So our son-in-law, Luke, gets all the glory.

He gets to take a chainsaw to the pristine woodwork of the Columbia III and then he gets to fix it with all his glamorous skill set. He gets to use gorgeous clear first growth fir and he uses ostentatiously showy fancy wood joinery to piece it all together. Nothing but the best for Luke ($5000 worth of glue alone so far) and everyone in the channel stops by to see how the progress is going. Accolades always follow, topped with the really grinding comments reminding me how lucky I am to have Luke on the team.

Well, really? I am tired of it all!

I have worked every day since the ship tied up in October, but does anyone ever ask me what I am working on? Oh no, no, no! I have the “Marine Voodoo” file.

What is in the “Marine Voodoo” file? Well, thanks for asking!

All the stuff that keeps the ship running smoothly or allows it to remain up to date in the highly regulated world. Most notably, it is all INVISIBLE! If I do my job really, really well, all the work vanishes and the average guest will simply look out at the leaping whales, the grizzling grizzly bears and the overpoweringly scenic scenery. But they will never know about the magic marine voodoo that keeps toilets pumping, water flowing, electronic gizmos interfacing, and government regulators sleeping soundly.

So for those of you fascinated by the Voodoo file, you will be intrigued to read about my heroic (though invisible) exploits.

A major commitment for me this winter was the installation of a water maker. In the already densely complex engine room I had to find space for a new system of pumps, filters, desalinator membranes and the the plumbing to get sea water to the system, waste-water over board and fresh water into the existing tankage. Certain existing systems had to be relocated to make room and then 12VDC and 120VAC power had to “magically” be provided for the desalinator. If all goes well and the machine performs as specified, guests won’t know the machine exists. The only difference will be silent acceptance where once there was chiding for those taking a lengthy shower. But to the Doctor of M.V., it’s $10,000 and a month of invisible work.

I know the next photo is boring. Being a Dr. of M.V. IS boring, but this picture means a lot to me. The new water maker required that I relocate the vent for the fresh water tanks and this discrete little vent (yet to be painted white) represents a passel of trips to the plumbing store, yards of new piping and yoga master contortions by the Dr. of M.V. to get it all hooked together in cramped quarters. All, so that no one will ever know or care. What a rich life I have!

And part of the freshwater system upgrade was the installation of an ultra-violet sterilization filter. Sounds easy, but the engine room on the Columbia III is pretty crowded already, so fitting this in took a certain magical touch.

Not all projects just work perfectly the first time. In this instance I neglected to put a critical o-ring in place. It was about 8pm when I opened the water value to test my workmanship. There was a SPECTACULAR spraying of water over my entire work bench, tools and supply shelves in the engine room.

“Mmm, I think I’m done for today”.

I turned off the water, left the engine room work bench dripping and walked up to the house for a small scotch.

“Three steps forward, one step back.” There is always tomorrow.

Next on the list was the installation of a new state of the art Fire Detection system to meet modern passenger carrying regulations. It is easy to say, “Install 13 new smoke detectors”.  It is quite a different matter to magically sneak 250′ of wire through out every room of the ship and have the wires not sully the classic look of the completely finished interior wood working. And then I had to connect all this to the new brain box, and interface this new system to the existing general ship’s alarm panel.

Sitting on the wheel house driver’s seat, our guests are unaware that I spent quite a bit of time stringing detector wires in the compartment directly below.

No corner of the vessel seemed to escape the turmoil.

A new detector in the wheelhouse . . .

Bunks dismantled to facilitate stringing wires from the wheel house at the front of the ship to the very aft storage compartment called the lazarrette.

New detector in the main salon,

The new fire detection system brain box.

And the new annunciator panel.  After all that work I lit a piece of paper towel on fire and waved it below the new salon detector.

“Bells!” “Buzzers!” “Strobe lights!” “Annunciators!”, “Salon Fire!!”

. . . . Magic! And satisfying.

Another couple of small projects were the installation of a new satellite telephone, (they are like cellphones and require frequent upgrades),

And an upgraded third VHF marine radio.  These little projects in the wheel house always need a lot of new wires and connections to external antennas  that require a “tidy hand” to keep the wheel house looking professional.

Of course, Glamour Boy Luke has no compunction about asking for assistance with his higher priority project so I was pressed into service in the evenings helping to pre-coat the plywood for the aft-deck-head.

Dr. of M.V. selfie:

vs. Glamour Boy portrait:

Of course the ship needs to stay warm all winter. The small salon fire place runs 365 days a year. But, oh, oh! That requires a few trips a winter to Campbell River. Its about an hour each way by skiff to pick up a couple of barrels of stove oil, then I transfer them into barrels in the boat shed. Free coffee at the fuel dock to send me on my way.

