Month: April 2021

Well, we thought that we had a place to keep our new boat. It was an expensive place, but any port in a storm… or so we thought.

Unfortunately, there was this line on the chart that was missing some critical information. The line is a bridge that we’d have to cross under, and my charts didn’t tell me how high off the water it is. Just past it is another bridge, but it’s a “swing bridge” which means it swivels in the middle to let boats too tall to go under it move past. Back to the unmarked bridge, though… A couple of hours of work on the internet and I had the bright idea of using Google streetview to “drive” over the bridge.

The bad news is that there’s no way our new boat was going to fit under that bridge. The worse news is that it doesn’t open in any manner. The result is that there’s no way for us to get TO that new berth. So, it’s back to the drawing board.

Today is calling two more marinas from the original list to see their status, and then I start calling places over in the channel islands. This is less than optimal since it involves a ferry ride over just to get to the boat (and, of course, a ferry ride back too!), adding cost and time. However, if it gives us a place to keep her, then that’s what we’ll have to deal with, this season at least.

Then there’s insurance to iron out as well – though I need to know where we are keeping her so that I know the terms on the insurance I need. 1 million liability? 2? etc. Who’d have thought that the year-long search for a boat was the easy part?

Yesterday was the sea trial in which you simply take the boat out to see how well it sails, though I admit that I turned it into something a bit more (thank you, Joe, for putting up with it!)

The wind was not very high – around 5 knots or so. I figured that a 43 foot boat would need more than that to actually sail, and that putting up the sails would be more an exercise in “see? they exist, and the winches work” than a sailing trip. However, it turns out that Opus will sail in that wind, which is a relief given the typical summer conditions around here. It means, at least during the summer, that we’ll be more than a motorboat with a stick poking up in the air. I mean, if I wanted to motor around here, I’d buy a motorboat.

We left Stanley Park a little bit before 10 and motoried out under the Lion’s gate bridge before we put up the sails. A couple of triangular laps (this is sounding like a club race, isn’t it?) and then it was time to head back to the docks. What I wanted out of this sail was:

1. Watch the procedures regarding the boat
   • How do the sails get raised or doused
   • Motoring
2. Ensure that all the vital equipment worked
3. Check the items that was not/were not checked by the Marine Surveyor

Item 3, we tested the radar on the way in and also the GPS. Other things, such as the windlass operation, Microwave operation, whether there was any water entering the bilges, etc. waited until we returned to the dock.

We found the windlass wasn’t working, and that’s been made a condition of purchase, but all the other things as been agreed to being taken “as is”. I would have liked the owner to drain the fuel tank to remove any water that might be in there, but that was a “nice to have” rather than a requirement. If he doesn’t do it, I’ll have to.

After the sail, we went up to see the other bits and bobs that come with it – a locker of sails, granny bars, life raft, etc. I admit, it was an impressive inventory.

Anne and I had previously agreed that we were not going to make a decision there and on that day, so today is the big decision – do we buy or not? I think we do, but I want to make one last check with Anne before sending a message to the broker.

After that, assuming Anne says yes, it’s head down applying for insurance and calling marinas. We will need to find a home for our ship.

You know, I completely forgot that it was Easter weekend. It’s rather difficult to make calls for things like moorage when everyone is off chasing bunny rabbit eggs. So, instead, today was a day of planning – creating shopping lists, prioritizing shopping lists, creating task lists, prioritizing task lists.

Anne is a list maker, a habit that is slowly starting to rub off on me. Currently we are maintaining a list of boat items and tasks in a spreadsheet on Google Sheets, and it has 134 items on it that we’re colour coding. Red for “need to do before sailing at all”; orange means “need to do in the first month”; yellow for “Need to do the first summer”; white is “No deadline planned, though probably over the winter”.

And so we come to our first disagreement. Like 99% of our disagreements it’s kind of a no-event. There’s no anger, no shouting, no resentment. I just disagree with some of the things that she’s prioritized as red and, I’m sure, she will disagree with some of my prioritizations as well. For me, a “red” item is “Does this have to be done before going for a day sail the first time?” Orange is “Does this have to be done before or concurrent with our first multi-day trip?” etc. I want to keep the red things down so that they’re not overwhelming (and so that our new boat isn’t a dock queen for the next 2 months). I want to concentrate on the essentials and then expand from there.

That doesn’t mean we won’t do some of the orange things before we get all the red things done, of course. Some of the red things are, at the moment, only things I can do as Anne is not a mechanic (yet!). So she may be knocking off some orange, yellow, or even white things while I’m cursing at engines or duct work or wiring.

And, yes, I admit that I’ve been persuing the catalogs of B&G and Gill and Raymarine and Furuno looking at the bright shiney things but the boat actually has an electronics suite, so revamping all of that is not in the cards at the moment. I might need to add a Wifi gateway to the system so that my iPad can interface with the data from the helm. The current chart potter at the helm is, by the admission of the current owner, not reliable. There is a second chart plotter on an arm that can be swung into the companionway hatch, but I really do not like that arrangement, so we’ll be doing something about it. Probably an orange or yellow, task, though. Maybe even white.

Cutting open the fuel filter led to an unpleasant discovery. However, first we need to discuss the structure of a fuel filter.

There is an external metal shell inside of which the actual filter sits. At one end of the shell is the top and in the flat top is a series of holes – small ones in a circle surrounding a larger threaded one in the center.

Fuel enters the filter shell through the smaller holes. Inside they go through a corrugated filter (corrugated so there’s more surface area) into the center of the filter, which is hollow. The fuel goes up the center, hollow, section and out the bigger hole in the top and thence onwards through the fuel system. Marine diesels generally have two of these filters – the primary and the secondary. The secondary filters out what gets through the primary filter.

I brought the secondary filter home with me after it was changed during the Mechanical Inspection, and cut it open with a dremel tool.

What we found was that the inner core was severely rusted, which indicates that there was significant amounts of water over a long period of time in the center of the filter. Since there is nothing between this filter and the engine to prevent it, that means there’s been water in the engine too. Despite being a marine diesel, they do not like water in them. They want to stay dry.

The other bad news was that there was significant blow by on one of the cylinders. This means that the piston isn’t sealing against the cylinder wall correctly and stuff is getting past it, indicating damage to the piston, the piston rings, or the cylinders themselves. Unfortunately, without opening up the engine, we can’t tell how much damage has been done to it at all, meaning we’re taking some risk in buying the boat. The engine might work fine for years or it might die tomorrow. Fixing it could be a few hundred dollars, six thousand dollars, or need complete replacing at about twenty thousand dollars, plus labour.

We’ll wait for the results of the marine survey and then talk to the seller and see if we can come to an agreement about who shoulders how much risk. Worst case is that we walk away from the deal, though I’m hoping that doesn’t happen.