SY Opus

Originally I had intended on taking Opus from Prince Rupert to Shearwater single handedly. This would have been a multi-stage process over the course of a week or so. The first leg would have been Prince Rupert to Hartley Bay at the end of the Grenville Channel, a grueling 16-18 hour trip. After a couple of days of recovery, another grueling leg from Hartley Bay to Klemtu, another few days recovery, and then an easy day from Klemtu to Shearwater.

However, due to the goodness of Social Media, at the last moment (I was due to depart the next day) I found a crew person to make the trip with me. This necessitated delaying departure for a few days, though the delay was worthwhile to be able to share the duties and, therefore, have no recovery days.

Hubert boarded on July 3rd and we moved over to Pillsbury Cove to anchor for the night because there weren’t any moorages available. After carefully picking our way through the shallows at the entrance, with Hubert at the helm, we anchored deep in the cove, though we could still easily look out at Prince Rupert Harbour. I knew my ground tackle (i.e. “Anchor” would hold no matter what came up, but I had some concerns about the comfort overnight. Fortunately, those concerns were needless as we lay at anchor and the waters were calm. We headed to sleep early as we had a very early start planned for the next morning.

When we woke up, fog lay heavily upon the world, with visibility measured in tens of meters — the first time this trip that I had seen fog so thick, of course. Fortunately, since the distance was relatively short, we could wait, though we would be unable to take my preferred route and, instead, would have to take the longer route. At around 9:00 AM, the fog seemed to be lifting , and we cautiously felt our way out with radar probing the area around us and our chart plotter keeping us safely in the deeper channel. Once out of Pillsbury cove, with the range on our radar set large enough to see the two shores, we headed southwards down Prince Rupert Harbour, keeping an electronic as well as organic eye out (thank goodness for Radar and AIS!)

Fog was to dog our stern almost the entire way to the end of the Malacca Passage, including a concerning encounter with BC Ferries “Northern Expedition” in thick fog. We could see him on our radar and AIS, but weren’t sure if they saw us, so we called them on channel 16. They didn’t answer. So we called them again. They didn’t answer. Despite calling them with continued urgency and frequency (to the point that the coast guard got involved), they never answered our hails, we never knew if they knew we were there, and we took evasive action, to the best that we could – though our speed is paltry compared to theirs. They passed less than 1/4 of a mile from us, in fog thick enough that we could see, maybe, 100 meters, and never answered a single radio call.

We arrived at our destination, “Captain’s Cove” and anchored for the night in the same place that we had anchored with Quijote on the northbound trip. We woke to an absolutely fabulous day and headed south, ostensibly to Ire Cove, with a “stretch goal” of McMicking Inlet if we felt really good and making good time at Ire. However, upon reaching Ire, we felt really good, discussed it among the crew, and elected to keep going. And we did, traveling from Captain’s Cove to Shearwater in one overnight trip. Hubert was a joy to have aboard and we arrived at Shearwater after navigating via Radar fixes, chart plotters, and ded reckoning, in good spirits and still feeling like we could take on even more.

We had arrived in Shearwater early, and weren’t due to pick up our third crew member, Patrick, for a few days, so had the opportunity to run about and enjoy the delightful Cow Bay Marina for a few days before the next part of the journey.

Although I already covered a bunch of the preparations I had made, this is a bit more about the ones I hadn’t mentioned.

Because of the length of this leg and the fact that it was an overnight, fatigue was a real concern. We tend to be at our lowest ebb around 4am, something I’ve encountered a number of times before in my career in computers when pulling all-nighters during “crunch times”. My approach to combating this was two fold. The first is not to overdoes on sugar/carbohydrates. I didn’t want to add on a “sugar crash” to that low ebb. To combat that, I had mostly proteins in the form of beef jerky to eat, along with some dried fruits (very high in sugars… I know) for the occasional “shot in the arm” if I needed it. As a last resort, I also had some Red Bull and some caffeine tablets at hand. That was the first prong of the preparations – the physical.

