Waterlogged

Westerlies

2011-08-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

Another season of fireworks is upon us, and this year's Celebration of Light is now three days, down one from the usual four. Greig always tries to have some boat out there for which the kids or mutual friends can take in the show from a boat. Usually though, neither of us are are ever actually on board we are working on other charters.

This year we took the Malacite down, even though we haven't got it fully repaired, it's been beefed up, and although it isn't pretty, it is well supported. The Malacite has lots of space on deck and even from inside for viewing, rain or shine.

I was on board the Burrard Queen and so when the fireworks began, we all jumped on the opportunity to clean up the boat as much as we could. I missed them. Frankly, I can take or leave the fireworks, but after a while they all look the same in my memory. I suppose the most memorable fireworks for me was back in 2009 and really, it was Mother Nature that had me gobsmacked.

As Monday was a civil holiday for us in BC, Greig, Dosha and I bunked up on the Malacite. Greig was up bright and early to do a camp run to Keats Island so Dosha and I were on anchor watch. It was a swelly night in the and the Malacite pitched and rolled substantially enough to keep me from a good sleep. The marine forecast certainly didn't mention anything about potential winds and the westerlies were blowing a good 20-25 knots by about 10 am. It was enough to keep me busy keeping eyes peeled on both the hobie and our prop-less tender. (The Prop fell off our new tender on Saturday night. DOH!)

We had a secondary skiff but Greig had used it to go dockside for work and thus, Dosha and I were stuck out there for the day. For the most part that was just fine for us. Greig had put out two bow lines and a stern anchor.

From about 10am to about 4pm we got bashed around pretty good. The Uniflight was tied to the starboard side and one of the fat bumpers came off in the chaos. I'd only checked on it a few moments before and went upstairs to listen to the weather on the radio, only to hear a different sound emanating from down below. Sure enough, the bumper was gone.

Greig has conditioned me to pay attention to the sometimes subtle changes: a sound, a list to port or starboard or just how the boat sits on it's natural waterline. But I heard the difference and went running. I looked around the boat for the bumper and it was no where near us and then I saw it sailing off and over into False Creek. Attempts to flag down a jet skier failed, the guy just looked at me funny and kept bouncing around and he couldn't be bothered to inquire what I was on about. I was quite ready to pay him a quick $40 for the two minutes it would have taken him to run after it!

Feeling flummoxed on how to beef up the protection on the rub rails of the Malacite with one less bumper, a bumper miraculously floated by, sans rope. Seriously! Oh, serendipity how you surprise me! It was a bit of a dance trying to get it on the hook with the 14' pike pole but I was determined and re-hung the other two existing bumpers with my new "acquisition."

Phew.

In spite of it all, it was a glorious day for sailing and I think I counted at least 60 sailboats out in the bay alone flying around. I got some sun on the legs. But all in all, I was pretty happy to see the Captain by the time he arrived. I was pooped! Funny but I just don't find boat life to be always that relaxing.

Maybe it's just me?

New neighbour at Granville Island

2011-07-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday evening we had guest in from out of town and we took them on a dinner cruise. After, we did a quick tour of the docks and I mentioned that the SS Master was on Granville Island and wouldn't it be neat to go have a look at it. It was late and I certainly didn't expect to see anyone about but Chris Croner, President of the SS Master society was there closing down the vessel for the evening. Take a look at this video from the CBC news from a year or so ago, and you'll see Chris here speaking.

It is with great excitement that finally after five years of their negotiating with the CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation), who own and operate Granville Island, that the SS Master Society has permanent summer moorage, on popular Granville Island where it will be seen! There is so much foot traffic on Granville Island that it is a brilliant addition to the colour and interesting things to see there.

The SS Master is the last surviving triple expansion wood-hulled tug in North America. It's the west coast's Bluenose, only it isn't a replica vessel, and is all ORIGINAL. And unlike the Bluenose, which receives millions dollars in funding for it's existence, the Master is funded by donations and volunteers.

Lucky for us Chris was there and kindly let us come aboard for one last evening look at it's engine room.

He lamented that it had taken years of negotiating with the CMHC to get the Master there. I said, "Well, I am not surprised since this town is so unfriendly to anything that floats, let alone of major historical importance." He said, "Oh yes! Isn't that the truth. For a major port city it is ridiculous."

Check out the SS Master here. Chris told us clicking on their videos and specifically the one entitled Engine Room Tour, generates money for the society. It's a little loud but they've also got other SS Master videos on their YouTube page too.

Some "before" and "durings"

2011-06-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy few weeks. Lots and lots of cleaning. We've been lucky that Bui has conscripted his friends to help ups clean it up and without their help we wouldn't be this far ahead. As of today, we are working on dump load number four, which we expect to complete by the weekend.

Smoke damage isn't the easiest thing to clean up. By far any "green" solutions, ie vinegar and baking soda just don't cut it. Simply putting the sooty glasses through the dishwasher at my house didn't clean the glasses. They needed a de-greaser and happily Oxyclean seems to have done the best trick. Did you also know that the smoke is quite corrosive? I really had no idea that it was actually. And sticky gooey too. Any cheap utensils that didn't have a good finish on it corroded quite quickly to the point where they were fairly un-salvageable. All the chafing dish stands and glassware cleaned up well when I was able to soak them in an Oxy solution.

We are also very thankful to our friend Ryan Langlois of Shoreside Maintenance for putting in some time to help us as well. He had some help from his four year old son and his girlfriend Kallie too. He has a commercial de-greaser that is very eco-friendly which I'd like to get some for myself. He cleaned the windows of the wheelhouse and hung himself off the outside and pressure washed it with his diesel pressure washer. Ryan and tribe, you are all gold. Go SHORESIDE!

We pulled out the toilets and while the kids have been doing a large part of the dirty work, Greig installed one of the secondary toilets from down in the bow and replaced the old toilet that was up in the wheelhouse. He's been back tracking wires and marking them to find out what wire went where.

Still lots more mucking about to do.

Here are some before and durings. "Afters" will be a bit.

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More boats and a "Hey Ho! Let's go!"

2011-06-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

OK, Waterlogged has been too quite I guess and as long as the G-man and I are together there will always be boats. Plural. My vehement protests over us only having one boat lasted all of about 10 minutes when we got down to just our tug, the Saorsa, upon selling the Pacific Express this spring. Hey did ya hear? It now runs too. Yay to James and Dean and all their hard work!

The Bowie, to which this sorry blog pays it's original homage to, has now sunk over at Mitchell Island and it appears that it won't be righted. Rhianna broke the news to us a few weeks ago and posted it on her blog here. It was sad to see and certainly the kids were pretty busted up over it but it was really bound to happen. Glad it didn't happen to us.

Rest in peace old boy. Too bad the bastards let you down, once again.

So where does our inventory lie these days? We still have the Saorsa and Greig is trying help broker the sale of the MV Island Jewel for our friend Maureen. Who wants a liquor license on a boat? They don't hand these out like candy doncha know? C'mon....special deal for YOU! You just gotta get the engines back on line and go through the CSI. Happy go-go!

At any rate, he'd been moping about the house, frustrated, on the "EI sailing team" and with too much time on his hands and a head full of Drudge Report and Infowars. So much time actually that he started blogging too. I expect my editing duties shall subside for the time being. ;)

A few weeks ago he came across a couple of ads on craigslist for Hobie Cats. So he borrowed some money from a friend and he bought two: a 16' and an 18'. Now, I admit to not actually having *too* much issue with this. Admittedly, however our lifestyle in the summer is so darn busy that we'd hardly have enough time for one Hobie let alone two, but the rationale he countered to me was, "I got two so we can RACE!" The "we," being the kids, their friends and us and Greig is currently the only one who really knows how to sail. (And Bui is now at that age (18 this month!) where this boating stuff his dad's been on about might actually get him to score some cool points with the chicks.) Dean on the PE knows how to sail too and said he'd help teach us sorry lot. I am sure I'll be able to drag him out to tutor some of us one of these days as he was pretty excited that we got them.

Here is Greig and James of the Pacific Express on the 16'. Honest, they are there!

I actually think a Hobie cat is a fantastic idea as I would like to improve upon my own meager sailing experience once I have a decent sunny day and a good wet suit. The best thing about these is you can just hop on these and go, providing there is wind. This saves me from packing up food for the army that would invariably accompany us on a larger vessel, 'cos sure as God made little fishes, they won't even think of it. Plus the Hobies don't require renovating. Major points here people!

Of course this is all prefacing up to Greig's newest acquisition, the MV Malacite. We've spoken of the Malacite before and it was featured in select scenes on the tv pilot we did several years ago too. It's own recent drama was an electrical fire occurred down in the bow at Sather. The New Westminster Fire department got on it quick thanks to Byron, who purchased the Partnership, aka, the floatie. By in large it all could have turned out much, much worse, thanks to alert eyes and the quick action of contentious neighbours who heard the fire alarms going of inside.

The Malacite is an old Canadian Navy PT boat. The story goes that back in WW2, it and two other sister vessels were coming around UBC/Point Grey and the noise from the engines alerted those in the bunkers on the beach, sending the whole city into blackout for fear of it being an attack by the Japanese. For many years it was the private yacht of the Commodore for the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and a trip up to the Wigwam Inn up in Deep Cove, will find many photos of it on the walls therein.

MV Malacite, June 2011, post fire.

It's hull was completely rebuilt about two years ago when it suffered damage in a storm. That was a pretty major insurance job then and so this time around, these same underwriters decided to write it off, pay out the owner and offered it to Greig. He countered their offer with a more affordable one and they readily agreed. During the last repair of the hull they replaced one of the engines and both engines and genset are fine. So with that in mind and all it's recent repairs, it was really a no brainer. The wheel house is aluminum though the main deck is wood.

