Shipyard 2025

Ok,Ok! I know I am way behind on this blog and the posting dates won’t reflect the times when the photos were taken . . . But 21 years of shipyards do blur a little bit. . . . .

As every year,the ship comes out of the shed in March . . .

and gets lifted in Campbell River at Ocean Pacific Marine . . . and I ALWAYS stress to see her lift out of the water , , , , so many questions . . . how’s the prop? any dings? the zincs? . . . how active have they been? . . . any glaring damage? any subtle damage? and gawd forbid any terrifying thoughts of straps failing while the COLUMBIA III is “flying”!!!!!

and skippers, Steve and Jonas, get right to work . . .

Jonas ever willing to take on the nastiest jobs . . . here scrapping the cooling pipes.

and Robin, one of my longest suffering kayak guides is also working towards her Captain’s papers and she wanted to know more about the ship . . . by painting the hull!

and every 5 years ( it use to be every 4) Transport Canada requires we pull the thru-hull valves and the drive shaft for inspection. Here are the bronze barrel valves dissembled and cleaned for inspection.

As the prop and rudder have to come off to pull the shaft, I take the opportunity to send the propeller off to be cleaned up.

I replaced the drive shaft about 10 years ago and so the inspection is hardly necessary as the shaft still appears like new.

I have a marine mechanic come and inspect the shaft and thru-hull fittings. This allows me to submit an independent report on the findings to the Transport Canada Inspector. TC likes this level of verification!

and the usual aft-deck chaos that is so unlike the spotless summer season.

A shipyard welder puts new zincs on the rudder.

I tend to let the crews do the more straight forward tasks and I use my time to tackle quirkier projects . . . like a new main engine fuel return line system that keeps the salon oil-stove roof-top tank filled automatically . . . .

and a drippy faucet in the chapel that required some surgery to replace. . . .

No maintenance blog would be complete without a little honest, self-deprecation. I spent quite a bit of time rerouting the fuel lines from the engine room up to the roof-top stove tank and to the salon diesel fireplace. This required drilling holes in “places” and snaking 1/4″ and 3/8″ copper tubing through vexing contortions. Then one day we awoke on the ship on the hard and the propane stove would not light. Nothing cooked for breakfast! I did quite a bit of troubleshooting and determined one of the 4 propane safety detectors was malfunctioning and it would not allow the shut-off solenoid to open.
Well, the system is 25 years old . . . .

and I was right in the ship yard with their well stocked marine chandlery . . . So I bought two new propane monitoring systems ( two for redundancy) and 4 new sensors (read: $4000). But of course, the new sensors and their accompanying electrical connectors were larger in diameter than the old style. So it took about two days (read: owner’s labour is always free!) to reroute the new sensor wires and get the new system installed. So when I triumphantly went to test the system i was just a tiny bit disappointed, though not surprised, that the stove still didn’t light off. . . . after another day of “free” owner labour (read: me) I found that I have mistakenly cut a wire to the propane sensor system when I was installing the new copper fuel lines for the salon fire place. . . . So i repaired the one teeny weeny little broken wire and reflected how nice it was that I spent 3 days, $4000 and a lot of awkward work in close quarters upgrading a system needlessly. Cool.