I think most of us remember the feeling . . . a university term paper that is assigned months in advance  . . . that hangs, unstarted, in the air all winter, clouding otherwise pleasant moments of respite . . .  and as such, the Canadian Coast Guard Radio inspector asked me to create an “Antenna Map” for the COLUMBIA III and he gave me a year to comply . .

How could 10 months slip by so quickly . . . .

But I do like a challenge, especially if it taxes my paltry drafting skills . . .  Despite the fact that every antenna has installed by me over the years it took quite a bit of reverse engineering to trace each antenna back to its source. As I like a tidy wheel house and my wire bundles are nicely routed and secured, I had to cut most of the cable bundles free of their zap-straps to allow me to connect each electronic unit to its antenna. I figured it out, but now my wheel house looks like someone threw a grenade in the door . . .. .

But I do take pleasure in the results . . .

One has to remain calm and placid when life throws us vexing curve-balls . . . and I for one, after my decades of maritime experience am pretty good at salty equanimity . . . sometimes . . . and other times i just pull a jacket over my head and silently scream . . .  really?!?!      REALLY!???

This story is actually too involved and traumatic for me to recount in blow-by-blow detail but here is a scintillating overview:

The anchor winch on the COLUMBIA III is over 70 years old. Late last season it broke. It broke in an awkward way and at an awkward time and cost a lot of awkward money and was awkward for Mothership’s reputation and awkward for some of our guests and awkward for my self-esteem and really made my sleep patterns awkward . . .

Was that vague enough?

Being awkward-adverse I fixed the precious little contraption to the best of my abilities (which proved to be not up to the task) and despite functioning wonderfully in the preseason sea-trials my wonderful winch took on a new, cantankerous personality soon after leaving the dock at the start of the season. Perhaps my lovely winch was feeling separation anxiety when it got too far from me because, in an endearing attempt to keep in contact with me, the winch decided any attention, even bad attention, was better than feeling abandoned.

So, soon after heading north for the start of the season, the 70-years-without-a-hiccup winch (my lovely) started to make grinding and squeaking noises and shaking and shuddering motions. (not positive symptoms for a machine if you are unfamiliar with the signs) . . . and then it promptly stopped doing its primary function . . . winding in the chain and anchor. Really, I’m not requesting a lot of complex tasks . . . just turn the drum when asked . .

Thus began a blissful summer of “exchanges” between me, my lovely winch and my skippers, Jonas and Steve. I drove to Port McNeill twice and we had the winch apart so many times I lost count. We had wonderful support from a local machinist willing to make boat calls  at odd hours to keep our tours running. The winch chewed-up internal gears and found novel ways to fail and we created novel fixes attempting to outmaneuver our petulant “lovely”. One set of worm gears lasted 70 years and we went through 2 more sets in 3 months. My normally pristine fore-deck was defiled with absorbent pads and hydraulic spills and greasy tools . . . and the super cool part was the guests never knew the skippers and I where exhausted with the unwanted “negative affections” of the stupid winch.

Here is what the new happy gears looked like: . . .

Here is what we found ONE of the times the winch stopped performing its turny-turny function . . . .. The bronze gear had moved laterally and the drive gear had chewed up the teeth. That 5/8″ space to the right of the gear shouldn’t be there.

I received this photo as part of the dialogue between the ship and me at home . As the gear had slipped laterally, I concocted the idea of a plastic “shim” to hold the gear in the right place .  . . so I ran down to the workshop and made a set of ‘Ultra-High-Molecular-Denisty plastic (UMHD) “washers”. Note here I am NOT a machinist so these are crafted with a drill press, hole saw, router and sand paper!

and I raced to Port McNeill to meet the ship. I ripped the winch gear-case apart at the engine room workbench . . .

It was a long night as I had never had the gear case apart before, but the new plastic shim looked pretty convincing once installed . . .

That fix bought us a few weeks but the audio expression of disapproval returned and flourished . . . the squeaking returned and got worst . . . So I went back to Port McNeill to meet the ship on the turn-around between tours and this time I found an angelic local machinist that took the gear box to his real machine shop and he made a real steel shim and trimmed the drive gear to improve its alignment and hopefully reduce the distressing squeaks.

At some point, Skipper Jonas replaced Skipper Steve but the fun just kept coming even as the ship mover further north to the Great Bear Rainforest area. As Jonas had not been on the ship for the earlier midsummer sparring with the winch I briefed him on the phone and sketched a procedure for dissembling the winch if necessary and sent it to the ship with more spare gears and hydraulic motors hoping to limp through the last of the fall season.

Part of the mystery for me was that the winch worked perfectly for 70 years, then one bronze gear failed and was replaced. After that one replaced part the winch became a grumbling, hissy-fitting, pain-in-the-you-know-what!!!