The bulk of the damage occurred down in the bow betwixt the heads and the galley. We've some major work to do in this area structurally but it really is quite confined. There is lots of smoke damage too but we'll rip out the major stuff and sand the rest.

Already in the last few days with the help of Greig's son Bui and big clan of friends whom he conscripted, and it is looking remarkably better. As well, our friend Ryan at Shoreside Maintenance surprised us and cleaned the wheelhouse for us. Hanging off huge downtown high rises is no big deal for him and so hanging from wheel house wasn't either. It so happens he uses very environmentally friendly degreaser that cuts through the creosote, whiz-bang without the scrubbing of commercial household products. I have to get me some of that!

Here are some pics!

All the forward windows from the bar need replacing.

In the rear salon looking forward toward the bar.
The two curved windows opposite each other survived. YAY!

Even in the back salon there were some windows that cracked from the heat.

Care for a glass of wine?

Top part is the shore power and the bottom is the 12-volt panel.

Greig in the forward salon.

Forward salon, the busted up front windshield and all the broken windows up forward.

Down into the depths of where the fire started.

YAY to steel steps!

Point of ignition is here on the port side in what was the buffet room.

Closer shot of the damage.

Starboard side with the buffet counter.

The galley with apparently brand new appliances. I hope if we build a new galley it will be on the upper deck 'cos whether it is a yacht or a house, the galley is still where the most time is spent doing stuff." I don't want to be stuck down there where I could be creating delicious meals and enjoying the view.

OK, who needs to use the head?
Yes, they still work!

It shall rise again!

2011-04-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

Well I am happy to write that the new owner of the Pacific Express, has been going great guns on renovations. He's managed to get the starboard engine up and running, a 1671 Detroit and they didn't seem to have too much trouble doing so. Congratulations James! Thanks for letting Greig and I witness this significant milestone.

What tha haps?

2011-02-08T23:55:00.000-08:00

Yes. I have been quiet lately.
Very quiet.
We've been laying quite low.
Re-grouping. Losing weight, eating better, sleep better. Attempting Cuban dance classes. Together! Yep, true story.

We've been trying to find a common purpose that leaves us both with our own respective sense of self intact. The years after selling the Bowie and moving up the river and downsizing from all of that took a bit of a toll on us both. It took three years and through various negotiations and trades we have now gotten ourselves down to ONE BOAT.

Sometime soon, probably in the spring when we've got some more cash to blow, we'll amp this baby back up again with the new star of the show, the Saorsa. And it only took two subchasers, a ketch, a chris craft, a steel cat/floathouse, a water taxi, a bayliner, a ferro-cement tug conversion for Greig to finally find a vessel that fit us both. Turned out it would be a tug.

Jaybus was that a journey or wot? Yep. And it ain't over.

The Nutmeg

2010-10-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

One day a few months ago, I stumbled upon Thomas Dolby's blog. I was probably rooting around on TED.com for something. Turns out he's the music director for the conference. I discovered that he has restored an old lifeboat and made it into his recording studio. He writes about the Nutmeg from time to time on his blog. He has it pulled up on land near his home so it doesn't sit in the water. Have a look at it here. It reminds me of a elongated version of Rhianna's now not so Lucky 7. Regardless, I am adding him to the blog roll 'cos he's doing a cool thing with an old boat and he does post about it from time to time.

Say hello to the SV Sunline

2010-10-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

They are new to the blogging and boating thing. I've added them to my blog roll. Go say hello and add them to yours.

http://sailingsunline.com/

Wet exhaust conversion

2010-09-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

As the Saorsa was a working day tug, it has no facilities or comfort spaces for extended travel. In the weeks since we got it, Greig has moved the hot tub from of the bow deck of the Express and on to the stern of the tug. The hot tub now sits just forward of the rudder stock leaving room for the not-yet-installed tow post..

The next problem at hand is that if one is cruising down the river and actually wanting to enjoy that back deck and say, sit in said hot tub, one gets bathed in the exhaust. A conversion from a dry exhaust to a wet exhaust and removing the stack seemed his first major task. Once the stack is removed he can bump up the deck level and convert the poorly used spaces into more liveable space.

By in large he is trying to do all of this conversion himself to keep the cost down. He consulted someone to put in the mixer for it but he was quoted $900 per side (in stainless).

In the video above, he has got one side done. Just before I left on a business trip he got the port side completed. Today, we helped him remove the cowling from around the exhausts.

A dose of reality and the TV show that almost was.

2010-09-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

Back in September of 2006, we filmed a TV pilot with life on the Bowie and our little social experiment as the background for the plot. Greig had a friend named Kate from acting school, who was getting into producing at at the time and doing so for Paperny Films. We felt there was much craziness that happened that none of us could have ever dreamed up left to our own devices. She pitched it to the powers that be and one day in September she showed up with a crew and we did a day of it. Some 14 hours of video was shot and couple of months later she presented us with a DVD. At one time I had lots of copies and even stored on my computer. Then the big computer died and alas no more backups were about.

I've been gently prodding her from from time to time to post it on YouTube so that I can link it to my blog. But her producing career has taken off and she has been busy doing so many things, like her own production company, Kate Green Productions.

Surprise! I am so excited to be finally able to say, here is the LINK!

Yeah, this is what we did. Thanks so much Kate!

Saorsa & a Sunset

2010-08-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

For over the past year, Greig has been in communication with a fellow that I can only describe as his brother from another mother. They look nothing alike and clearly were separated at conception. However the similarities are downright crazy! Darryl, like Greig, likes boats. A lot. Darryl like Greig seems to collect them. Darryl, like Greig is working more than he actually has time to devote to said boats. So for the past while they have bandied about trades here and trades there and finally something stuck. Greig traded three non-running boats and the bayliner for a running tug.

Yes. RUNNING!

Yesterday afternoon was a provincial holiday here in BC and our only day off. We had hoped to take my RIB out for a blast and a few loading and unloading lessons for me about it all but thieves intervened in our fun and took the new toy from in front of my house at about 6:30am yesterday morning. My neighbour across the street is an early riser and witnessed them and called the police who went in hot pursuit. In the opposite direction.

Alas, the plates Jim saw on the truck didn't match and so the truck or the plates was also stolen. Sigh. We never even got to USE it and had it for less than three days.

I guess they tried taking my suburban too as he had seen them shoving what looked to be a screwdriver in the driver side door. That suburban was a replacement to another suburban that we had stolen last October. It received a new engine recently and we're still working on sorting out the bugs from that.

Not to let the bastards get us down entirely, we opted to take Saorsa out for a drive as I hadn't been on it yet and more time on it gave Greig more opportunity to get to know it better.

The Saorsa was built by Fulton Shipyards in the US circa WW2 I believe. It used to be called the Butte and rumour had it was that it pulled the supply barge to Alcatraz. I have since discovered that it was probably was McNeil Island Penitentiary, which had an Alcatraz connection in that it once housed the Birdman of Alcatraz. (Source: http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5238). Saorsa comes from the Old Irish sairse: which means freedom or salvation, redemption. Clearly someone had a sense of humour.

It is a very solid tug and it plows through the waves with ease and is very stable. It has a V12 Cummins and a Northern lights genset on it that is in need of servicing. Of course it is another project but in all fairness in the last year he has gotten rid of seven projects and has downsized significantly. Yea!

Here are the photos of our afternoon cruise.

Bowiechick friendly

2010-08-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

Yep. A craigslist score that just happens to be bowiechick friendly.

It is small enough for me to attempt launching and operating by myself. Plus it has a trailer and...wait for it...NAV LITES THAT WORK! Gosh, I am feeling so grown up now.

It is a SeaDoo. I scrubbed it down on Saturday and in the seat in the bow had a special smell which I think belonged to a dead rat. (Old droppings therein notwithstanding.) Dead rats smell somewhat like a rotting fish only slightly different.

All other small tenders we have had had always had a f--- around in trying to start them. I could never pull on the cord for that Johnson outboard we had on the Wee Skiffy. Not that it was something that bothered me that I couldn't as there were other burly guys that had trouble too.

Key starts rock.

**UPDATE: Aug 2: 8:52am: Didn't even get a chance to use it as it just got ripped off the truck in front of my house. They would have taken my suburban too but my neighbour seemingly chased them off.

Sometimes you stumble upon the darndest things on YouTube

2010-07-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

I was just stumbling around on YouTube and randomly discovered this video from December 1996 and seven years prior to Greig's purchase of it in January 2003. It is of the Bowie and it broke away from its moorage and slammed up against the Pitt River Bridge. I didn't know about the incident but there are two raw videos on YouTube about it from bcnewsvideo.

Coincidentally too is it features the previous owner that we only knew as "Sally." We never knew her last name and only that she had a heck of a time finding moorage for it further toward the mouth of the river. I don't know how long after this incident that it moved carelessly to a shallow spot on the river and rolled over on the low tide.

I had to chuckle of course at the videographer question to Sally and her son, "You must have an intersting life!"

Also it so happens in the spirit of randomness, that Greig so happened to meet said son on a dinner cruise a few weeks back.

And here is the second bit of footage:

Well, I considered this blog-worthy, even though there is no dramatic rescue. Cleary in the second video that there were several other boats that broke away from rotten pilings.

"A dead fishery, contaminated land, a bag full of bills and a court date." - Kindra Arnesen

2010-07-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

Holt Webb writes a blog called Vanishing America and he has done a six-part interview with Kindra Arnesen, local Louisiana activist, whom I have profiled here previously in a couple of videos.

