Boating Adventures

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.

More to follow.

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.

About 600 of them go into heated storage.

Pretty cool place.

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.

I’m trying to take up roughly from this post. If I ever get organized I’ll try to package things up a bit better. Anyway…

I first got thinking about owning another keelboat last fall. I was hanging out at Crowley’s having done a complete loop of the four lower great lakes on Mazurka and getting ready to head south.

I’ve really enjoyed the power boat thing more than I expected, but long open water trips under power really aren’t my thing. Boring at my normal slow speed and wasteful/expensive at higher speeds.

While there I went through an old J35 that was for sale. Cheap – under 10k – a bit rough, but seemingly solid. I’ve always liked those boats. I also roughed out a possible plan for ownership, where I would base the boat there but head for Ontario for the summer. Move aboard in the spring, go sailing for 3-4 months, return to Chicago for the fall. And I could cover a large part of the cost of ownership by helping out at the yard during the peak spring and fall seasons.

I noodled on this over the winter. Thought some more about my use case, and about the realities of owning a 35 year old J boat. What bubbled up to the top for me was that I really wanted to do some racing in the boat, specifically single-handed or short handed distance racing. And there is an active and accessible offshore series the the Great Lakes run by the Great Lakes Singlehanded Society. And when I thought of the J/35 I inevitably started thinking about adding a water ballast system to maintain performance when solo.

It turns out that my needs are almost mainstream now. Just look at the target audience for the exciting new J/99. Go read about the boat. Pretty cool, and I’ll circle back and mention it again I’m sure. To give a sense of price, a recent review estimated US$225k sail away.

Anyway, back to my world. I was cruising around Florida in Mazurka dreaming of a $10k boat that I could race and sail fast single-handed through the great lakes. I figured that whatever boat I bought would need mods, so say 10k for that right away. I also figured that just about anything would do in terms of liveaboard comfort. My standards are pretty low. The performance expectations were sort of locked in with my dalliance with the J/35. But trying to get and keep that boat in any reasonable racing form on a shoestring budget seemed impossible. And I didn’t want to devote my life to repairing rotten coring.

With all that in mind, I saw an ad on Kijiji in late February and immediately recognized the boat from the description and location. I called the seller, rented a car in South Carolina, and drove up to Ontario a few days later. Soon after that we had a deal.

I should say that while I took a 25 year break from larger boats I didn’t stop looking at them. Whenever I pass by a marina or storage yard I stop and look around. This boat had caught my eye in 2017, when I saw it sitting on the trailer in Port Stanley while visiting in Mazurka. I had visited the club a few times over the years, and knew of the owner and the boat, but hadn’t seen it previously. When I saw it I liked it right away, and read up on the Whitbread/Mount Gay 30 then.

The design seemed to aligned with my needs very well, particularly the stability requirements and water ballast system to facilitate short handed racing. While I hadn’t had any experience with alloy construction I had confidence in the builder/owner, and didn’t see anything during my inspection to scare me off.

I picked up the boat in May and took it to Chicago by land.

The boat is a Dash 34, designed in the early 1980s by Laurie Davidson. Check out the paint job.

Patrick, the man on the right, has owned the boat since new. That’s his friend David on the left. The three of us went for a sail today out of RNSYS in Halifax. My other friend David caught up with us in the harbour a bit later after hitching a ride on another boat, and we ended up sailing to Bedford and leaving the boat there.

Tomorrow the forecast is for NW winds, which means a spinnaker sail back down the basin for the return trip.

I’ve known Patrick for a long time, and have sailed with him on several boats. One of my most memorable sailing experiences was from 1979, when he and I and a non-sailing friend of mine sailed his Bombardier 7.6 Narwhal III from Chester to Halifax in the same storm that went on to kill people in the Fastnet race. It was incredibly windy, probably the most wind I’ve ever sailed in. We had a double reefed main only. Planed down the coast and then as the wind veered NW had a lot of trouble beating up the harbour. We finally got in around midnight. That was before mobile phones, and we didn’t have a radio. Our families had been pacing the docks for hours.

Patrick in his quest for speed under sail moved up to a Kirby 30, and then the Dash 34, which was built in 1984. He had it heavily customized at build with an oversized rig and a diesel inboard.

In 1986 I started sailing on the boat as helmsman. For the next few years Patrick was very busy with his medical practice and family commitments, but he encouraged and supported me and a young crew as we aggressively campaigned the boat without him. This is the crew in 1986 winning the RNSYS opening regatta

We campaigned the boat hard for three seasons. Put a new keel on in 1988. Raced the Marblehead-Halifax in 1987. Won a lot of trophies and grew as a team.

I left Nova Scotia for good in the fall of 1988, but went back to race the Marblehead-Halifax again in 1989, this time with Patrick aboard. In a fast race we finished in 48 hours and won our class. It was sort of a fitting end to a big chapter in my sailing story. The boat was not seriously raced after that.

Patrick is now 80, and has trouble handling the boat by himself. At the insistence of his family and friends the boat now has a small roller furling jib, which he hates. But he has excitedly reminded me several times that he still has big spinnakers aboard. We’ll get one up tomorrow.

Edit/update: Had a nice sail back to Halifax Saturday. These pics were taken as we left Bedford by my friend Andrew.

After we dropped the spinnaker in the harbour and started to go upwind we heard a loud noise and discovered that the main bulkhead was starting to come apart around the chainplate. Fixable, but it ended our sailing for the day. We motored back to RNSYS. So it goes with 35 year old boats…

I’m glad I made the trip. Nice to catch up with old friends and sailing companions, and to have David’s son Allister and mast man extraodinaire Scott join us on Saturday.