And then Jonas called me again . . .really this was getting us both tramatized . .

Jonas was near the end of the second last tour of the year and the winch quit working again . . .like HOLY SH*T MAN!!!!!. I know I cried. The new symptom he told me was that hydraulic oil was spilling out of the winch case and the winch wouldn’t turn . .. . Oh my lovely you are out doing yourself . . .  and the only way hydraulic oil could get into the winch housing itself is if the seal on the new hydraulic motor had failed. We had to change the hydraulic motor immediately.

Jonas and crew managed to retrieve the anchor manually each of the last few days of that tour using the emergency handle we had created after last summer’s “circumstances”. It’s a good thing Jonas is strong . .  .

All summer I asked myself over and over, what had changed . . . . and finally, embarrassingly, that tossing turning vexing night, mid-September, mid-winch-ongoing-crisis, I had a thought, a really good thought, (though a bit slow, Ross). I realized that yes, I had changed the bronze drive gear but trying to be Mr. Proactive I had also changed the hydraulic motor that the gear was mounted on!!! . . . I HAD changed 2 things . . . So, armed with this epiphany, I raced to the nearest airport and put the 70 year old hydraulic motor on the earliest plane to Bella Bella. It was SO easy, all I had to do was purchase a complete $625 seat on the plane for a 20 pound shoe-box. It was the only way the airlines would guarantee delivery . . . Jonas installed the old pump following my instructions  on the day before the last tour of the year . .. .

and all the grumbling, squeaking, grinding, squirming, shaking and shuddering signs of excessive winchy attention-seeking ended. 

and Jonas completed the season without mishap and brought the ship south with a few crew and their partners to celebrate.

We concluded that the new-off-the-shelf hydraulic motor I had installed last spring was defective, perhaps its own drive shaft was bent. Regardless of why, the problem left when the old motor was reinstalled.

When the ship finally made it back to our home port of Campbell River in early October EVERYONE was relieved and completely done with pandering to our petulant anchor winch. We hadn’t lost a day of touring and the guests were unaware of the tussles we had to keep the season moving forward, but enough was enough. I was NOT going to do that again. So I payed a crane truck to come to the shipyard and literally pluck the winch off the front deck and took it to a machinist in Campbell River. North Island Machine Works had done work for me in the past including custom building our main drive-shaft when we replaced it a few years ago. So, Ryan was the fellow I turned to. I stopped in shortly after and he had the winch dissembled . . . like an exploded-view in a parts diagram!

And here he showed me  the bronze gear (number 3) that was right on the edge of also failing . . . every gear tooth was about to break off! We believe the defective hydraulic motor was so mis-aligned that it was slowly folding the gear teeth over to the point of failure.

Once the old winch was dissembled the machinist and I had a “little chat”. He felt he could repair the winch for about $5000 and he could remake the winch into a newer more robust winch for about $10,000. And I said, “Ryan, I want this winch completely rebuilt and running like a Swiss watch and I don’t want to lose anymore sleep nor tax the patience nor skill-set of my skippers with sub-standard equipment. Their job is to run the ship well. My job is to provide them with good equipment.” I gave Ryan a $20,000 budget.

And the reconstruction began . . .  here is the old winch housing with the tie-up bollards removed . . .

note 70 years of rusty deterioration . . 

and the new, new, new winch case with finely machined surfaces, modern upgraded hydraulic motor (I bought 2 for a spare) and the entirely new, re-engineered gear box . . . 

The old gear case was welded together, the new gear case is welded and then machined on critical surfaces to make everything line up PERFECTLY !!! 

and the old worm gear upgraded to a new heavier-duty set of gears . .   

I have had Mr. Murphy eavesdrop on my conversations often enough to know i can’t guarantee the winch will work flawlessly this summer, but I can absolutely proclaim with confidence that I have TRIED to ensure it will.

End of part 1!

I will add part 2 when the rebuilt winch is completed.

thanks for your patience with this “quick synopsis”. Ross

So the winter comes and goes with the grinding deep maintenance that occurs in the cold, dark, winter days in the boat shed. Then the energy starts to build in March and the ship heads out for the ship yard haul-out followed by the Spring burst of energy from the crews sanding and painting . . . Finally the ship comes out of the shed and the kayaks are prepped and we run our usual battery of inspections for radio, fire suppression system etc etc.

Finally the big day arrives for Transport Canada to give the COLUMBIA III her dockside inspection. I thought she was looking pretty grand!

and after THAT! Well then, really, we’re all ready for the season, Right? 

Oops, there can be little last minute details Captain Murphy likes to participate in . . . .        . . .like . . . .