Please go over to his YouTube channel and watch these six videos which are about 32 minutes in length.

More BP BS from the gulf.

2010-07-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here is another video of Kindra Arneson speaking at a town hall meeting of the spill in the Gulf.

And more for a reality check:

This breaks my heart

2010-06-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

BP's spill in the Gulf is absolutely breaking my heart and I am livid about the colossal mismanagement over something that was completely preventable. This will affect this planet's oceans forever. I had I stumbled upon some video posted on Facebook and they claimed the "video was banned by BP." But the video is a very lossy version of one created by 60 Minutes Australia and I have since discovered the original US 60 Minutes video in three parts on Youtube. It isn't banned. At least not yet.

The video is by Australian 60 Minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcvzkrPL9C4

Part two is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC-tYZ7tbYM&feature=related

However 60 Minutes has a very good in depth presentation also on Youtube that exists in three parts. Here is part one of three. (Footage from Aus 60 certainly utilizes the footage from this report.)

As the gentleman above retells his experience it reminded me of my Marine Emergency course from last winter. Evacuation protocols supposedly practiced weekly were not adhered to and many took off in lifeboats without him or even the rig's captain and many others!

In the AUS video, they interview and introduce Kindra Arnesen of Venice, Louisiana. She is being called the "Erin Brokovich" of the BP Spill. A Google search for Kindra netted this video of her speaking out at the Gulf Emergency Summit (June 19, 2010).

I applaud Kindra for having the chops to stand up and make a noise. I am sure she would absolutely love for things to go back to a "normal" that will never be, ever again. It takes great courage to do what she is doing. She isn't just fighting for herself and her fellow Americans. She is fighting for me, you and all the rest of us here on planet Earth.

I also applaud Mike Ellis, a captain working for BP & The Coast Guard has been working on Sea Turtle rescues, talks about BPs practices of rounding up and burning oil soaked wildlife.

MSNBC's Rachael Maddox tells of a similar platform explosion from in the Gulf that occurred back in 1979 but this seems to have fallen out of memory. In this link she'll illustrate how history aways seems to repeat itself. That one took nine months to seal up and was in 200 feet of water.

Hearts and positive prayers to everyone going through this Hell on Earth.

Bui's model

2010-06-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Bui built his dad a steel model of the Pacific Express in metal shop. Needless to say the old man was very touched. Bui even included the hot tub!

MY Ocean Victory in English Bay

2010-06-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

I was working on my friend Maureen's boat the Island Jewel last weekend and we cruised by this lovely anchored out in English Bay. I don't know who owns this but it is said this is the biggest Fedship and was launched in October 2008. It measures 75.75-meter (248’6”).

www.mvbowie.com is no more

2010-06-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

Today, I shut down the website for the MV Bowie. It was time. I didn't want to keep paying out to maintain this and any email accounts I had set up were getting so much spam it was ridiculous as well as redundant.

May as well before Obama shuts the whole internet down anyway. ;).

If it Was My Home- Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster

2010-06-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

Click on the link to get some perspective of the scope of this disaster. If it were Vancouver and the lower mainland it would cover all that, the Fraser Valley, Southern Gulf and south end of Vancouver Island.

How about an Alibi for your Wahoo?

2010-05-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

The marina owner/boss had a Little Brother in the marina who had, wait for it... a grotty old boat. At 50ish, Little Brother is no dummy when it comes to boats and I know he knows his stuff. I like Little Brother as a person, just not his bad habits. At one time he really had his life together and is so often the case, suffered a major injury and his life fell apart. Since the trauma, Little Brother, also was not very inclined to pay moorage, or his hydro and often "borrowed" things from Big Brother and neighbours to pay for his habits. It's a script for life one sees time and time again: life has you landing a big pile of doo-doo and sometimes you can recover from it; or you just fall apart. Bridges it seems are made for burning.

Little Brother also had friends with bad habits who were also inclined to borrow things. As we restricted their access to the property, the rate of stuff going walk-about declined. Then, Old Softie, aka Greig, would acquiesce to some request. It is his nature to be inclined to believe in people when they are far from being entitled to that faith. Then there would be a new spate of borrowing again and {begins singing} It's like the song that never ends...it just goes on and on...

Big Brother just couldn't muster the cojones to throw Little Brother out. It's that family thing. Oh sure, he could yell at him and steam at the ears but when it came to actually following through, he always ended up backing down from his threats. Big Brother had assistance recently when the city and port authority decided to crack down on his property to get it cleaned up. Little Brother was no longer living on his boat, but in a motor home on Big Brother's property and well, it isn't zoned for such things.

Seeing an opportunity to maybe help the Boss/Big Brother get rid of Little Brother and all the noise that all brought, Little Brother decided to let Greig buy his boats (only two!) in exchange for Greig's dumping pick up truck. Little Brother has a hard time keeping a job and if it keeps him somewhat self-employed, and busy, all the better, thought Greig. I was thrilled at finally go from having five insured vehicles to three (yes, three is still too many). So, in typical fashion, Greig's recent sale of two boats has resulted in an additional net gain of two more. {Heavy sigh}.

With twin 671s, I guess this too was a charter vessel at one time and the superstructure has really deteriorated in the few years it has been at Sather too. I am sure it was a beauty once and ago.

The Alibi Wahoo is an authentic rum runner. Little Brother showed us it's authentic provenance in a book he had borrowed from the public library. (Yes, he forgot to return the book too.) It sure was pretty! He figured the Alibi and the Ma Cherie were the only two authentic rum runners left on the West Coast - for this book's author says so. The Ma Cherie is a beautiful boat and in the first year Greig and I were dating it was for sale for the princely sum of $110k and I looked into trying to purchase it. But that was before the Bowie came into our life and days after viewing that, Greig took off to Mexico to work on the movie Master and Commander. The Ma Cherie was no wreck and now lives in the marina next door. Yes, I am sure had that deal gone through, my attitude about boats and live aboards would be quite different. (I have real photos of it somewhere...)

Right, but this is about the Alibi Wahoo.

It's Twin 671s Detroits do turn over so it isn't seized and they are quite salvageable. It's wheelhouse, upper structure is a mess. Built sometime in the 1920s it was surely a gem.

Oh wait...I did say two boats. Yes, the second I saw running when we first got to Sather a few years ago but it has been neglected too. Yes, it went past, fast, so I can attest to what it once was also. However, it's name has always offended me and really, I think it is best that it just...went...below.

Charming little thing isn't it?

Three live aboard tales from New York

2010-05-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

Apartment Therapy had this post on three stories of house boating in New York City.

The third, thought published back in December of 2008, from the New York Times, made me chuckle and wonder that they must have been reading Waterlogged for some time and adapting our ideas. The Urban Pirate Life sounded awfully familiar to me. We were not off-grid like these folks and at least managed to stay warmer on the Bowie and the old wood ship I think was easier to heat than this steel one.

Boat sale #3: the MV Hari Mai

2010-04-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

It is with happiness I proclaim the Hari Mai is now officially sold! Though I really loved this boat - and though we only owned it for a few years it really is synonymous with Rod, aka Harry Man, from whom we purchased it from. Rod took care of it lovingly for about ten years I think. When he married a few years ago and he and his wife were expecting he was very anxious to have it sold for little Ester was only a few months away. I think it will always be my favorite of the smaller ones we've had. It had a Grey marine gas engine that ran like a sewing machine and really quite economical on the fuel. I prefered its slower cruising than the bone jarring speed/noise of a faster boat.

I have fond memories of you forever Hari Mai!

Expressing himself

2010-04-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

We did get some progress done on the Express last year. With Denis Sr. help, the half of the salon got framed. It wallowed until January when Greig got a shot in the arm to get it "livable."

Livable. It's word fraught with so much meaning. His livable has never been my livable so upon the sale of the float house, the panic attack that flooded over me was a sure indication that it wasn't the way for me. However, around Christmastime, Greig was motivated by a high school friend who was bringing over a construction crew from Victoria and needed beds for his crew for the end of January. He didn't think he'd find affordable accommodations for his five -six guys because of the Olympics. So Greig hauled his backside trying to get it up to at least camping state.

His concept drawing.

1. He put up sheeting on the existing studs.
2. Got a crew in to spray foam the ceiling and upper walls
3. Installed a couple of the salvaged Bowie portholes I had cleaned up.
4. Found a free 10 person hot tub, installed a new spa pack to the tune of about $1600 when the dust settled. It still needs a proper lid as the other has finally had the biscuit. In the meantime, I recycled a huge vinyl banner from work and he is using that until he feels it is OK to shell out the 200-400 bucks for a proper cover.
5. Made a bathroom: installed a shower/bathtub, toilet, vanity and black tank.
6. Got some basic kitchen facility in place with cooktop burner in place.
7. Set up a band stand with an organ, the computer, Bui's drums and his guitar....rock on.

The Pacific Express with the Celtwin and the Bayliner out front.

The guys moved in and set to work on their big window installation job and Greig managed to salvage a few windows from the job site and now has some installed along the port side, as well as a big slider on the back deck. The crew has dispersed to sleeping areas on the Bayliner, sailboat, Hari Mai and the water taxi and for the most part these guys seem to be coping with the camping like conditions just fine if not being, well, guys away from home and not so tidy.

Some of the salvaged windows he got installed.

Soon they will be done this job and Greig will have the Express to himself save his new room mate. Gizmo is a ginger persian who has been an indoor cat and was owned by a young girl over in West Vancouver (very tony digs) who' Mother felt she wasn't taking the best care of him. I suppose I thought Persians would be fussy things and the wee thing had a moment but he is a very good natured little fellow.

Gizmo is 15-18 months old and still quite kitten-like.