The second half was dealing with the psycho-emotional aspect. I had pulled some books on tape from LibreVox to listen to and keep my mind engaged. In addition, I set a repeating alarm so that every 15 minutes an annoying alarm would go off that would require me to take off my glove if I were wearing one, and acknowledge the alarm. Trust me, over the course of 18 hours, that alarm became QUITE annoying as it always seemed to be going off when I needed to be doing something else. So, between the alarm, and listening to “Around the World in 80 days” (seemed an appropriate title to me!) I kept my mind awake.

Other things was to make sure that I had enough sleep. You can’t really “bank” sleep, I find. but you can make darn sure that you’re not already at a sleep deficit when you start out and that’s important. I also ate well just before my last sleep period so that I had a bunch of calories stored up. I find I can go for quite a while without sleep (not that it’s a good idea), as long as I have enough calories — and “enough” calories means a lot more than I normally would eat. My guess is that I burnt through 3,000 to 4,000 calories during that jaunt in keeping myself awake. If you’re a scientist and can give me actual information on caloric needs under those circumstances, I’d love to hear from you!

And, yes, I know that wasn’t a healthy way to do things, but it works for me and was only for one night. I’d get a lot more advice on how to do it in a healthy manner if I were going to do that sort of sailing for an extended period of time.

Other things I had planned for was my routing. I was, intentionally, not in the major shipping routes. This meant that I could, theoretically, let Opus drift and take a 15-20 minute power nap if I needed to. I also had a few “outs” I could use to hole up if I absolutely had to anchor and get some longer sleep or avoid some unforeseen weather, though navigating into a sheltered lagoon through a narrow passage at night when I’m fatigued would require a lot of motivation for me to undertake.

The yellow lines are the tracks from Prince Rupert to Ketchikan (northeasterly yellow line) in which we had the mechanical break down east of Dundas Island, and my route back from Ketchikan (route to the southwest). Where it suddenly bends East Southeast is where I took the option of the shorter path because there wasn’t any wind. Otherwise the path would have stayed on the west side of Dundas island, hooked underneath “Knee Hill” and traveled almost due east to get to the Venn passage. Without the wind, I took the more direct/shorter route (by 5 miles, but that’s an hour of travel under motor!)

Some of my outs were in the shallows on the east side of Annette Island, Brundig Inlet, Morse Cove and Foggy Bay. If I passed Brundig Bay, however, it was pretty much “have to go all the way”, so seeing Brundig at my stern quarter was a “decide whether to continue or hole up” moment that took some serious soul searching and checking if I was good to continue.

Obviously, everything worked out and we made it. I’ll be using much of those same procedures for the next jump from Prince Rupert to an anchorage at the south end of Grenville Channel – about 70 miles, where I’ll anchor for a couple of nights to catch up on sleep before doing it again to get to Klemtu. After that it’s easier times with the longest jump being 50 miles or so.

Tomorrow night is the big day. 80+ miles, single-handing, hand steering. It’s what this entire week has been leading up to and for which I’ve been preparing. Still, it’s a little daunting to think about. Daunting, anxiety-inducing, and yet also with a large helping of curiousity and excitement for the challenge ahead. Still, it’s important to go into it with open eyes and with pre-thought.

The weather here in Ketchikan for the last two days has been awesome. It’s like Ketchikan is putting her best sunday go to meeting clothes on in an effort to entice me to stay. What it does do, though, is offer a temptation to get to Prince Rupert early since the days are so beautiful. It’s important not to give into the temptation and go off half-cocked, though. Discipline and careful, methodical, preparation.

Today was rigging a bunch of things as well as creating a clean cockpit. Most importantly were the jack lines. These are lines that run along the deck. You tether yourself to them and they allow you to move forward and aft. If you are, for some reason, knocked overboard, the tether keeps you with the boat. Since there’s noone else on the boat to turn around and come back to me, it’s important that I stay with the boat.

The second thing to rig was a way to get back ONTO the boat if I go overboard. I’ve rigged the boarding ladder so that I can bring it down if I need it, even if I’m in the water. Until I yank that lanyard, though, it’s securely on the boat and won’t come off.

I’ve also rigged lashing for the dinghy that can be released quickly. Though, in truth, if I have to release it in an emergency, I might just cut the lashings since, at that point, I’ve determined that Opus is sinking. What’s a few cut lines in that case?

