April 1st, 2023

Sand and Strip and Wash and Paint and Cetol and Varnish and Repair and Replace and Clean and Tidy and Bake and . . . ..

The calm before the storm . . . 5 crew show up today to start my annual Sand-and-Paint-athon. But before they arrive I’ve been organizing the shed, the supplies, the ship and the lists!

Three new different small palm sanders to test drive . . .

Lots of sand paper!!

 

and cleaners . . .

And I pre-washed the PPE . . .   

And then the team of heritage vessel maintenance specialists arrived and with little ceremony began working . . . and it also started snowing!

If one ever needed to remind me of the glorious wonders of having the ship inside a covered shed just mention this conjunction of events: April1st, 5 crew arrive to begin spring S&P (on payroll and time clocks ticking!) and snow.

Snow? The scene was perfect for a Christmas card for my illustrious guests but not for varnishing.

Even the daffodils at the head of my dock were not impressed.

But nothing holds back the crack team of specialists. . . mmm, How about “Heretics”? Heritage vessel maintenance maniacs ???? . . .

Stripping another set of windows to bare wood as I transition away from traditional varnish to Cetol Marine Gloss  . . .

A lot gets done with 5 hard workers fully engaged in the task at hand!

and after the sanding comes the washing to get the white and grey paint dust removed before starting in on the bright work. . .

and pieces from the roof and the lazarette were removed and painted in the shop . . .

a break in the weather let Steve and Frieda paint the new lazarette shelves I created…

and later installed . . .

and all the grey roof trim was S&P’d

and the aft mast was S&P’d

and, well A LOT of stuff was S&P’d . . .  you’d get bored with the list . . .

The weather remained vexing for April . . . and boat-shed hallelujah-ish. But 2 solid days of SE 30-40 knots had us creatively trying to cut down the wind blowing thru the shed.

I installed the boat shed about 10 years ago with 14 separate 4000# concrete blocks sunk to windward, 2 separate lines to the head of the bay attached to 1 1/2″ pins drilled into the bedrock, plus one all-chain line also pinned to bedrock plus 2 galvanized steel 12″ diameter stiff legs pinned to the shore. All connected with 2″ and 3″ diameter lines connected to 2″ diameter shackles and 1″ diameter chain . . . . I need to be able to sleep at night . ..

But rust never sleeps.

During the two day blow one chain failed under strain. Despite the gale, Luke donned his dive gear and retrieved the dropped line. I had to cut the shackle (down to 1/2 its original 2″ diameter) and you can see the 1″ chain corroded to extinction.  The remaining chains connecting the anchors to the shed were sistered with 1″ nylon rope in case any more failed and . . . I know what I will be doing soon . . . .replacing the chain components of the mooring system.

Free moorage in front of my home sounds so easy!

But wind or not, work progressed . .  

 

And the hull, which many by-standers think is fiberglass, gets special treatment.

The main galley exterior door which is made of very solid and heavy teak, is over 60 years old and the most trafficked door on the vessel. After withstanding 3.8 million door slams, a small strip of teak cracked off around the latch mechanism. The door was repaired but had to be refinished after the new wood was sanded to shape . . .

Glued . ..

Sanded . . .

refinished with 3 coats for this year ( a minimum on bare wood)

The inset piece

And three coats of varnish on the binocular holders . . .

I am told that it is hard to find and retain good employees: well-trained crews that work long and hard with high standards and don’t require supervision . . .  so it only seemed prudent for me to have ready coffee and tea and preheated mugs and chairs and sometimes . . . .

fresh oatmeal raisin cookies warm from the oven . . .

Or cheesy, hot biscuits with lunch  . . .

or spinach, feta, philo pies for dinner . . . ( A skipper’s tasks are never done.)

or heart-shaped waffles for dinner (?) . . .  (I was too lazy to make them for breakfast . . . The crews got up too early for me). But you get the idea. I pander to the crew’s every whim.

And you guessed!! More cetoling and varnishing and painting!

And interior projects proceeded. The custom-faced under-counter galley refrigerator had very light duty plastic shelves on the door that had failed. So we designed, and Luke fabricated, welded and installed a new shelf system.

And the aft companion-way storage drawers progressed . . .

Now there is designated storage for spare parts for the gensets, ship’s furnace, galley range and a miscellaneous parts drawer too.

and it really is pretty excessive but I wire brush the engine roof floor plates until they shine! It is a really noisy, arm numbing job I loath to delegate . . . or as the crew might say . . .“But Ross, those floor plates look FINE as they are!” 

and s&p&c& clean tidy and trim . . .

and a final wash before we did the decks . . .

Then the big day arrives and the weather cooperated. The shed doors were unlashed and opened

And the best “reveal” ever!!!