I think from having these guys about Greig is finally cured of the communal living. No doubt if there was a female down there they would have all behaved themselves a bit better. Pretty much all of them are fairly heavy drinkers and two have had to be fished out drunk from the cold winter river. Sean has had to send a few back to the Island (Vancouver Island) for getting out of hand. And maybe that is just guys, away from home, exhausted from 10-12 hr working days and trying to relax enough to get up and do it all again the next day. I guess it hasn't been any fun. Well at least they can BBQ.

In the last few weeks though we have had a spate of windstorms and kept a few of them up late and bouncing around in the chuck a bit. The Express certainly is a whole lot lighter than the Bowie whose movements were much more subtle. All in all not listening to the tarps or boat rigging flopping in the wind makes for a better night's sleep.

The Suquamish

2010-04-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Suquamish is a boat that has been at Sather for sometime. If you have been following this blog for any amount of time, you will recall it is the one that tipped over a year ago. I wrote about the incident here. I don't know much about this boat: only that Glen claimed it was the oldest wooden passenger ferry on the west coast - something I have never been able to validate in my loose research on the thing.

Glen, then owner, worked to clean up the mess and after the swamping got the engine on it going within a matter of days and spent the rest of the summer organizing all the piles of crap and materials on board. The problem with Glen was that he had been squatting at the marina for a good while - at least a year and a half before we arrived. He was half on the Sather water lease and half on the neighbour's next door. Since Glen was persona non grata, Greig had it on express orders from the Big Boss to not let him on the property or give him power at all lest enabling him to remaining there. On the day we sold the float house, he came to Greig, literally hat in hand, asking if Greig would take it over. It had a slow leak in the stuffing box and just keeping on top of it was getting too much for Glen. So Greig was in possession of another big-assed wooden boat for the princely sum of a $1. Without much say in the matter anyway, all I could do was shake my head in resignation over it all, knowing full well Greig would pull another horseshoe out of his backside over it at some point..

The spring has had Greig in a wee flurry of boat showings and negotiations some of which looked really positive and have ultimately fallen through. Greig asked me to post the Suquamish on craigslist and within the month sold it. Adrien had had a vessel once before and was keen to get back into something to live aboard.

The work Adrien is doing is not to dissimilar to Greig's recent renovations to the Express- something I've not yet written about yet. Suquamish had very similar lines though not quite as beam-y or as long. It's straight eight Gardner still runs though I have no idea if real operation of the vessel is upon Adrien's agenda or not though he did stick a funnel on the roof the other day, in situ. Part of Adrien's payment to Greig was a very fithy '89 Mercedes four door which Greig in turn, gave to me. I didn't expect that for I felt I had no entitlement to anything where the Suquamish was involved. But I wasn't about to look gift Mercedes in the mouth, even it it is 21 years old. I've since cleaned up and is my regular driver when I don't bike or walk, until the Suburban is repaired. At least that WAS the plan until the other day.

I think Adrien's making some good progress.

A winter hiatus

2010-04-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

It is much harder to write this since I am not living down at the marina. I have attempted a few posts which I often don't end up publishing for a multitude of reasons. As well, Greig and I are no longer a couple (it has been a few months), yet we do still share some responsibilities and assets that are not going anywhere soon. I grew very tired about arguing about everything - we have an inordinate amount of power struggles that are irreconcilable. It is much nicer being friends as we, OK, I, don't do the "shacked up" thing very well.

The one thing we agree on is how much we love each other: quite dearly and deeply. The other substantive issue is we can't agree on is "how" to live. I have always figured that if real estate was at all realistic and attainable that would be a huge hurdle for us. Fact is anything "attainable," maybe a one bedroom condo, is totally not attractive to either of us at all and would cramp our mutual need for creative expression. Certainly it is never going to happen in this town. A one bedroom is totally unrealistic factoring Bui and Dosha into it all too. But they are getting older and Bui is going to be going into Grade 12 next year. However, 600K for a two bedroom shack isn't appealing and ultimately wouldn't work either. Our collective inability to do so has been a contentious issue all along. Lousy credit doesn't help either and well, the banks will set you up for huge falls which is what exactly what happened to me. Much to Greig's chagrin his children have had the choice and have preferred all along to live with their mother while he had always held out hope they would at some point "choose" him at some point. They haven't yet and I doubt they ever will. I think this is often the plight of many single Dads everywhere.

I made concessions for many years for him that made me miserable and it ultimately undermined everything. He is committed to providing something for his kids that is theirs, whether they really want it or not and big fat boats are the most interesting and manageable thing at his fingertips. But the meaning of a home and a "house" are very different things in my book.

He is forever inundated with a lot of negative energy from so many fronts, and I freely admit I am included in that at times. He wages political warfare on so many fronts - and as much as it seems it is self inflicted, the crazy crap that comes out of the blue at him is very bizarre too. He's a magnet for that shit, heck, probably enables it to a large degree. I can't help but wonder if God just isn't preparing him for something bigger sometimes.

We have been attempting to downsize the fleet and it's a slow process. But he has another girlfriend who is even less interested in that kind of life than I ever was. At least now he has a cat, to keep him a bit of company and hopefully has a bit of salt where mousing is concerned. Gizmo, is rather diminutive compared to the girth-some Tobias. Gizmo is a ginger persian and is starting to settle into the lifestyle and has come out of hiding now and is beginning to resign himself to boat life. The first 24 hours he was completely FREAKED. "Giz," I told him, "I understand!'" He is only about 15 months old yet so I think these two adopted fellows will be great company for each other as they get to know each other better.

Yes, my rent is tall order on my own and exceeds the percentage based on my salary that I should be paying. But managing that is less stressful and panic ridden than the challenges of living down at a rundown river marina and all the other factors that go into a semi-peaceful existence. I sleep much better these days. Did I mention how much I LOVE living alone. Oh ya baby!

It's been a miserable winter weather wise and there has been lots going on I've not had the time or motivation to blog about. I am perusing more of my own interests now and have a new blog based on my interests in cooking, gardening, antiquing and sewing. I guess you could say it is kind of a green blog as I endeavor on the principle of "use what you have."

Boaty bitching in the news.

2010-04-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

The sunny weather of the Olympics is over and we have had our winter now these last few weeks since and last night the lower mainland got nailed again with windstorms. Now back to business, as usual.

Four vessels have washed up on beaches in English Bay and of course on the CBC's website there have been two articles this morning on the issue.

1. Vancouver Sailor Blames City for Kits Beach Wreckage

2. Windstorm blasts BC south coast.

All in all fascinating and maddening all at the same time to read the comments here which range from simple mis-information to complete elitism and fascism. People are just so NICE!

I'm kidding. Really, that is the Real Vancouver. All that "niceness" during the Olympics? It was a one time event. Now eff off and hand over your wallet, ya deadbeat.

Sunny Olympic days

2010-03-02T15:26:00.000-08:00

I made it out on a charter during the Olympics. Thankfully it was a glorious day. Here are some Olympic themed pics for you.

This is what GOLD sounds like

2010-03-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

Beautiful time-lapse video of Vancouver

2010-01-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

My mum told me about this video as I guess it was featured on the evening news. It is very beautiful and well done. There are lots of boats and this gives you a good idea of what we see out on charters most evenings though this is clearly shot in winter. Enjoy.

I've been sayin' it for years.

2010-01-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

Well this seems like such old news to most of us who live here, today's Vancouver Sun announced a new study that rates Vancouver "severely unaffordable" housing as one of the worst in the world.

No kidding?

"Vancouver not only has the least affordable housing of 28 markets measured in Canada, but of 272 metropolitan markets ranked in Ireland, the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. and Canada, according to statistics compiled by the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy."

Oh and there's a developer who has come up with this great idea in providing micro-housing units for renters: 270 sq. feet. And no, they don't float. It sure looks like a bachelor suite to me.

Gee...$300 less than the average bachelor suite (suites advertised on Craiglist average 800-1500). I should note minimum wage here is $8/hour and the BC Federation of Labour is kicking off a campaign to have it raised to $10.

Seems to me Tumbleweed homes are still a more attractive option 'cos at least you can own one of 'em!

Adreneline much?

2010-01-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

About two hours ago I was up in the mall picking up a prescription and thinking I should hit the library or go to the bookstore nearby. I opted for the bookstore even though I had no intention of actually buying a book.

As I approached the book store, I heard the shriek of a woman and as I was turning back toward the scream, my first thought was that someone dropped a jar of pickles on the tile or some such thing. I saw a fellow veering back from the cashier clutching a handful of bills to his abdomen and turning to run out of the store. Without thinking I just bolted after him. Silly really, as I was in heels but the bastard and I locked eyeballs and so I took chase after him over the tile floors. I chased him for about 400 feet over the mall and down a hallway to a stairwell and then I lost him for I didn't know if he gone up or down. And the realization that I was in heels and I didn't have a snowballs chance made me realize the futility of it.

As I turned to give up an employee or maybe the owner of the shop the store was right behind me. He said that this fellow had ripped them off before. They declined my offer for my services as a witness and so I took my leave. Adreneline pumping, I felt no need to remain in the mall and left.

It's giving me pause to think however how quickly I choose to bolt after this fellow. He wasn't what I would consider a "big" guy and I probably had a good 20 pounds on him, as I would never be accused of being small or petite by any stretch of the imagination. (I am 5'7" and large athletic frame). He could have been armed but I certainly didn't ever feel afraid. I suppose if this happened in the US, the chance of him packing heat would have been far greater. I mean no disrespect to my US friends here, but geez, it's Canada and when we think of the "right to bear arms" it usually means bare arms, 'cos it is summer and we can turf the parkas! He was clearly confident that I'd not catch him anyway. Brunette, 5'10 -11", 160 lbs, light olive complexion perhaps of European mix, khaki pants, baseball hat, blue fleece jacket. He was actually kind of a nice looking guy really. But I am no cop. I am no runner either - my bladder gets me every time!