I’ve also been attending to the little tasks such as refilling the water tank. It really didn’t need to be refilled, but there’s a comfort in knowing that Opus is full. In addition, it helps with stability by adding weight below the water line.

I’ve looked at the fuel gauge and it reads 7/8s of a tank. You would think that would mean 7/8 * 25 (Opus’ tank has 25 gallon capacity) but of course, nothing is that simple. The fuel tank doesn’t seem to be a regular shape. Thus, there is more fuel in the top 1/8th of the tank than there is in the bottom 1/8th. By carefully monitoring how much fuel is put in, I’ve determined that at 3/4, Opus has about 16-17 gallons of fuel instead of the expected 18. At 0.71 per hour of fuel consumption, that’s more than 20 hours of operation. So why don’t I top it up?

The simple answer is because I don’t want to be storing partially filled fuel jerry cans on the deck. I want them either full or empty, not in between. I may, about 1/2 way along the trip, refuel from my ready supply (5 gallons) jerry can. That is an additional 6 hours of operation, so there’s plenty of fuel handy.

For people concerned about spillage, there is none. I use a shaker siphon (self-priming siphon) to transfer the fuel. As long as I hold the can so that it can’t slip and there is enough room in the fuel tank for the entire fuel load, no spillage is really possible.

I’ve been toying with three possible departure times because of trying to balance various factors. The first factor is safety. I’m not fooling myself that this trip is “safe”, but I’m trying to minimize the risks. The second factor is speed. The faster I make the transit, the less time I have to spend at the helm. The third factor is waterways. I can’t transit the shortcut waterway unless we’re at 1/4 to 1/2 tide rather than low tide – and I’d prefer the tide be coming in. Lastly is when the destination will have a berth available for me. My nominal check-in time is 15:00. I can probably check in before then. However, it does me no good to arrive too early because I won’t be able to dock. I’ll end up having to float, remain alert, and avoid traffic when what I really will want to do is simply take a nap.

Oh, did I mention that I also have to go through Customs? So add on some time to do that too.

Did I mention that I really don’t want to be docking when the current is running fast — and it DOES run fast at Prince Rupert, reaching as high as 5.5 knots on Monday. Considering my cruising speed is 5.5 knots with a maximum of just over 6 knots (at greatly increased fuel consumption), you can see the problem, I think… I want to arrive at slack tide!

So the departure depends on balancing all those factors (other than safety – that always has priority). As I get more accurate wind forecasts as we get closer to departure, the departure time wobbles. Right now I’m looking at three possible departure times:

17:00 Sunday, 21:00 Sunday, 05:00 Monday

We’ll see which one I eventually go with.

As usual, I’ll have the tracker running for those people with whom I’ve shared access. Keep your eye out!

I had a full crew coming northwards, at least from Shearwater onwards. Due to various events and constraints, I’ll be single-handing Opus back south again. As you might imagine, the configuration of a boat for single-handing is very different than the configuration for a crewed boat, especially when the boat does not have an autopilot and must be hand steered.

The first consideration is doing everything you can so that you do not have to leave the cockpit. Leaving the cockpit has two effects. First is that there’s no hand on the wheel and so the boat will ply its own course. The second is the greatly increased risk if you should go overboard. There’s no crew to turn the boat around to come back to get you.

I’ve been reconfiguring Opus for single handing. Some of it is obvious, such as repairing the broken safety line, adding jack lines, and a tether. Next is making sure that I have a clear way to get to any point on the boat while still tethered in. There will be no untethered excursions for me!

The next thing to consider are the prosaic ones. Since the first leg is a 16 hour transit of high-80 to low-90 miles, consideration needs to be given to bodily needs – food, water, and the removal of used up food and water from the body. No autopilot means that when I’m in the head, there’s noone guiding the boat. When I’m at the galley, there’s noone guiding the boat, etc. In both those cases, it means the boat is idling and drifting.

I’ve added two net bags at the helm to hold water bottles and/or snack containers to minimize the amount of time I may have to leave the boat adrift.