Another project on the go. The existing domestic hot water heater decided to start leaking last summer… Yes; Luke was the one to devise an epoxy patch to make it through the summer. Heroic? Yes. Somewhat less glamorously, here I am dry assembling the new tank and its fittings in preparation for installation.

Pet-peeve list number 2,348.5. The main electrical panel is inspected in detail each year.  The power must be off for the inspection, so the operation occurs in the dark. So, I thought it would be professional to provide the wonderful inspector a 12VDC light to make his inspection more “Columbia III-ish“.

The galley stove is the Percheron work horse on the ship and the cook is the true unsung hero of the summer. A better, more level work surface was requested and I custom ordered in a new center grill for the big Wolf Stove.

Happy cook, happy ship.

When all the galley stove burners are in use cooking a meal, the large kettle had no “home”. Because ships galleys are never big enough the kettle was constantly in the way. Solution? Special order two stainless steel hooks and bolt them to the stove ventilation hood for a new kettle home.

Magic.

More invisible magic: I always have a private pet-peeve list.

I made two nice mug racks about 10 years ago but then we upgraded to a set of mugs more “classic shippish”. The new mugs rattled in their slots. Here are two new racks I made, roughed in and awaiting finish sanding, staining and, well you know, 4 coats of varnish.

Speaking of magic, Dennis is the Master of Marine Voodoo and my “go-to” reference for anything and everything Marine. Here, my skipper of 44 years turns 81. Cake compliments of Fern.

The magic continues… A leaky main engine fire pump is getting replaced and all ancillary parts over hauled.

Four main salon windows were fogging up on sunny days. Voodoo: I made patterns and ordered in the custom cut, tempered and sealed thermo-pane windows. Now we need to destroy the existing teak window frames to remove the old panes, make new frames and, well, you guessed it, varnish! 5-8 coats of it, as these are an exterior surface which need the extra protection.

Ok, ok. Invisible marine magic isn’t glamourous. I know. I know! The next post will feature Luke’s exciting new developments in the aft roof reconstruction.

Let me know if anyone wants a post on my “Doctor of Office Voodoo” file. It’s super invisible.

Ross, Dr. MV

As per usual, I putter on the COLUMBIA III on various behind-the-scenes tasks. And as the month of May approaches the pace seems to slowly pick up. Here is the usual catalogue of crazily disparate details that go into keeping a heritage boat operating.

#1 of many. The main engine had a coolant circulation pump that was getting tired. I removed the pump to have the bearings changed and the shop deemed the pump too worn to repair. Unfortunately, it took 6 weeks to find a replacement pump and then its mounting specifications where different. It took me a while to create an adaptor plate on which to mount the new pump.

The old pump comes off . . .

And the new pump goes on.

As they say in the magazines, “the belt guards have been remove for clarity. Never operate equipment without safety guards in place.”

And both generators were due for some mid-life service. So I removed the heat exchangers for cleaning and inspection. injectors and fuel pumps out for over haul, thermostats, belts, riser boots,  and one water pump  and one heat exchanger core replaced.

And its always amazing how many tools it requires to complete a job.

And how big a mess I can create on the  ship’s small workbench. Here are the 2 heat exchangers off the gensets sitting on  the workbench.

Skipper Farlyn helps reinstall all the bits and pieces on the gensets and she set up the valve clearances on both generators.  I think the 6.5 kilowatt generators cost about $10,000 each. Funny how the 4,000 hour rebuild cost  over $3000 for a small cardboard box of parts. My labour was free  . . . but I  pay Farlyn.

And the office still needs my attention! I come up from the boat shed and check the phone for messages (there is only cell coverage in the office as we have a “boosted signal” here only) and scan the emails for items that need immediate attention. When guests and potential guests call I often mention that I am just up from the boat . . . and I mean it. The office is “coveralls friendly”.

Then Steve showed up to begin work and my dogged pace bumps up several notches to keep ahead of Steve. First we got the kayaks off the roof and into the boat shed rafters and gave the whole boat a scrub just to get ourselves oriented.

One of Steve’s first tasks was to remove a substantial portion of our black water plumbing and replacing it with new hose to ensure all systems are “go” for the summer. No one wants black water woes mid season!

After all the work in the engine room we scrubbed the whole E/R with soap and water and Steve polished the checker plate aluminum floor boards to add that ‘CIII sparkle’ to even the engine room.