But it isn't the first time for your's truly to stand up to some rotter who thinks they can be a bully and that I am just "some female," who won't get in their face. Invariably, I do, much Greig's chagrin. He's referred to me as his Velvet Hammer on several occasions.

At any rate, while I ponder all the ponderables of this situ, may I recommend this very nice Australian red? Ah, that's it. Must be the uppity Aussie in me blood, or the German.

A day in Vancouver

2009-12-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

KatKam, which I have listed here on my links has a wonderful video of that glorious day last summer during fireworks when it stormed. It is a compilation of all its photos of that day but pretty cool all lumped into a time lapsed video.

Watch it here.

Good advice

2009-12-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

Today, the Bums posted this quote on their blog:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

- Teddy Roosevelt

Merry Christmas and compliments of the season to all of you. May 2010 bring lots of love, light, happiness and inspiration. Thanks for sharing.

xo Tana

Plastic Fantastic

2009-12-16T10:53:00.001-08:00

Anyone heard of the Plastiki Expidition? A catamaran has been built from recycled plastic and they are sailing it from San Francisco to Sydney.

Check it out here.

Accidents can happen so quickly

2009-12-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

This is old news but still quite spectacular piece of video and appropriate to my week of Marine Emergency Duties (MEDs) training than I expected. We watched plenty of videos on all kinds of marine disasters, but this one that someone sent Greig on Facebook was of the North Arm Venture from July of this year, which we used to see cruising by the Bowie often. I recall hearing about a tug flipping up in Skookumchuck Narrows (pronounced skoo-cum-chuck) last summer but this is the first I realize it was the Venture nor had I of heard or seen of this video.

Here is the link to the video taken by some kayakers and the article in the Coast Reporter Newspaper.

Thankfully, a beautiful summer day and you can see nobody was wearing life jackets either. It was so very, very quick. The Narrows are a renowned perilous stretch of water and a challenge to any skipper towing anything through it at the best of times.

I was really surprised at how long it took the engines on this to stop. I guess one crew man was trapped in there for some time but did get out thankfully. Lucky that this didn't turn out worse than it did.

Essential Skills

2009-12-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

I have been employed part-time on the charter boats for some years now and it was a job I never applied for but just fell into via my relationship with Greig. Out of high school I got into the restaurant/hotel industry with the thought that maybe I'd go to school and get into management. After working for a few years in it I realized it wasn't my cup of tea and I needed something more creative.

In the past few years I have accrued a substantial amount of sea time, albeit fairly close to shore, working most weekends and my regular 8-4, M-F government job. Still, time on a boat is still time on a boat. In all that time I've never gone for any of my MEDs (Marine Emergency Duties) or any of the Transport Canada certifications. I've half heartedly looked into the STCW 95. The intent would be to could get that certification and potentially quit my real job and finally go crewing somewhere warm and tropical? As much as I put it off no education is ever wasted but it would have to occur when it was more convenient for me to do so.

Big Cheese has offered to pay for it in the past but it has always require me taking paid vacation time from my "real" job to which I kind of balked against. It was somewhat of a contentious issue with me and Greig for he has always pushed for us to work more together and while that isn't so problematic per se, I actually like my job as a designer. I also balked because I felt by in large that my "real" job that provided the extended health care and regular hours was "crap" in his mind and that just irked me. Now that isn't really how he felt or intended, but it was how I was made to feel about it moreover. Chalk that up to male/female communication issues/misunderstandings yet again.

OK, sure my "design" job is a lowly community college and I am not working for some fro-frooy ad agency downtown getting written up in Applied Arts, the GDC or Print*. Sure that maybe does has more cachet. Bottom line, I like it. I love the people I work with and they are also dear friends. I've worked in enough dreadful places to know how precious that is. It is collaborative and like most other post-secondary institutions, more conservative than you'd realize. I always use to joke that one of my fellow classmates from Langara had "my" job for she went from here to Outside Magazine (once one of my favorite mags) to the now defunct and much missed Blueprint and then onto Martha Stewart Weddings. "She" worked in New York, for MARTHA! I envied her while I toiling away in a ultimately dead end government job trying to convince people to not use Comic Sans or clip art.

And really, over the years of dealing with various and sundry boat emergencies it was something I "should" have had. Once I was crew when we ran aground just of Point Atkinson and the skegs got pretty much ripped off the Eloquent. That was a scary incident because it was a calm summer day and I didn't know what we hit as I was pouring behind the bar. But Greig kept me calm and we mustered passengers and kept everyone else calm and luckily all was relatively fine. Still, it was scary.

It was a hell of a scare too when the Pacific Express caught fire too. Greig had pushed and pushed the landlord there to get a fire pump on those rickety docks. He had training and thus the confidence to direct others when it was most important and amongst us got the fire out by in large by the time the Richmond Fire department arrived.

Then, I was on the Partnership with earplugs in steam cleaning some carpets. My steam cleaner is noisy so I didn't hear people yelling. Ultimately, I was alarmed by the vibration of people running up and down the dock, shut down the machine and pulled out my plugs to hear what the panic was about. Again, beside Mt. Kleeman, I could hear people yelling and hollering but I couldn't see the Express on fire until I walked all the way around the other side of it. At the time, the tide was low and the main dock sat on the beach at a 15% angle. One of the fire hoses was already out and laying on the dock and with the lean it had rolled under Mt. Kleeman. The hose and nozzle was pinched amongst all the flotsam that we were constantly inundated with there.

Greig had by that time come home from taking the kids to lunch and had one hose on the fire but needed a second one to give the necessary backup to cool it all down. They kept pulling on the hose but couldn't loosen it off. Given the tilt of the dock and that part of Mt. Kleeman was sitting on the beach there was a gap that I could see. I dropped down onto my stomach and crawled underneath it to see if I could wedge the hose and the nozzle back out of there. It was just out of my reach and the flotsam became a wee bit of a benefit for I was able to wedge my hips far enough in further to grab the hose, free it from the flotsam and hollered, "PULL, PULL, PULL!" And with that they got the second hose on it and managed to get it cooled down before it really got away on us all.

Yesterday and today I have been taking my MED A2s at BCIT and through the Justice Institute of BC. I've got two more days at BCIT. BCIT is the premier trades and technogy institute here in BC. The "JI," trains all the paramedics and firefighters, as well as additional programs to local police and RCMP.

Today, day two, we went out to Maple Ridge Campus to do the firefighting portion. Besides freezing my backside off we actually got to do some firefighting simulation there. Thankfully we had a fantastic instructor, a now retired 28 year veteran of the Vancouver Fire Department who took this otherwise dry and serious material and made it relevent, practical and interesting. I have to say I did learn a lot and I will from here on in not shop for fire extinguishers in quite the same way! I have been mindful all day of that day on the Pacific Express today, sort of joking with our instructor on my "experience" with boat emergencies.

Tomorrow, we are going to get wet the pool to try and get people in and out of the water. If I think of it, maybe I'll take the camera and post some pictures.

Thankfully, for the sake of my classmates, I've waxed.

*But we DO win awards! Our team one six awards in District 7 at NCMPR. I am proud to say that three of the pieces I designed one three awards too. Yea Douglas!

When the mountain falls

2009-11-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

Who'd have thunk such a prophesy from previous post before would actually result it coming to fruition? The next day even? Well it did indeed.

We've been battered by the Pineapple Express again this winter. November usually means monsoons and wicked windstorms and we've been getting hit again. However for the first time in many, many years, it ain't quite affecting me so 'cos I am squirreled away in my cozy little house - yea me!

We called this 90-foot monster of a boathouse Mt. Kleeman, some days after it arrived down at Mitchell Island several years ago from a local boat broker named Gary Kleeman. He didn't own the boathouse nor the boat inside it that I was ever aware of. He just happened to be the guy charged with selling it all. They located the big beast at the stern of the Bowie and it blocked that off from the rest of the marina like some kind of Berlin Wall on water. Prior to its arrival we could sit on the Bowie's back deck and see who was coming in and out of the yard. We could tell who was who by how they walked and if we didn't recognize them chances were they were not supposed to be there. This big mountain blocked us off from everything and was an eyesore among all the other eyesores, our own eyesores notwithstanding. It seemed everything started going downhill after that.

We took to calling it Mt. Kleeman, it has forever stuck with us. Eventually the boat inside it sold and its owner didn't want the boathouse, Greig's employer and our landlord snapped it up and moved it up to Sather. The Sea Ferring (which I see just recently sank over at Mitchell Island) was in it for a short time last summer and recently it housed, a 40-some foot Hattaras that the Big Cheese was fixing up.

Anyway, my feared prophecy came true in one of last weeks bashings and down it came. I can only say I was pleased that it fell the other way from the Partnership and didn't come down the other way. I am also glad I missed it too. The only thing keeping it from not collapsing entirely was the Hatteras that was still inside it. It doesn't appear any worse for it though.

Just when you think your going one way...

2009-11-16T16:38:00.000-08:00

Something comes along to throw a spanner in the whole works.

It has been a difficult move but, I love my new house and I have a new TV and computer and I am in love with this boy from California...his last name is Apple...Ya, we splurged and go me a new Macbook Pro! Now I am just waiting in the cue for the service call for Shaw to come in and hook it all up. See! Ain't he just darling? All that silicon in all the right places...

