Several years ago a couple from the Netherlands chartered us for a wedding shower for their daughter. (Somewhere back in this blog is a gal dressed in traditional Dutch attire!). Well, Dad actually operates tour boats on the canals of Holland and Rene fell in love with the Columbia III. . . . which seems perfectly natural to me. But over the last year or so, Rene has been working hard! He utilized the plans on our website supplied by Robert Allan Limited and began his project. Over the months we have had updates and the new, new version of the Columbia III now sails in Europe! Rene seems to have not only good taste in vessels but great wood working skills as well! Thanks for the photos, Rene & Carla!

Holy!! Look at the bright work!

Now we need some miniature remote controlled killer whales!

We love the Columbia III, we love the BC Coast and we thrive on all the great people we meet during the summer, but after the boat has been gone from home for 41/2 to 5 months is does feel wonderful to be home again. Home, and all our guests happy, the season safely over. There are ALOT of pieces to this mothership puzzle, ordering food, preparing the boat, caring for guests and safely husbanding visitors from around the world through an adventure that many say in life-altering. When we finally tie to our home dock I can sleep all night! and not get up 2-3 times to check the anchor, to check the battery bank, to check the weather . . . Home again safely, and with thanks.

We strip the boat each fall, all the books and mattresses and bedding comes off and are stored in our home. It takes a while! The kayaks come off the roof and are stored under cover.

Lifejackets placed in dry storage, the cupboards cleared, cleaned and supplies inventoried.

the galley is scrubbed top to bottom,

The mattresses removed,

and the boat gets tidier and the house messier!

And once we got the Columbia III settled to bed, we started on preparing for our 2010 season. Even a couple of friends who happened by for dinner got pressed into service as we prepared our fall mailout to our guest list.

The spring of ’09 turned out to be an excellent one for ship maintenance. The weather turned warm and dry and it held, week after week and we were able to get the Columbia III into the best looking shape that we have ever seen her! We started early with every item we could remove from the boat to sand and paint in our workshop.

Both exterior teak doors on the wheelhouse had suffered some damage during the last season. The doors are very solid (and heavy) and the wind had caught them and swung them too violently against the stops which caused some cracking around the hinge area. So we removed the doors early in the winter, sanded them to bare wood and stored them in our house to dry and stabilize. (read “bump into in our bedroom”!!) I then routed out the damaged wood and inset two new layers of teak. 10 coats of varnish were applied to refinish the doors.


Detail for inset repair.

We did alot of painting and touching up inside the boat as well. We repainted one head, the main stairwell to the lower deck, vents in the salon and installed more built-in ventilation fans to keep our “girl” dry and sweet smelling.

Anther item on the winter list was the replacement of the protective rubber on the kayak swim grid. The rubber had cracked on the tight radius and it just bugged me! It’s funny how all these things always SOUND so simple but by the time we got the old one cut off and the new one installed we had a whole new appreciation for the crew that installed the original bumper.

After all the work earlier in the winter rebuilding the corner of the aft deck roof we took the opportunity to remove all the mahogony strips off the aft deckhead, sand and paint the deckhead, strip, stain, and revarnish the strips and replace with new brass screws . . . it looked pretty darn sharp when we were done!

Then we were into the regular hand-sand and paint routine, but the weather held so well that we sanded the WHOLE OUTSIDE OF THE COLUMBIA III and filled and primed every blemish and then repainted her all!

Then we took the boat down for the annual haul-out in Nanaimo for inspection and copper painting. Unfortunately, our camera containing our shots from the spring work and the haul-out dropped over board
after the shipyard ( oopsey!!) and we lost a lot of GREAT shots of painting and sanding . . . isn’t that an oxymoron?

Just as we were finishing the painting for the year and the boat was looking her best EVER, the weather turned wet. Thankfully we were done. But I was still “down on the boat working” and I heard a sound resembling a gun shot. But no, it was a humpback whale breaching in the channel off our dock! We raced out in the skiff for a better look and the whale continued breaching over 25 more times! It was like a missile launch stuck on repeat, repeat, repeat! But we got a few photos that honesty WERE NOT PHOTOSHOPPED!