One fun project was the location, purchase and installation of a new 19″ navigation monitor. The old 17″ monitor was good, but I really wanted one that could be manually dimmed for night operations. Of course, they make monitors like this, but they are only the top of the line, marine navigation monitors that have this capability. The manual dimmer is essential as the skipper needs to be able to reach over in total darkness and find the knob that will bring the GPS plotter screen into view, and then return the screen to darkness again. Any sort of menu-driven option for screen dimming requires a mouse and a screen brightness that allows enough visibility to find the dimming menu. When I am running at night, I don’t want to be fumbling for a mouse trying to change my screen intensity. Obviously the big boys felt the same way . . . only for me, a $4000.00 monitor was a big investment! Of course, the new monitor was powered from a different source and needed an external speaker installed . . . so lots of rewiring and rerouting of “stuff” and a custom aluminium stand had to be created.

Here you can see the radar image on the right, the GPS plotter image on the left and the orange radar overly on the left screen that matches the image on the right screen. The AIS traffic is listed on the panel on the far right.

Then when I was finished with the wheel house, Steve took it all apart again! The wheel house has a two tone decor and Steve pulled all the wires, knobs, radios, window handles, control panels etc etc .!!! off the walls so he could sand and paint the dark green accent.

And while he was in the wheel house making a mess we decided to revarnish the bright work in the wheel house including the bits and pieces we could remove for ease of sanding like the cabinet doors and the driver’s seat step.

And we are trying an experiment. We use 50′ of 5/8th” galvanized chain and we have 300′ of 5/8th stainless steel cable  for our anchor rode. The stainless and the galvanizing are not a happy combination and the zinc galvanizing disappears very quickly from the chain. And rusty chain stains the decks and looks crappy! SO . . . new chain this year, and a novel idea of separating the chain from the SS cable by 12″ of 3/4″ spectra rope. This is the insanely strong new fibre rope that far exceeds the load rating of the chain. i am hoping this rope link will act as an electrolysis insulator and protect the zinc coating on the chain. But the anchor and the old chain had to be removed to a float,

.  . .and we painted the winch as it’s easier to do with the rode off of it . . .

And then we reinstalled the cable and the chain.

Then there was the sofa. A really nice, leather sofa. The seat is a large expanse of smooth leather and i always worry that it might get damaged accidentally during the course of the summer. I called our “upholstery specialist” and he informed me it could take weeks to get a colour matched hide so as a precaution, I ordered 1 1/2 hides. Now, I carry a lot of spares on the CIII; everything from spare coffee makers to spare water pumps. I expect I have $20,000 dollars worth of spares aboard. And now spare leather. Just in case.  

And off we went to the ship yard for our annual haul-out, washing, painting and zincs. I am always nervous as the boat lifts clear of the water. It had been 13 months since I last saw her undersides. 13 months since  our last intense refasteneing of the hull. “I hope everything is ok. I hope there are no surprises like a propeller that has been damaged on a hidden dead-head . . .”

But the ship yard crews washed her clean and all was well. She hardly needed a paint job.

 

So Steve and I dodged bad weather and got the ship’s underwater portion of the hull painted , the boot top painted and the water-line gumwood oiled. The back deck is not its usual tidy self when “on the hard”.

We even had time to cork an extra 60 bottles of wine and start another 300 bottles for the 2016 season. This year we will be casking our red wines in oak for the extra special “note”.

Here`s a `small town`story. I bought a new and high quality radar last year and that was stretching the budget for 2014. But I really wanted the Automatic Radar Plotting Aid (ARPA) which is an optional circuit board for the radar. So this year I called the dealer and ordered in the component. ($700.) When the CIII was on the hard in the shipyard I thought it would be a good time to take the radar into the shop for the installation . ..  But when I walked up to the wheel house the radar was GONE!  But I had a pretty good idea of where it was. After a quick call I determined that the radar tech was working in the area and saw the Columbia III in the shipyard and stopped by to ask if I wanted him to take the radar to the shop. As no one was aboard at that moment, he just took it anyhow . . .

ARPA tracks a selected target and predicts its course to determine if a risk of collision exists.

 

Here’s a cool little side note, on the way home from the shipyard, a 3 hour run in the CIII, a deer swam past in the middle of a swirl of Okisollo Channel tidal whirlpools and back eddies!

 

And Lead Guide/Skipper, Luke was busy when Steve and I were in the shipyard. He stripped the high profile salon table to bare wood and is in the process of refinishing it. After the stain/sealer he now has about 7 coats of finish on the table and it is starting to look pretty nice!

 

Grandson Theo helped the whole family get the CIII back into the shed so we can get serious with our real spring maintenance! Stay tuned for the next exciting, even scintillating blog installment of `Spring Sanding, Painting and Varnishing!