Yes, Rob and Jamie you are right...I do still have stuff to say and there is some interesting boat developments coming down stream so to speak. Greig says I still have substantial boat assets so just because I am not "living" on them is a whole other thing. So, I guess am reconsidering the end of Waterlogged as it was and making it something else. (Maybe I'll switch to Wordpress from Blogger too. Hmmm...)

Still it is nice to SLEEP through a storm and not be kept awake all night by it bashing and crashing about me wondering if Mt Kleeman, the Boss's boathouse is going to come crashing down on me too. And I have no regrets really on selling the Floatie for I look at and see all those things I don't have to do now. Though I do have to go through and clean it yet...

Thanks for all the lovely emails and messages over the last month. It has been very touching.

The beginning of the end

2009-10-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

It is with mixed feelings I announce the sale of the MV Partnership II, aka, the floatie as I like to call it.

It has been sold to a nice young father of two. I didn't expect it to really happen after all we've had plenty of hull kickers. It isn't so easy for people to buy a boat let alone a live aboard for banks don't like to touch 'em. (Yes, Ocean Escape, I do concur.)

I would have been happy to remain on the floatie but alas Greig and I have some unresolvable lifestyle issues that neither of us are willing to compromise on. I did just that for a long time and it wasn't working for me. One boat was always enough. Six, too much. I dunno...is it just me? Am I really that much of a buzz kill? Is it really incredibly selfish on my part to want to do something else other than put all my energy into derelict ships and a revolving door of roommates who, more time than not, have serious anti-social or substance abuse issues? Yes, and for every "bad apple" there were two or three that were stellar and whom we consider family to this day. Renovating the boats, working a full-time job and a part time job was about all there was room for. But I wasn't doing it for me and so it left me fairly unfulfilled. The renos on the floatie were the most fulfilling for me and validated what I knew already that I really could do lots of it myself. I just needed time to get to it and that was on the short end of the stick. Life is too short to be doing things you don't really wanna. And I wanna do many other things.

It seems that Waterlogged is coming to an end. Greig has asked that at some point I will go through and make a proper book of the whole adventure. But I have mixed feelings on that too for there have been some incredibly painful things that Greig and I have been through as a couple. Great examples mind you on what NOT to do in relationships and how to kill them. And others have been hurt too but we've all made our respective choices so nobody can play blame game or victim cards. Maybe I'll self publish something through Lulu. A year or so ago I went back to review some of the posts and of course, one story inspires three others that I never got around to writing. It also was painfully obvious how much editing is required too. Mistakes notwithstanding, this has been a wonderful way to journal the whole affair and it just so happened a few people dropped around to read it and I made a few extra friends along the way. Thankfully too, should that time come I 've lots of editor friends who'd probably be eager to point out all my errors, bad grammar and spelling mistakes.

I'm moving ashore in a too expensive rental suite in a house, with a yard, that actually will let me take Tobias. I can walk to work and park that durn car! When I find some balance and equilibrium back in my life I may start on the Hari Mai, unless of course it sells too. Truly, it's been my favorite boat of the whole bunch. Maybe I'll start a blog about that boat yet.

One of these days I'll finally shut down the Bowie site but I have to ask my web collegues on how to archive all that in a way that doesn't keep the url active, yet present as a reference point for the US-PCS class ships.

I had a dream about the Bowie last night. I am not one to ever remember my dreams, much as that frustrates me. In it and for some reason, we were down in front of Mitchell Island out on the river in front of it. I was on some boat. I looked over to the Bowie's stern and I thought it was looking too low in the waterline and clearly taking on water. Somebody better get that pump in the Laz going! Then it suddenly started sinking fast. My first thought was fear that somebody was on it and the only person not screaming was Dave L. cheering at its demise. It went down in the stern like an orca whale spyhopping and it rolled over and floated underneath us and drifted with the outgoing tide and river current. We poked at is uselessly with our pike poles. Then I woke up, with an incredible feeling of sadness. It was just a dream and is floating fine last I heard annoying Rolly still with its presence. Go Bowie Go!

Thanks all, it's been ducky.

Ghostly apparition

2009-10-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

"Hey!" He hollered from upstairs. "Grab the camera and run over to the portside of the Express and get a load of that!"

I grabbed the camera and popped on to the Express and gazed out into the foggy morning mist to see this floating up the river on the incoming tide.

Clearly it had taken on water by the way it was listing and who knows how long it has been floating along. My money is that someone took advantage of a foggy dark morning and the incoming tide and set that adrift to get rid of it.

I didn't recognize it from any marina either down or up river from us and tried to zoom in close.

Greig, now dressed, decided to investigate in Wee Skiffy but alas, by the time he got even close all he could see was the roof... going under the log boom.

I think it was a much neglected Cruise-a-home.

Boats burn in Coal Harbour

2009-10-13T15:01:00.001-07:00

Three boats were ablaze this morning downtown in Coal Harbour. This article on CBC's web site has more details.

Having been through a fire on the Express, they are so very scary. Thankfully we had fire pumps on the dock and got two hoses on it before the Richmond Fire Deparment arrived with their trucks, and Greig and company managed to have much of it out. Still, all that fibreglass would have made for a much more toxic affair than our old wood subchaser.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. I am always amazed at the insipid and inane comments often left by people on such posts.

More photos on CTV's site here:

Some TLC for a Grey Marine

2009-10-12T18:12:00.000-07:00

Yipee! I am happy for we have found someone to weld cast and the Hari Mai's engine can finally be repaired. I know that Streak can go fast, fast. But given my druthers, I'll take the slow easy cruising of the the Hari Mai over zippy-go-go anytime. Plus, it is just a cooler boat all the way around.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Clearly...not enough action?

2009-09-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

By the fact I have 11 comments regarding an electric fence indicates yer all bored, or apparently fascinated with electric fences. It wasn't even boat-y and I only wrote it to throw a bone into my dearth of postings.

Sigh...well here is some new "action" from our little hole in the river.

This place trumps the old one by the fact that in spite of all the log booms in our vicinity, we just don't have the logs attacking us like they did at Mitchell. Yea! Fighting with dead heads for two hours every night was just no fun at all. Still, we need wood to burn and there is lots of crap to clean up around here too that doesn't involve having to haul logs out to buck up and split and most of it can head straight for my woodstove. There are remains of older docks up on shore and so we are recycling lots of the wood there for planks on the docks that are, well, so rotten a small child or toby, my cat could fall through it. We've got a fair amount done and I got ambitious with the pressure washer and finally got to one of my list items from May. Yes, from May.

The upstairs railing around the floathouse is covered in rather unsightly cedar shakes. Yes, I would love to replace it with something different and gain a few more inches of walkway space up there. But I have to live with what I've got for now. So I attacked it with the pressure washer and did the front, starboard side and across the stern. Alas, the dock between me and Mt. Kleeman was removed to make room for the Malcite's arrival and so Mt. Kleeman is smack right beside me. There are some overturned docks about and when Greig finally feels ambitious enough to tackle turtling them to their upright position we can slide one of those puppies between the floatie and Mt. Kleeman. Then I'll arm up again and hit the shakes on the port side and give them a good scrubbing.

Gawd, was I ever filthy from that. A lovely brown woody sludge covered just about everything so I had to do a final rinse of every surface with just the garden hose. I am ever so thankful that this sunny weather holds and continues to cooperate.

I carried on with washing off some of the new dock planks too and when that is all "done" I guess we'll have to throw down some anti-slip device (probably chook wire) as it will all get terribly slippery as soon as it thinks to get a bit frosty around here.

And if this weather holds, maybe I'll get some painting and staining done!

Zappity-do-dah

2009-09-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was back home in the interior visiting my folks and one recent add-on in Dad's garden is this spanky new electric fence. With so many deer about and in trying to keep bears away from the fruit tree he decided to make this wee investment.

He was having trouble and the whole thing seemed to be bedeviling him a bit as he didn't think any current was running through it. On my last afternoon there I had put in my request to take some of his bounty home with me. I had my dibs on beans, tomatoes, cukes, peaches and apples from the Gravenstein tree. (He's also got Northern Spy, Red and Golden Delicious, and Fuji's). The Grav's are my favorite though for eating even though they are a cooking apple mostly.

Mum and I tackled the beans, many of which were too big and woody and destined for the compost bin. I had filled a bucket and headed back out of his netted garden to go dump the first pail. The gate didn't open all the way, due to the slope of the ground and so I had put the metal bail of the bucket against the wire of the electric fence. We were in the garden and I thought he had turned off as he was frustrated that it wasn't working.

I eased myself around the gate and grabbed the bail on the bucket and discovered to my surprise that yes, the fence well and truly was working.

"Hey Dad!" I hollered up from the garden, "Are you still thinking you're fence isn't working?"

"Ya!"

"It is now! I just got bit!"

"Wonderful!" he hollered back.

Gee...thanks Pa! Glad to help.

Waterpod

2009-09-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

Tugster posted a link to the Waterpod but I missed it until my friend and our old roommate Marcus sent me a link to this video on Facebook.

I have always thought that as land becomes more scarce and sea levels rise that we must find alternatives in our lifestyles and these folks should be applauded in their experiment here. Municipalities on water all over should be taking more proactive approaches rather than maintain a "head-in-the-sand-itis."

Big and pretty

2009-09-03T04:36:00.001-07:00

Of course this beauty doesn't grace our waters much and was bound to have me wondering just who owned it. The SY Rosehearty had been anchored out in English Bay for a few days in August. Now that, is a yacht. A Google search on it turned up lots of links.

Oh, it belongs to Rupert. As in Murdock. Very sweet. Oh to be so financially flush.