 

It takes a bit of organizing to get the the masts up . . .

and the shed always seems cavernous when the ship is out.

but finally there she sits at my dock! What a gall-darn gigantic bunch of work!!!!!!!!!

But the good weather couldn’t go to waste so some of the crew took on the tender’s refit that after

So after two weeks the crews have thinned out and finally left. My house is quiet and I almost had a well deserved day off (but that’s a different tale).

The COLUMBIA III now sits out my window, gorgeous and waiting for next steps. Lead Guide Sarah Hauser will arrive to prep kayaks and paddling gear (we have two new kayaks this year and all new Werner paddles) and I will knuckle down once again into my alternate reality of substantiating paper work for multiple levels of bureaucracy that envelope this small business. (Now that would be a tedious blog post!!). I have inspections to pass and supplies to load and somehow turn the ship into a welcoming home-away-from-home for my soon-to-arrive guests.

For our 2023 upcoming season,  my benediction;  Safe, fun, and viable. For everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, yes, a very quick update as I am swamped.

I have a new-to me-skipper, Jonas Fineman getting ready to do some skippering for me this summer. Jonas owns and operates a wonderful schooner in our local waters.   I met Jonas on the Marine Debris Removal Initiate a few years back and I have been dreaming of how to get him incorporated into our team ever since. So to begin the process, Jonas came for a week of pre-shipyard work and then also joined me for another week in the shipyard. This included getting the ship into and out of the shed and lots of practice docking and anchoring the COLUMBIA III. Jonas is a very experienced skipper, but every ship handles differently.

So, true to my evil nature, Jonas’s first task was replacing all the black water lines on the ship.

And it’s a good thing Jonas took on the task with good humour. The combination of urine and salt water makes a calcium-like-cement lining to the 1 1/2″ sani-hose and slowly restricts appropriate “passage” of “target materials”. The next picture is worth 1000 words . . . (This is under 3 seasons of accumulation)

I felt so bad, that whilst Jonas slaved in the black-water plumbing tangles I made him brunch in the ship’s galley . . .

After the black-water fun I thought I would try baking Jonas, “Hansel and Gretel style”, as he learned how to change the igniter on the galley range . . . essential skipper training . . .

But finally it was time to get the ship out of the shed . . .

and to the shipyard. I already stress enough each year as the ship gets lifted (it just never seems,”Natural” to have her way up in the air!)  but then it started snowing and dumped 6″ in about 3 hours!  Does snow make lifting straps more slippery????!!!!

Cool evening light after the snow storm . . .

But the next day, dodging rain squalls, Jonas was keen to get her painted. So he dried the hull with a tiger-torch and we painted the hull ourselves. The Ocean Pacific crews had us slated for the next day but we wanted to grab the weather window when we had it.

The following morning we got the boot-top done . . .

Note Jonas’s amazing technique . . .

And the shipyard welder replaced our zincs including the poured zinc on the propeller nut.

And the water-line gumwood was cetoled . . .

A Transport Canada inspector came from Nanaimo to check out our hull and said something nice along the lines of, “We shouldn’t waste our time coming to inspect a vessel that is being maintained this well.”

And the COLUMBIA III usually has a few appreciative admirers and this year was no exception. Work Safe BC was in the yard creating a shipyard safety video and asked if they could film the COLUMBIA III as she was relaunched . . . .

and finally back in the shed with her shiny new draft marks!

And now I get to prepare for the S&P crews arriving in a couple of weeks!!!!

Oh My!! I am getting behind on my blogging. April 1st snuck up on me and Pounced with a Vengeance! All of a sudden crews arrived and “stuff started happenin!”

So I decided that just this one time we would do a quick n’ dirty, once-over-lightly, git-her-done refit.  You know, after all my Covid losses it was ok to cut as many corners as possible . . . .

No, no, no. Really! You are hurting my feelings if you believed that last paragraph . . . have you learned Nothing  from the last decade of  boring maintenance minutiae?? No, I had 7 crew, logging over 600 hours on payroll, just to make sure my very, very, very fastidious guests (both returning and new) would find our humble ship worthy of their journey . . .

And a quick drum-roll/ gallop through some photos…

On the first morning I usually walk around the ship with the crew and we look at different aspects of the ship and what we think needs regular attention and what needs the “next level” treatment. Generally, some part of the ship’s wood-work needs to be stripped to bare wood and refinished starting from scratch. If certain parts of the exterior of the ship are getting chipped or tired, we put that area to the top of the list. This year we choose to strip the salon windows and the aft 1/2 of the ship’s high profile handrails to bare wood, and also sand the aft deck coating off.. See next . . . And we usually sand and paint the main deck house/wheel house every two years and this was the year…

We had an unusual misadventure with the finish on the aft deck last season. I am not quite sure how I managed to trick a dark brown deck finish to go white when it got wet or cold (honestly!) but it needed to be stripped off with aggressive sanding . . . I’m so good with Aggggressive!