And then, lastly, there is the reconfiguration of myself. Due to tides and winds, optimum time to depart is approximately 21:00 or 22:00 PDT (20:00 or 21:00 Alaska time), which should get me into Prince Rupert approximately 14:00 the next day – peak high tide time. That means I’ll fight the incoming tide to Ketchikan for about 2 hours, then be able to ride it out, then get to Prince Rupert in time to ride the last of the incomming tide in through Verney Channel. However, this means reconfiguring my days so that I’m active throughout the night and the following morning and early afternoon. That’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of days – swinging my day around. It’s not a comfortable process, but it is necessary.

Once I reach Prince Rupert, I’ll probably sleep for a day or two before starting the next leg of the trip. It is a bit more of a “normal” day, so I’ll be swinging my time back to a regular diurnal schedule while in Prince Rupert. Somehow, that’s easier. I think we’re evolved to naturally gravitate towards being active during the day.

Tomorrow morning will be about doing all the final engine checks and topping up the fuel tank. Opus has a rather small fuel tank – only 25 gallons. that’s good for about 32 hours of run time. I probably have enough fuel in the tank right now to do the crossing, but “probably” doesn’t have that warm fuzzy feeling. I’d hate to have the engine quit in a narrow, shallow, channel due to fuel starvation, so I’ll make sure the tank is topped up before I start.

I’ve also planned three different routes from Ketchikan to Prince Rupert. They branch off from each other at various places in order to give me options to make best use of wind, waves, and tides.

Lastly is the mental preparation – how to keep myself alert and functioning. This is a multi-pronged strategy. The first consists of something to do to keep my mind active. This is audio books to listen to while helming through the night and day. I have those downloaded onto my iPad, which is also my main display at the helm as it mirrors the chart plotter at my navigation desk in the cabin. And, yes, I do have a boat-supplied, waterproof, power supply to the iPad. The pad’s internal batteries would certainly not last a full transit of this length!

The second prong of the strategy is having a recurrent alarm going off every 15 minutes that I have to take positive action to quiet. Thus, even if I do nod off, I’ll be woken within 15 minutes. This alarm will be served by my cell phone, which also will be supplied with power from the boat. The cell phone also serves as a backup navigation system, running Navionics, if the iPad, for some reason, fails to charge. Then, of course, there are the usual requirements such as logging every hour, to help keep me busy and alert.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Stay tuned for more preparation entries tomorrow.

June 23

Ketchikan

It’s been rather a long time since I posted anything. I could make claims to having been quite busy though, truth be told, I probably could have found time here and there to make entries. Instead, accept this one as a compendium of all the entries I meant to make.

I suppose the biggest thing to discuss is the termination of Opus’ trip northwards. To do that, there’s a bunch of context that needs to be given.

We bought Opus in April of 2021. Excepting this trip, Opus had made only a few trips under my command, and sat in the Marina for quite a long time getting worked on. Her engine needed a lot of work, a heater was installed (and de-installed, and re-installed and tinkered with and… etc. It still doesn’t work properly). Various leaks were tracked down and sealed. They say that a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money. Opus continues that proud tradition, unfortunately.

We intend to take Opus into the Vic-Maui race in 2024. That’s a 2,300 mile race from Victoria, BC to Maui, Hawaii. This trip to Alaska was supposed to be a step towards that, proving out her systems on a long trip while still not being in the middle of the ocean beyond help if something went wrong, and stuff did go wrong, for sure.

We haven’t fixed all the leaks, and rain has kept us from continuing to work on that. The dinghy is also leaking water, which meant we were unable to tow it. It was “safe” in that it wasn’t going to sink, but it was certainly going to add more drag than I wished, and was uncomfortable to use without bailing it. The heater wasn’t reliable (and often didn’t work at all), which is an ongoing issue. Slowly – too slowly – things were being worked on, but I’ll be the first to admit that Opus was/is not in optimal condition. She still needs a lot of work.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, came during the trip from Prince Rupert to Ketchikan. That was intended to be a 3-day journey. First day being from Prince Rupert to the Dundas Island, still short of the U.S. Border. 2^nd day was to be a cross over the border to Foggy bay, staying there overnight on sufferance from the US Border Services, and then the third day being the final trip into Ketchikan to clear customs. Unfortunately, as we were closing in to Dundas Island, Opus lost power.