. . . I decided to be extra good and ordered in 3 new propane tanks to ensure they were in perfect shape. But of course the “style” of construction had changed since the propane cabinet was built and the new tanks were too tall. . . .  REALLY???  TOO TALL!!??!!! So my wonderfully clean and freshly painted back-deck was buried in dust and grindings as I routed out new indentations to accept the alternate dimensions of the replacement tanks . . .  and I thought they would just slip them into place!

and a week before departure, the galley range decided to malfunction and an intense flurry of activity ensued to get it operational again.

AND… we bring the crew together for a full day of recurrent training with fire pumps and first aid kits and the skiff etc etc. . . . (3 days for  me with individual one on one individual instruction )

We even had “galley training”. Savanna was new to the ship so she arrived a day early and got to prepare a few meals off the Mothership menu to give her time to orient herself in the galley . . .  now, where are the measuring spoons hidden . . .    

Steering the vessel with the emergency tiller . . .  

Here Skipper Steve takes a few crew at a time to review the operations with the inflatable tender. Steve draws on his experience training crews in the Antarctic.

Spill boom deployment . . .

Oh,oh, skipper story-time . . . .  When I was a kid working on a small salmon troller off the BC coast, a skipper on another boat was lost at sea. The only other crew member was a kid like myself. He had seen his boss fall over-board but the deckhand had never been told how to turn off the auto pilot, nor operate the engine controls . . .  so by the time the lad figured out how to stop the vessel and get turned around he was never able to find the skipper. The seas were too choppy, the ocean too huge . . . .  It was a formative moment for me, hearing a young voice on the VHF radio asking, “Hey, has anyone seen my skipper?”

So for the last 50 years (do the math! I’ve been on the water 68 years (Im 69 now) all my life but not in a position to oversee training) of mucking about on boats I have ensured that every crew knows how to start, stop, maneuver and neutralize the electronic controls on the boats I operate. . . .cooks and kayak guides and deckhands.

SO! . . . .all Mothership staff training needs to get past ME, the creator of procedures, and checklists, and information hand-outs . . .

Every crew member receives the same recurrent training checklist which we work through together, It usually take about 4 hours and I do 1-3 crew at a time. The ship is quite complex and the crews need to be familiar with her. We cover every part of the ship and all her systems. New crew get the basics, experienced crews dig deeper into the systems.

. . .  “I don’t want someone to die because you don’t know how to turn this tub around!”

Here is a dandy ship’s tale of woe . . . . Some time in April I nipped into the engine room to grab a tool of some sort . . (I get into the engine room most days of the year!) and something really didn’t smell right. Not a lot of bad smell, just a little teeny weeny bit of the WRONG smell. Black-water odours are pernicious and vicious even in very tiny amounts. And I walked over to the black-water tank under the workbench and there was a pin-prick of moisture on the side of the stainless steel tank . . .I forget the tank’s age but I had those custom built about 7 years ago and THEY SHOULD NOT BE LEAKING RIGHT THROUGH THE SIDE OF THE TANK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (enter salty-dog colourful maritime turns-of-phrase that conjure up vexation . . . like really, really VEXED!)

So I acted fast! The two black-water tanks I had installed a few years back (I’m too lazy to look) were removed the next day and one was transported to town for a welding company to copy and one I sketched out for them to fabricate.

removal of said vexacious tank 1.

and ya gotta love the accumulated scale built up in the lines . . .

After a bunch of sleuthing we determined that the “old” tanks were made out of the wrong kind of stainless that was not resistant to the corrosive black water solution . . . So we did it again in the the right kind of stainless .  .(316 not 304 for anyone that really cares)  And here is one of the new, new tanks installed . . .

Here’s another boaty line item. Last year I installed a fancy new search light on the COLUMBIA III. And this spring we ran our usual electrical test for Transport Canada, called a Megger Test. Unfortunately the bulb in the new search light was damaged by the test voltage . . . So I needed a replacement. List price from the search light manufacturer was $250 each and 6-8 weeks for delivery . . ..

I found the identical bulb/part number on-line, 2 bulbs for $29.00 shipped the next day . . . .

But we were getting close! The beds were getting made!

Besides being a small business owner I have a life too! Here is a picture of Dennis Mattson. He is 90 years old and was my first skipper back when I was 16 years old. Dennis ran and lived aboard a salmon troller his whole life. As he has no effective family, he and I have maintained a loose friendship for the last 50+ years. He has been living here on Sonora Island for over 20 years and I help him with shopping and medical appointments. Thrifty’s Foods certainly love it when we show up! Dennis loves so shop! Go Skipper go!!!

. . . . and a wee event in May. Tavish and Deirdre were married here on Sonora with 250 guests for dinner and many overnight . . . . That didn’t impact my spring ship preparations at all!!!

and the final touch before the ship leaves home for the season is waxing the floors . . . 

Safe 2025 travels, COLUMBIA III.   All well for ship, guests and crew!