And Nadya seemed to be getting aggressive too, so she tried her hand on the decks as well.

While I worked on the aft deck, the crews began sanding  . . .

and the hull of course.

The port holes on the hull have bronze “beauty rings” that we remove each year for painting. But the screw holes were getting stripped so I  glued dowels into each existing screw hole and then sanded the area flush. Then we started as from scratch to re-attach the rings.

For some unknown and perhaps unknowable reason, the green paint on the forward port bulwarks seemed marred by old blisters while the rest of the bulwarks seemed fine. So we cheated here by stripping just the troubled section hoping the ship’s name would cover the less than perfect transition from new paint to the existing paint.

And of course, my grand daughter, Maeve, had to do her pre-season salon sofa trampoline check . . .      the test went pretty well until grandpa called an end to the session!

Here the aft hand rails get stripped to bare wood and sanded to perfection.    

Here’s a “project” for you. The salon has 3 large windows on each side of the vessel and I have been struggling for 17 years to have the exterior finish look as good as I want it to be. I have tried several different types of marine varnish and none have stood up to the UV exposure these windows  seem to attract. The feature transom on the ship suffered the same fate and I found that Cetol Marine Gloss finish solved the problem . . .So this spring three crew spent a lot of time carefully hand-stripping the old finish off, resanding the bare wood and then refinishing the windows with 3 new coats of Cetol. These are custom ordered, tempered glass, thermal-paned windows and I made it really, really really really, really clear I wanted the old finish removed and NONE OF THE GLASS scratched or broken from the heat guns stress fracturing the glass . .

My line was, “I am paying you to go slow!”

At some point Robin cheerily reassured me that, “Each window is going to cost you about $1000.00 just to strip the old varnish off!”

“Ya, ya, Robin. Just get back to work . .  .”

After all the dusty sanding the whole ship is washed, from the masts down to the water line.

And finally the paint starts to go back on.

and the clear finishes on the bright work.

We usually paint in teams of 2 or 3. 1 rolling the larger areas and one “tipping” or smoothing out the roller marks for a gleaming final gloss look.

We go through a lot of paint, paint brushes, foam brushes, rags and yogurt containers saved from last season with the guests. Here ace guide and chef, Robin Humphreys, readies her tools. But perhaps with the exception of the skipper/owner guy, all the Mothership crews are “Ace”.

And the salon windows get their new Cetol finish applied.

and the handrails start to shine.

and the sundry bits that were removed get a refinish.

. . . shower grate renewal.

Somehow or other, Leah and Nadya were able to paint and dance at the same time.

One of the final steps is applying finish to the decks. Hopefully this one doesn’t go white when it gets cold or wet!

As this was a “post Covid” spring . . .  meaning I was watching my cash flow and being a bit chintzy .  . I didn’t embark on too many new projects, but the ship’s under-water hydrophone, (that allows us to listen to whale vocaliztions!) needed replacement.

And Tavish suggested we create “windows” on the main-engine belt-guard so we could monitor v-belt wear when the engine was running. So Luke removed the guard and added grilled inspection ports.

And what marine blog would be complete without some “potty talk”? I bought 3 new toilets and installed them just to make sure everything worked smoothly in that department.

And you know computers of all makes and sizes save us all time and money . . . Here is 1 of 2 ship-board GPS’s that I upgraded. The old ones worked just fine, except that in case of an emergency, my emergency radios (which derive location from these devices) would proclaim to the world that I was in really desperate difficulty in 1978! It was an irreparable software glitch. Oh well. At least the new GPSs were only $1300 each.

So when the Skipper was starting to lose his composure, Nadya led us in group equanimity exercises.

A finishing touch to the spare anchor hawshole.

The life raft returns after its bi-annual recertification . . .  darn this is super heavy and just so much fun to wrestle into and out of a truck and skiff on a beach . . .

Leah relashing the kayak paddle racks that were removed for refinishing the stanchions.

Supplies for the ship . . . two new custom mattresses for the aft staterooms, part of our routine upgrading process . .  .

The ship’s tender gets cleaned, painted and waxed.

and finally the ship’s inside supplies are moved down from my cabin .

Lunch time at my place.

It’s a lot of dusty, chemically smelly, tiring, repetitive, boring, and personally uplifting and inspriational work getting the ship ready. . . .

and a few motivational shots for the season ahead . . .

Paddling the Great Bear Rainforest.

calm and secluded anchorages

cool mid summer evenings

Yup! I want to be there again! I suppose I really do love sanding and painting.