We jury rigged a GoPro onto the boat hook so that we could inspect the underside and determined two things. The first was that the propeller and prop shaft were still on the boat. The second was that even with the engine in gear, the prop was not turning, though the engine was.

Compounding this problem was that I was sick with a combination of (later determined) a reaction to some food I ate, which then got me sea sick as well (I had taken sea sick medicine, but thrown it up earlier). Being in a cramped location, trying to work on the diesel engine, was not something I ended up being physically up to. Fortunately, we’re a sailboat and have alternate means to continue. Two of the crew (Kay and Karenn) took terms at the helm while third crew (Sam) aided and then took over diagnosing and trying to fix the problem.

It was determined that the prop shaft was no longer attached to the V-drive. Let me explain that a little more. The shaft that comes off my inboard diesel engine faces towards the bow. If we hooked a propeller onto that, then the propeller would be facing the bow instead of the stern. We need to make the shaft do a 180 degree turn to face backwards towards the stern. This is the function of the V-drive. It is connected to the prop shaft via two flanges that are held together by three bolts. It was determined that the bolts had all failed and there was no longer anything holding the prop shaft flange to the V-drive flange.

As we pitched and rolled in the waves, Sam and I tried to effect repairs together and then Sam by herself. Unfortunately, we failed to be able to extract the pieces of the bolts from the flanges and thus had no way to bolt the two pieces back together again. Meanwhile, Karenn and Kay continued to helm us under sail as our first, then our second, planned stop faded into our wake.

Approximately, 22:00 or so, it was suggested that we make a final call to the coast guard asking for a tow. We had alerted them earlier to our problem¹ and they were standing by. After our call this time, they dispatched a boat from Ketchikan, which took us under tow. At 01:30, they nudged us against the bar harbor dock and did a boat inspection to make sure of things like floatation devices, number of flares, fire extinguishers, etc., met coast guard regulations. Finally the crew could turn in for a rest.

The next morning the harbormaster was knocking. He wanted to know what this boat was doing tied up to their temporary dock, and so I told him the story. After doing that and notifying him that we were currently unable to move under our own power, he agreed to let us stay there temporarily, which we ended up doing one more night, though not without one more problem due to tides.

The tide that morning was going to be low enough that Opus might well become grounded. Her keep is strong enough to take her weight as long as it’s concentrated up and down. I basically “sewed” Opus to the dock using every dock line I had and running the line back and forth between her “toe rail” and the dock so that she’d stay upright. However, upon measuring, it turns out that there was a depression directly below her – she never actually touched bottom even though her depth meter was reading less than 9 feet (her minimum depth to float).

Meanwhile I had set out to find someone to fix Opus. This took a bit but we finally found a mechanic that was willing to come out to look at her. Between him, his assistant and me, we worked on it all day and eventually had to completely remove the V-drive to effect repairs. Finally, at 18:30, we were done. It was a lot of labour, a couple of bolts in various sizes (so that we had whatever size was needed), but once again the propshaft was connected to the engine.

Unfortunately, that was not the full extent of the damage. It would be several more days before I had completed all the repairs on her.

Meanwhile, the crew had decided to move on – they could no longer continue the voyage with Opus. This left me with yet another problem. How would I get Opus home? So I sent out word on various boards that I was looking for crew. I’ve had a couple of responses. However, I’ll give you the words of one of these exchanges so you have an idea of the troubles I’m having:

Them: Wave/Request to check mutual interest

Me: Hi, which trip are you interested in?

Them: Prince Rupert to Vancouver

Me: ** Asks for contact information so we can discuss details **

Them: Hi, Kevin, I’m in Ontario now I don’t know how long it will take to get here from bc but I’d love to hop on your boat and go to Europe or something like that.

As you can see, they had no interest in the trip that was proposed. That is typical of the interactions I’ve been getting recently.

And so now I’ve been planning and preparing Opus for the journey southwards uncrewed – just me and the ship making our way over 600 miles back to our home. It’s daunting and scary, for sure. It starts with a 16 hour trip back from Ketchikan to Prince Rupert. 16 hours of me on the helm, steering and managing the entire boat, non-stop, over 80+ miles. Then I spend a few days in Prince Rupert recovering before another 70+ mile leg, whereupon I anchor, and recover for a few days, then another 70+ mile leg to Klemtu. After that things get easier.