MVF Heroine

2009-07-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've stumbled across another boat blog via the Strathspey, to add to the blogroll. The MFV Heroine is undergoing a lovely re-build/restore in Scotland. Nice to see somebody trying to do things right and with a bucket of $$ to go with it.

Here is a quote from the May 2009 post which I loved:

"Also, his advice was not to fall in love with anyone who wasn’t as mad about boats as you are because they will make you sell the boat, and give up your dream, and cause you to go back to Inverness to work in an oven-like basement for 14 hours a day …"

God trumps South Africa

2009-07-29T09:19:00.001-07:00

I am a bit tardy in posting these photos but I have to say that last Saturday night's Fireworks, with South Africa on deck, was one of the most phenomenal experiences I've ever witnessed. And really South Africa did a fine show but it didn't hold a candle to the sunset thunderstorm out in the middle of the chuck.

Heading out in a fine warm drizzle.

Looking back toward the West End and out popped out a rainbow.

The rain kept up and I really thought it would all just pass over quickly to cool things off...

...but it stayed, and so has the humidity. Really I can't do this justice as even the air was glowing orange. It was a most blessed light that moved many of us.

Lucky. Wish you'd been there.

It's flippin hot!

2009-07-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

And I love it.

I love summer and I love the heat. It must be payback for last year's crappy summer and a miserable winter.

We went berry picking last weekend and I got ambitous and made my first batch of raspberry jelly ever.

And with the mountains of basil it would have been a cardinal sin in my mind's eye to have that go to waste. I ended up with 14 cups of pesto to freeze.

Dee-lish!

First night of fireworks

2009-07-22T11:58:00.001-07:00

Click here on the Kat Kam see the ever growin' gong show in English Bay as the clock winds down to the first night of the HSBC Celebration of Light.

This year Canada, China, South Africa and the UK are competing and it is a light show set to music. We can't ever seem to be on one of our own boats as we usually end up working on the charter boats instead. The money is too good to pass up. However, the Streak is going to be out there too and so at least the Laliberte's and Bui, Greig's son and his friends will be able to enjoy it, sans us. Too bad we lost that anchoring buoy off the sailboat from last summer. It was so handy for this exact purpose.

For more barge photos click here for the News 1130 article.
(Photo from News1130.com)

Green bits here and there

2009-07-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

My hanging baskets are putting on a decent show at least.

I've never had basil do so well as this year. I have to get at making more pesto to freeze for I don't want it to go to waste at all. It is proof positive that basil loves the heat and we've had glorious weather so far this year. I guess we're making up for a dreadful winter. The trellis for the beans was scrapped together by my dad and I from a 20' long piece of 1 1/4 " doweling that just washed up between the dock and my boat. I tied a bit of string to give the scarlet runner beans a bit more encouragement but really they've not required much. They just go. Evil Mark is back living with us and though I couldn't get it in the photo here, there is a yellow and black NO TRESPASSING sign which he hacked to say NO TRELLISING. Well I'm gonna anyway.

The nasturtiums have just started to bloom and I built that planter out of some scrap pine my friend Glenna brought home from the set of Sanctuary where she was working as a set carpenter. I just have one tomato plant as I curbed my ambitions for hanging tomatoes this year.

And while not garden-y per se, Our Man on Shore Len had this funky shelf that he was dolling up with me in mind. I have to do a post on Len for he certainly deserves one of his own. It is boat kitch to be sure and you either love it or hate it. I happen to love it. Who says a three legged shelf isn't useful on a boat?

Ya, making GREAT progress on painting the boat aren't I? Just ignore that Corona bottle cap.

Greig's new ride

2009-07-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Greig has a new ride. With the rationale of "How can I live on the water and not have a boat that runs?" It would be like denying the man cheeseburgers. The Hari Mai was running but the Grey marine has some issues and the repair is going to take some time to source out bits and parts. It is a situation that just wouldn't do.

The tentative name is the Indigo Streak, because well he's an Indigo and there is that big blue streak down it's side. I think Indigo Dreamer is more fitting but its not my decision.

We went up the river for a toot the other night. We saw some boats too.

Oh and these are a bit out of order but for the most part that is irrelevant.

This is the New Westminster Quay. I understood it was undergoing renovations and was closed but according to their web site it is open. There has been an attempt to make it like Granville Island for years and because it is privately owned it has failed. New Westminster is an older community in the Lower Mainland and home to a ton of old Victorian styled houses. For many years they've had problems with crime and drugs down on Columbia Street but it is slowly getting re-gentrified. There is a railroad track that runs along here and a large expanse of tiered parking lots and it just looks horrible. The City keep selling its "on the river-ness" but it is otherwise anti-pleasure boats and until they actually do something about prettying it up it's still a bit of a sow's ear. It is here where the Fraser splits between the North arm and the south so it isn't like there is no marine traffic, albeit it is mostly commercial.

The Profiler II belongs to the Federal Government and does the soundings of the river bottom. Our friend Josko is (or one of) it's captain.

This is the MV Edgewater Fortune. And according to this page on Wikipedia a Bay minesweeper built for the Canadian Navy in 1952.

Tug Island Commander which I've never seen underway but that doesn't mean it still isn't operational.

This is the historic tug the Sea Lion. It used to be down at Kitsilano Point at the Vancouver Maritime Museum but I noticed it moved out of there a year or so ago. Here is the museum's blurb on the vessel as it was a significant vessel on the coast at one time and involved in the Komagata Maru incident.

Various Tugs

Cool...floating shack with its own tennis court out front.

wee projects

2009-07-06T14:53:00.001-07:00

A few wee things going on of late. I lucked out in having two glorious weeks of weather at the beginning of June as I decided to take two weeks vacation. Since I couldn't afford to leave town, my folks came to visit. I LOVE this when that happens 'cos my dad likes to be useful and I usually have plenty of things lined up for him to help me with.

First, out went my broken dishwasher. It gave up the ghost shortly before leaving Mitchell Island last year and I was only using it to store the metal chaffing dishes in the top left corner. Yes, a clear violation of efficient use of space, but I needed my "Round Tuit" to come back into town to assist such an endeavour. I suppose I could have perused the Craiglist in search of a new-to-me dishwasher or gone to see our guy Len as he's got the barn full of stuff and probably a dishwasher he's keen to sell too. (More on him in another post).

Besides, isn't that why one has kids around but for doing the dishes? Bah...storage space makes my toes curl more than the idea of a new dishwasher. I just have to make a curtain to go over it to keep the dust out.

Of course I am coveting the idea of one day getting new cabinets for these are thrashed and in need of replacement.

And falling under the category of a Tana-happy-project is this funky torchiere lamp that I picked up at an antique store in New Westminster. I paid $10 which cleaned up one can find ugly ones for around $175 minimum. But it is destined for my office at work when it gets done. I've been stripping down the metal and it is a mix of brass and pot metal so some of it will get re-painted and I will just polish up the rest of the brass.

It takes one of those Fat Albert bulbs in the top. Those tend to be pricier than regular bulbs but I like the tri-light functionality. Popping the three light part off turned out easier than expected and you can see the durn thing doesn't work too.

Yup, that grotty wire is going and I will replace it with proper insulated stuff. Here is a project Dad would have loved to help with but they skipped out too early for me to add this to his list. That's OK, I'd just as soon do it me-self.

In my "infinite" brilliance however I took apart one of the lights too "joyously in my journey of discovery" when I should have just left it as is. I lost a fine screw when it fell of my work bench, between the boards in the floor and into the river underneath. I have an alternate screw but I'll have to grind off the business end for it is a wee bit longer than the one I lost. Sigh.

And here are some wee babies. Yup, I think these are the same batch of swans Rhianna saw as there are eight babies here too. Mama swan gave me a wee nip in the upper arm when she thought I was getting too close to her babies.

And it was finally wee skiffy's turn for a buff and polish. Greig thought it should be renamed and put out the call for new names but nobody came up with anything more brillant than the name it has already. I think wee skiffy has been with us now some four years. It didn't come with that arch and some time ago Greig had Wei Tang weld it on for us over at Mitchell but getting round to painting it never came to fruition. I felt we were always going to call it wee skiffy and that it should be kept. And so I won.

There is a pile of sand leftover from the hydro installation so when the innards of the boat was still tacky I had Greig get a bucket of sand from the pile and we scattered it onto the wet paint for anti-slip. Oh yes the fancy boatyards like Arrow use crushed glass for that function but we aren't at all fancy down here on the Fraser river Bayou. Just regular dirt please. A second coat made it all really purdy...I printed out and made a stencil for the name on the bow and...

And speaking of purdy don't Miss Stacey (she is mama to Payton, Dyllon and Denis Jr.) look grand in the new life jacket? We lost a bunch when the Goblin sank last winter during last winter's Cold Snap from Hell. Still need more. They are on the list.

And away they go!

Fresh cruising season

2009-06-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago had us getting back into the charter season groove on Eloquent. It was a glorious, but windy day and a wee bit bouncy on the chuck. I think the first cruise was a burial at sea or some such thing. The last burial we did a few weeks previously had the family members all screaming at each other. Thankfully only English Bay that was dramatic that day.

Alas it was so windy my voice on the recording is totally lost. Bah, I probably wasn't really saying anything of significance anyway. But I think you can see from the rise and fall of the railing an idea of the swell height. Nobody barfed. Three stars!

And as we were leaving the dock on the first cruise we saw a few notable things. The first boat is the Lazy Gal and every time Greig sees it he practically drools. He HEARTS that boat large. I do believe it is a Chris-Craft. And soon after a Monk cruised by. It was really the first nice day we've had here in the city after such a long wet spring and it was a bit busy.

