knitting up a storm lately, and we’ve both been reading lots of library books in the evenings. We do most of our activities after dark by the light of our kerosene lanterns. Since it’s getting dark by 5:30 these days, we spend most evenings by lantern and candlelight.
We had a big Dietz oil lamp that my parents bought us for Pender’s frequent power outages. There were two brass lamps come with our boat on gimbaled mounts on the walls. And, just recently, my Grandpa gave us a bunch of boat stuff including a tiny red hurricane lamp. He used to use it as his anchor light for his sailboats.
Though not as convenient as flicking a switch, the glow and warmth from kerosene lamps makes the boat a very cozy place. Particularly when it’s raining and blustery out. Plus it tends to give one a sense of nostalgia. It’s comforting to know that mariners for the last couple hundred years have had their cabins lit similarly.
This week we had a visit from a hooded nudibranch. The bottom in Port Washington is mostly mud with a good amount of eelgrass meadows. This is ideal habitat for all sorts of marine critters, including nudibranchs.
By Marc on October 23rd, 2010
So not much got done this week as far as maintenance on the boat. I didn’t get the plumbing parts I needed to do the sink project until yesterday. At the beginning of the week my sister Danielle came and stayed with us for two days (first guest to stay on the boat). Thursday we were in Victoria all day for a midwife appointment, and having lunch at our favourite sushi restaurant with Amanda’s mother and brother. On top of this, Amanda has been off work all week using up her vacation time before she goes on maternity.
The weather has been great though. On Wednesday we decided it would be fun to take Nesika out for a spin. Danielle had to take the afternoon ferry back across to ‘the big island’, so we needed to go somewhere close. Now that we have our small boat at Port Washington it’s a short jaunt to Prevost Island. There are two chunks of park on Prevost. One is at Portlock point directly across from where we are. It’s not a very hospitable beach for landing the dinghy though. On the north side of Prevost is the larger piece of park with many sheltered anchorages. We figured heading up and around to James Bay would be our best choice.
Shortly after heading out of Port Washington we saw the SALTS ship Pacific Swift heading down Captains Passage towards Victoria. They had their main sail out and were just setting topsails. Unfortunately they were too far away to get a decent picture with the lens we have on our camera.
Heading up the east side of Prevost we saw plenty of seals and sea lions sunning themselves lazily on the beach. We kept close to the shore, taking the narrow passage between Prevost and Hawkins islands to try and stay out of the main current in Trincomali channel which was against us.
The anchorage in James bay is beautiful with good holding in a mud bottom. Along the south end of the inlet there are two broad sand beaches which are great for landing. There’s an old orchard there that we got to explore once we got ashore in the dinghy. Since we were on a schedule we could only ramble about for half an hour or so before going back to Nesika to start heading back.
Not before picking an apple or two.
The trip back was pleasant and we had a lunch of ‘Bunny Pasta with Yummy Cheese’ as were passing the Charles rocks. A few bunny noodles were lost overboard. They were our only casualties.
Even though the plumbing hasn’t progressed as quickly as we would have liked, it’s been a great week to spend time together and enjoy our new nautical life. We’ve seen plenty of family and friends, enjoyed good food, and gotten lots of reading in. Which is really the important stuff anyway.
