It’s pretty clear to me that there’s a serious threat coming our way from COVID-19. I’ve been chatting with family members and thinking about preparedness and risk.
I’ve really been enjoying living alone on my boat in downtown Toronto. Will write more on the experience, but it’s comforting right now in view of a possible health crisis. The city and overseeing health authorities learned a lot from the SARS outbreak, and I have confidence in our systems. And I’m not worried about possible medical bills.
One of the joys of living alone on a traveling boat is mobility. I’ll be out of here and heading north in 2 months. In the meantime I’m in the best place I could possibly be.
The road trip to Florida helped me to talk out my plans, and I think I have things settled.
2020 will be broadly a repeat of last summer, sailing Tin Lizzie around the lakes. I think I’ll start in Sarnia or Lake St Clair, and do the GLSS race to Mac in late June, noodle around North Channel and Georgian Bay for a few weeks, then likely come down to race in the GLSS Trans Erie in early August.
After chatting about it with Samantha and Sarah I still wasn’t super excited about this until I went back and watched my videos from last summer. That got me energized. I’m really lucky to have these opportunities, and I’m planning my spring and summer around this.
My winter dockage is up late April, so I’ll most likely head up to Lake Erie then and see if I can find a parking spot for Mazurka for the summer somewhere in Lake Huron. I’ve been thinking of selling Mazurka, but I still want to do all the inland rivers. Will think about heading south from Chicago in the fall on Mazurka.
Got back a few days ago from a week of biking in Florida with Samantha and Sarah. It was very therapeutic.
I should note that I haven’t had a cigarette since our first annual trip this time last year. I haven’t kicked nicotine, but have changed delivery methods. I’m now a happy habitual vaper. I feel much better :-). I’m especially happy to be not leaving a trail of butts behind. That actually was the worst part. Filthy disgusting habit, smoking.
Anyway, moving on… Mazurka has been warm, secure and comfortable. I have a 750w ceramic heater in the ER, and 3 1500w heaters in the cabin. An electric matress pad makes the forward berth comfie. But we’ve had a mild winter. Tonight is as cold as it’s been yet, with an expected low of -14. There’s no ice, and the bubblers are keeping wide areas open. Think I’m going to survive the winter nicely.
I took the above picture a couple of weeks ago while strolling the boardwalk that’s between me and the city. Music Garden Park is lovely even in the winter. Maybe especially in the winter, as it’s largely empty except for a few friendly dog walkers.
The only other boat related news is on my bubblers. I bought two new 3/4 hp Taylor Made de-icers in the fall. I had spec’d out Kasco, but as usual put it off and bought these thinking they were equivalent. Not cheap kit, about US$550 each.
They both failed within a couple of weeks of each other after about a month in the water. I hadn’t been using them much, just on a couple of cold days. Both started getting ground faults.
I called Taylor Made, got referred to their service provider on Long Island, shipped them there and got one back yesterday. It’s labeled as a 1 hp, and is working now. The other one is now waiting for me in Guelph. Think I’ll leave it in the box. A brief internet search turned up similar stories, and the service guy didn’t have anything nice to say about them. They swapped out essentially the whole unit. It seems I made a bad purchase decision. Live and learn.
Nice evening here. I can keep a close eye on Mazurka from the nearest park bench.
I had a nice dinner out with Samantha and Sarah, then put up holiday lights. I was hoping to see them from here, but the cover is too thick and there’s a lot of light pollution. At least I’m showing a bit to my dock neighbors.
Inside I have colours across the top. Not great pics but a nice effect with the lights dimmed inside.
All good aboard. Had a couple of cold nights below -10C and survived nicely. Haven’t had any significant ice yet. I have bubblers hung and ready to go, but the forecast through the new year looks benign.
My intent had been to use my storage cover, but Genco quoted $1000 and three weeks to make the necessary modifications. Even after that it would have been inferior to shrink wrapping in several respects, notably light and having a framed door for entry. So I used the frame and decided to shrink wrap.
Petr the dockmaster helped me on Thursday, and with his help it was pretty easy. As I was late deciding there was limited inventory of wrap, so I had 14′ width white. Next time I’ll get clear full width. Doing the seaming was a lot of extra work.
Today put things to the test, with snow, hail and freezing rain and strong east winds. The cover performed well, stable and tight. There’s a lot of windage, and the boat was moving around a lot, and heeling in the gusts. I kind of like it.
