Month: July 2021

Yesterday I transported Opus from Point Roberts to Semiahmoo Marina. This is the first step in bringing Opus to Canada.

Why the jaunt to Semiahmoo instead of going direct from Point Roberts? I’m so glad you asked…

In order to come back into Canada from the United States, the following procedure has to be followed:

• Have a sample taken for a COVID test. This must be done in the United States before crossing into Canada
• Receive the results of the COVID test
• File those results into an app called ArriveCanada. This must all be done before crossing into Canada
• Within 72 hours of the COVID sample being taken (see step 1) cross into Canada.

What happens after that isn’t important. It’s that 72 hour deadline that is critical. If you don’t meet that, you have to start the process all over again. The last time I crossed from Point Roberts, the results of the COVID test were delayed (They came out negative for me), and I crossed into Canada with 10 minutes to spare before the test became invalid.

Keeping that in mind, I didn’t want to be 2 hours away from a border crossing. Thus, I’m now positioned about 30-40 minutes from a border crossing.

So how was the trip from Point Roberts? An adventure, like always. Opus seemed sluggish. Considering that she’s been sitting in Point Roberts Marina for 3 months, I imagine the grown on her hull is slowing her down. I’ll have to dive her and see. It will be a good time to double check the zincs too.

Upon arriving and getting settled into her slip at Semiahmoo Marina, I found that the fresh water system doesn’t seem to be working. it was working yesterday morning, so that’s going to be my main focus today, along with cleaning off all the bird berry-poop from the decks (which I did a few days ago, but it’s back).

After that comes the usual boat tasks of cleaning up, plus it seems the catches on two cabinets have come loose and I need to fix those. So, plenty of things to keep my busy for now.

I think next time I start a series of boat projects, I’ll bring JUST what I need for ONE project aboard, do that project, then go on to the next. Why? I seem to spend a lot of time moving all the stuff from HERE to over THERE so that I can get to THIS part, only to find that I have to move all the stuff from THERE to THAT OTHER PLACE so that I can get at one of the fittings, then move it all to HERE so that… etc. There’s just too darn much stuff aboard right now to get much of anything done.

Still, slowly, progress is made.

I had come back to a deflated dinghy. It took a while to find, but I think I have that fixed. I’ve also started to try to sort “stuff” into “things to keep aboard” and “things that are just taking up room at the moment” in an effort to pare down what’s aboard and actually try to get it into a shape that is usable.

Oh, yeah, and I scrubbed the decks.

And started repairs of the cap rail split. This is involving making a set of dams and then epoxying the cap rail down. After that’s done will come the sanding to smooth everything out. The dams are going to be made of painter’s tape and I’m hoping I don’t make a botch of it, getting epoxy all over the fibreglass, where I don’t want it, as it oozes out of the cap rail where I do want it.

I’ve also been working on the plumbing a bit, though as I alluded to above, it’s slow going as I keep having to move so much stuff around. The main thing I want to figure out is what the proper position of all the valves for the head are so that we can use the head and not run afoul of fouling a harbour.

Other than that, been helping another boat diagnose electrical problems with their GFI plugs, and apologizing to some other boaters. You see, the pedestal at my slip doesn’t seem to be supplying power. I didn’t expect anyone to be at our dock this weekend, so I simply plugged in to the pedestal for the slip on the other side. This, unfortunately, puts my power cord at about waist height. No big deal if there aren’t other people on the dock. Unfortuantely, 3 other boats came in. So now my electrical cord is in their way. Fortunately, they’ve been good sports about it, but probably tomorrow I’ll move the boat (or get the pedestal fixed) so that I’m not creating a hazard for others.

I have a whiteboard full of boat tasks to do, again. Once I clear these, I’m sure it will fill up again, but it does feel good to clear a whiteboard once in a while so that I feel like I’m making progress.

Last night was my first night back on Opus after needing to go home for a bit to deal with things like doctor appointments, renewing my driver’s license, and my birthday. UUpon returning to Opus a bit over a month later I found some unpleasant surprises.

The boat yard had not fixed the heater on the boat. Apparently, in the confusion of the boatyard changing ownership, that work had not been done. They had, however, moved my boat over to the dock closer to the boat yard. Unfortunately, when they plugged Opus into the dock suupply, they had not truly checked that power was coming into the boat. In their defense, the only way to truly know is either to try to run the microwave or, alternately, there is a single, small, LED on the panel that will tell you. instead, they looked at the battery voltage levvel, saw a high number, and assumed that the shore power was working.

It wasn’t.

So when I got onto the boat, the batteries were being slowly drained. They weren’t in terrible shape, but it could have been much worse. Considering they are brand new batteries, I don’t want to subject them to the abuse of overly discharging them. We caught it in time, fortunately.

It turns out that the shore power at my temporary slip isn’t working. Right now I have an electrical cord strung across the dock to an empty slip’s power, but that’s not a good solution. Also, at the moment, I’m not comfortable moving Opus by myself. It’s been a month and I hadn’t had that much practice with her beforehand. I want someone there to catch lines and right now there isn’t anyone.

It’s not a good situation as the power line is across the dock at about thigh level. It’s a danger, but I don’t have a lot of choice at the moment. I’ll have to hope that the dock continues to be deserted over the weekend.

Today was searching for the leak in the dinghy. No luck so far. The search continues. Also accomplished putting up the sail cover on the foresail, which has been exposed to the UV abuse all this time. Now it’s safe and secure inside its coccoon. I’ll have to work with the system a bit more before I can say that I’m “fluent” in the cover. however, once it was on, it cinched down nicely.

Part of the work to do in preparing for the racing season is to get a rating from one of the big origanizations – ORC or PHRF. Several members of the team got together to measure sails, which is part of the numbers that PHRF needs to set a handicap. The sail measurements coupled with measurements of the boat itself are run through a handicapping program that yields a theoretical speed for the boat. That is then used to decide the handicap.

The handicap is set so that boats of different design and lengths and sail plans can compete with each other. For instance, Opus could not hope to compete against an IMOCA or a foiling sailboat in a head-to-head race. Some of those boats will do over 40 knots in the right conditions whereas Opus is unlikely to break 10 or 12 knots. The handicap is expressed as a certain number of seconds per mile of race course that is subtracted from our elapsed time. So if a boat, say a foiling boat, is expected to finish a 100 mile course in about 4 hours, averaging a little bit less than 2 1/2 minutes per mile, Opus would be expected to cover that same course in about 12 1/2 hours, averaging 7.5 minutes per mile. Our handicap should be in the neighbourhood of 5 minutes per mile.

Of course, we all want to be the first over the finish line – what is called “Line Honours” in racing.

You may notice that there are two more timers running on the pages now. They are both estimates, but tell us how much time until our first “big” races – SwiftSure and Southern Straits. We may do some racing before then, but those are the first goals we’re really aimed at and training for. I’ll be firming up the timers once the race organizers announce the actual dates of the races.

Those are the two big races for us in 2022, though I have my eye on a few other ones such as Malaspina Straits. We’ll also be doing some long-duration sails on our own over weekends and perhaps even take a week to do a whirlwind circumnavigation of Vancouver Island.