However, anchoring comes with its own challenges. Opus’ windlass is underpowered for the anchor and chain we’re using on her for this trip. Thus, to bring the anchor up, I’ll need to man three stations – the helm, the bow, and the chain locker. This will mean I’ll need very protected anchorages as there will be times that the anchor won’t actually be holding the boat, but I need to be away from the helm to bring it up and stow it, plus adding my muscle to the mechanical power of the windlass, plus making sure that the anchor rode and chain are distributing themselves in the chain locker. With a crew of me and one other person, that can be a 20 minute job. With just me alone, I’m guessing it will be more like a 45 minute process.

I have the route planned and so now I’ve been concentrating on rigging the boat for single-handing. That means getting the entire boat secure, rigging attended to, and most of all planning how I’m going to eat and drink while under way. If Opus had an autopilot, that would be easy. Turn on the autopilot and take my hands off the helm. Unfortunately, getting Opus’ autopilot re-installed was not a high priority for this trip. Thus, no autopilot. Somehow I’ll have to be able to prepare meals under way, consume them, and still keep the boat pointed in the right direction. It’s going to be boil-in-a-bag meals at best during the day, or simply high protein, high energy snacks and drinks while at the helm.

Other repairs I’ve had to make:

1. Replacement of the starboard safety line. I have no idea how this broke. It happened when I was asleep. Unfortunately, there are no facilities that can handle making a new one here since it requires a heavy-duty press to swage fittings onto wire. I wanted to replace the wire safety lines with dyneema ones anyway. Unfortunately, they don’t have dyneema of the proper size here either, so I’ve had to make do with nylon line. It’s not as good as wire or dyneema because of how it stretches, but it’s a lot better than no safety line at all.
2. Rigging of jack lines. These are the lines that run along the deck and to which you hook a tether that either will not allow you to go overboard or else keeps you with the boat if you do, rather than letting the boat continue on without you. If there’s a crew, they can come back to get you. If you’re single-handing, well, the boat won’t be turning around to come get you on its own.
3. Replacing the hardware that has gone missing because things like the running back stays were not properly stowed. I don’t blame the crew for making a mistake. It is, after all, my responsibility to teach them. I DO blame them for not asking about it. Considering the back stays are part of what holds the mast up when it’s under tension, they are kind of important…
4. Ensuring that the repairs that were made are up to the strain. To that end, I’ve taken Opus out and run her engine for hours both at normal cruise RPMs and also at very high cruise RPMs to test the repair. I’m happy to report that she is running more smoothly than she was prior, though there’s still a fair amount of work that should be done on the engine when possible.
5. Oil, oil filter, and fuel filter changes. Although diesel engines could likely run with mud as lubrication, it’s not good for it and will hasten the day that the engine decided it ain’t a-gonna run no more, no more, and is sent to the old engine’s home.

So the big day is approaching. Weather is favourable for a trip this coming Monday. I’ll be setting off some time before midnight on Sunday and then arriving in Prince Rupert a bit after noon on Monday. This will allow me to make best use of tides. There doesn’t look to be much wind, so it’s likely to be a motorboat ride the entire way, so I need to make sure that the fuel tank is full. With a fuel burn of 0.71 gallons/hr, and 25 gallons in the tank, that gives me over 30 hours of operation, which is well more than I need for the 16 hour transit.

I have three night’s reservation in Prince Rupert, so that should work out well enough. If necessary, I hope I can extend that further.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep up more on this blog as things progress. I find myself both anxious and excited by the prospect of bringing Opus home solo. Hopefully the excitement is real and the anxiety is just pre-performance buttterflies. I’ve helmed Opus for more than 16 hours before, though that was in the protected waters of the Georgia Strait. Solo past Dixon Entrance and part of Hecate Strait is a bit more complicated than that.

1I have a membership in BoatUSA for towing, which I got specifically for this trip. It turns out that BoatUSA does not have any tows available in the Ketchikan area. They did coordinate discussions with the Coast Guard, which was about all they could do. Apparently they do have resources in Juneau if we had been up that far.