In other news, I installed a heated mattress pad in my berth. I realized that the area under the V berth is essentially unheated, and had been a bit cold sleeping. This solves for that.
It’s very comfortable aboard, with 6000 watts of electric heat installed, cycling on thermostats. But I won’t have that much available once I’m running bubblers. Think it’ll be ok.
I like this marina and community. There are about 45 boats here for the winter. This is going to be fun.
It’s been unseasonably cold here. These pictures were taken last week.
I wasn’t quite ready for winter, but survived. Had 3000 watts of heat on inside, which kept thing above freezing, but not exactly cozy.
I finally built a panel to accommodate a second 30 amp service, and today added it and ran cords to supply the engine room heater and an additional baseboard heater.
Now I’ve got 60 amps available @110 v, and it’s toasty warm inside.
Next up is getting the cover on. I’m going to use my existing winter storage cover
It’s going to need some modifications, but I’ll get the frame on and try it this week. Wednesday looks nice for outdoor work.
Got back to Toronto today and am hunkered down on Mazurka as a front goes through. Very gusty west winds blowing down the western gap. Lots of movement and noise. I kind of like it.
My next major mission is winter prep. Shrink wrapping Tin Lizzie, and getting Mazurka ready for a winter in the ice. I brought two new 3/4 hp de-icers back. Think I know what I have to get done before winter sets in.
Crowley’s is on the Calumet River, with a sizable port operation inland. I never tire of watching the ships come through. This Laker went by traveling backwards unassisted.
Earlier we had another back in, with tugs fore and aft. Pretty cool.
In between ships and barge traffic we bring yachts in and land them at our docks. Most come from the Chicago harbors 7-15 miles away.
I’m at Crowley’s for a couple of weeks helping out with the haul out. This is in Chicago, where they close down the harbors on Oct 31 and the several thousand boats that summer there head for the storage yards. We put hundreds of boats into indoor heated storage here, and most of them arrive in late October.
I love hanging around busy yards. In addition to storage customers we also have a steady stream of loopers here, sailboats that stop in to have us drop the mast. In many cases we wrap them and have them shipped to Mobile to rejoin the boat there.
This looper started their trip in Germany. Very nice boat. They were here for a couple of days getting their rig down and secure on deck.
There is always an interesting and changing assortment of boats in the staging area. I never get tired of looking at different designs. Interesting juxtaposition here with a 1d35 next to a Westsail 32.
And when I don’t have one of my boats here I take up residence on one of the boats ashore. There are always lots of choices. The Bristol 39 I’m staying on this week is very comfortable.
That boat on the left is a Pearson Countess motorsailer. I’ve always liked the look of the boat, and keep thinking it would be fun to restore and rehab this boat. But what then? Deep draft vs power boat is a big disadvantage. Not sure what I’d do with it…
This whole thing was highly speculative. We bought a very cool boat, sort of within budget and sort of fitting my flimsy use case.
So, how was the summer? In a word, spectacular. Tin Lizzie is a keeper.
Sure, there were setbacks. There always will be. I’m having a new rudder built this winter at non-trivial expense, and it was disappointing not to complete a GLSS event.
I joked about the bare bones interior until I spent a very cold and rainy few weeks living aboard in the spring. Then I started cursing it. I had the J/29 as sort of a low-end standard going in. TL falls well below that.
But wow, the sailing. I’m not sure if it came through in the blog, but I had a blast. The boat was better than I had dared to hope it would be. Fast, easy to handle, and comfortable to sail. I had endless fun playing with the instrumentation and electronics. The autopilot exceeded my high expectations. The weather was near perfect after I left Chicago, and I had a string of gorgeous overnight passages.
It’s been more than a month since we hauled TL, and it’s been fun roaming the waterfronts of Halifax and Toronto this month. I never tire of looking at sailboats, and now that I’m a semi-committed stinkpotter I pay attention to power boats too. But I have to say I don’t suffer any boat envy these days. Here’s TL next to an Olson 911 and a J/33.
Cool boat! I’m already plotting and scheming about season two. And rationalizing the ongoing expenses of keeping the fleet. Gulp. I’m going to blog about the economics of recreational boating some time. It’s an interesting topic.
Boating Adventures 