We came out of our docks at False Creek and went round Stanley Park (click here to see a Map of Stanley Park) into Coal Harbour. HRH Prince Edward just was in town doing a dedication. (I'd post the link but it doesn't seem to be working yet.)

Just taking his snake for a wee bit of exercise

2009-06-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

On Monday, when everyone else was sick from the heat, we had a gem of an opportunity to do some family fun. Bui had a professional day and was off from school as did Dosha. This rarely happens that we are all off together. Neither Greig, Bui or I had been to Buntzen Lake and so I decided we had to go for the afternoon to see what it was like. I knew that it would have been stupid busy on the previous day for many folk from Coquitlam, Burnaby and Port Moody go up there and it is crazy on weekend.

Bui and Dosha were playing catch just at the water's edge and suddenly screamed when she got started by this fellow taking his snake for a bit of exercise. Funny though as she says she likes the critters but she caught the attention of everyone on the beach when she yelped.

"Gee," laughed Greig, "I actually never thought I'd see the day to witness my daughter walk on water!"

At first I didn't notice that there was only the one snake but there was another up by his neck.

What we found particularly funny is that off to the right of this photo is a partitioned part for people and there dogs. An otherwise lovely thing for not the constant barking of one dog all afternoon. I was amazed at how many on the beach were offended by this fellow out with his snakes. They were quite under control and came to him when he called to them. Best of all they didn't bark either. Funny that.

Off with the tarp!

2009-06-04T11:06:00.001-07:00

Denis Jr, and his gal pal Rowan prepping the wood for Denis Sr.

We've been waiting for a good bout of weather to rip off the tarp and go hard on the roof. Seems like I took my first batch of vacation at a good time too for the weather is screaming hot (breaking records of 41C in the Fraser Valley. Alas the first day off roofing was about 33C and we were so unused to it that the next day had everyone hurting from heat/sunstroke. Well almost everyone as it seems I managed to escape it. Fortunately, the proceeding day gave Denis Sr a breeze so it made all that all so much more tolerable.

Here Denis Jr. and his mum Stacey work on finishing off the sheeting. It has been
partially done since April of last year as Greig started this a week or
two before we did the haul out.

Plastic sheeting covering the bed and Denis Sr. raised the skylite so it can
be removed when we feel like doing so.

I've lived under tarps of various storts for some six years. Once lived for a bit without one but that didn't last very long. I've had a tarp on the floatie for pretty much as soon as we got it for it leaked so bad. I don't know what it is like to not have one on it. Turns out, it is pretty bright.

Greig looking at the beautiful roof and thankful he's not
doing it.Those redhead's can't take the heat very well.

Here Miss Rowan and Stacey take a break on the back of the Express to
do Stacey's hair. A wee bit of roofin' and some hair-doo-in' in between...

It is almost done. Denis Sr. is putting down the last bit of middle as I write and I'll post the finals when it is all done. It looks beautiful and we've added a hatch to get up onto the roof so we won't have to get onto it from the back. I think that I will put down a floating deck so we can put a few chairs up there for it is a primo tanning spot. We have to suss out a proper drip edge for around the front as we've got a slight curve to it all. To have it done for that width would cost more than all the roll on put together. I think we can come up with an alternative that is far cheaper.

Spring and summer do list

2009-05-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

(I have been trying to write this post for about a week now. I thought I would try using newest version of MS Word and try directly publishing from it into Blogger but it didn't work and made a hell of a mess in the back end code. Furthermore it wouldn't publish. Not very impressed Mr. Bill.)

I am a gardener's daughter. Spring comes and I get the itch to dig. Not as bad as my dad does but I do know I come by this urge naturally. Some of the contained plants have survived and some not. The nettle is growing amok in the pots and it has no intentions of waiting for me.

I had great ambitions of growing some hanging tomatoes (not cherry ones, something a bit bigger) and the topsy-turvey bags look a bit stupid to me. Plus there had been a re-call on the things. A cheap and cheerful old pail will work just as well and is certainly more substantial. My ambition got ahead of me and I curtailed myself a bit when I thought of WHERE I would hang then and realized I'd have to ask my landlord about that too. And while he didn't say, "No" to my green intentions, his suggestion for an alternate location had potentially too much work when I've already enough.

And I wondered why it is that I set myself up? I have all these THINGS I want to do and then I complain about not having enough time for other stuff and the plain and simple truth is I just take on too much. It is actually more of a priority to fix the things on my float house this year than it is to ensure I have a nice yield of tomatoes. Besides, there is always next year.

In the meantime, the needs of the float house scream at me a I've got a rather ambitious list to tackle.

Here is the slide show instead.

Muddy Waters, redux

2009-04-28T09:56:00.001-07:00

The freshet is running again and Brian Lewis in today's Vancouver Province Newspaper had another article about dredging of the lower Fraser River. Of course they always talk about the main channel from the Surrey/Delta docks and it is all the other channels they neglect. There other stakeholders along the mighty expanse of the Fraser and they too are at risk. It is Buck Passing 101.

"He also says the lack of secondary channel-dredging is reaching the point where it's about to impact tourism -- especially Delta's emerging plans to redevelop Ladner Harbour as a major tourist destination. "

"They want to make it attractive, with shops, parks and picnic sites. But the fact is that a Fraser River mud bank is not something that's attractive for tourists to look at."

Ladner, New Westminster, Richmond are only a few of the communities affected by it all though they are the most downstream of it all. Oops and Vancouver too...

Why oh why does it take having to swing the tourism bat for anyone to take it seriously? Stakeholders all along the river have been jumping up and down for years about this. It seems easier for the Port Authority to go picking on individual lease holders to make this right without having to do their part in any of it. It is my observation that it loves to sling the mud it refuses to take responsibility for.

Anyhow we will see how this run off will effect us for we're new in this spot. I tell you though I certainly don't have to contend with the logs that we used to at Mitchell and I don't miss that one bit.

Maybe they'll surprise me.

Floating around in the gyre

2009-04-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I adopted my cat Tobias from my friend Sparrow who, forty-something and single with a grown child, decided to go walkabout. Her family is Hungarian (though she was born in Canada) and thus, that was her first destination. She has since made her way back to North America by way of Italy, the Caribbean, and now hangs her hat at the Pidgeon Point Lighthouse Hostel where she currently works. Yes she's indeed a bit of a gypsy. She's been making it in the news lately for her discovery of a rig worker's hard hat that wound up on the beach near the lighthouse. She managed to track the owner of the hard hat down too and is getting some 15 minutes of fame from it. The Anchorage Daily News published this, and CBS Morning news has been calling her too.

I had never heard of the Pacific Subarctic Gyre, and this is a pretty neat map to what that looks like too.

Kitchen Chemistry 101

2009-04-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Sir Seb of the Wendy Ann II for his simple way to clean portholes, I've been putting his method to work in a solution of cola and vinegar for a week or so. Of course they say the real thing is the bomb for cleaning anything that way but I was filling up a garbage bin so I opted for the cheaper no-name variety. He soaked his for a month or so but I don't think it will need to take so long really. And I twelve or so portholes to clean-up to mount into new construction.

These came from the Bowie as we had taken them out before selling it at the end of the summer as they were starting to get ripped off by the crackheads and others over there. At the time it was best to remove them for at least we'd keep them as intact as possible, the provenance. notwithstanding, they could at least go from one WWII subchaser to another WWII subchaser. We had negotiated to return them in the sale pending that the new owner would return a few other things off the Bowie but he failed in his end of the bargain. (Of course we should have known we had yet another wanker on our hands. Did I mention that we found out much after that he was was a convicted pedofile? Yup. Really, how could we have known as we were so glad to just get OUT of there. Honestly, I couldn't dream this crap up if I tried.)

I've had stored them away in safe local and I dragged out a couple of parts the other day to finally have a go at them.

Here I started to chisel away at the old double-thicknesses of ply
before having the where-with-all to photograph.
Oh, and can I have a "YEA baby!" the new workbench?

I wanted to show just how thick that old Bowie ply was!
A double layer of REAL 1" thick. Seems true 1" ply you get these days is shy of a true inch.
Apologies for the overexposure as it was hard to photograph with the left and
hold the ruler with the right.

Cola and vinegar smells just de-lovely, and these were covered
in paint the day before.

These letters spell out Eloquent, the main charter vessel Greig CDs and engineers on and so I threw them into the sauce too. There are two sets of brass letters.
Oh how I love typography!

Here is a view after chipping away for two hours. This one is too big to put in the garbage bin though I had parts of it in a Rubbermaid bin which it stretched all to heck and I could only get a quarter of is soaking at a time.

The screws into it of course are flatheads and covered in paint. (I'd like to change those to Robertsons if I can find them to match). This is one of the larger portholes. Attempting to get a good turn on these is impossible for me as the metal is so soft and you can easily wreck the screw head. I think the sauce was doing a good job of delaminating the ply in what bits I was able to submerge. I figure I was making pretty OK time with all of it. I do enjoy picky chores like this for I putter and get in a meditative zone. Greig is dreaming up of a faster way to do all this. I had also considered doing slices through the ply with the sawzall blade and then chiselling the ply away. However, I couldn't figure out how to put a shorter blade in the sawzall as the one on it was 14" long and a recipe for me to slice off my hand.

I've been nursing a bad thumb for almost lobbing off the end off it with a mandoline cutting prosciutto and as it turns out, thumb. I had visions of another visit to the Royal Columbia emergency given my luck. There has been too much of that too lately I think they are getting far to familiar with us.

Shelter, skelter

2009-04-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

I was kind of surprised it took so long for the real estate bubble to burst. A couple of years ago I used to read a blog called van-housing here on Blogger. I quit reading it for a while and a while back discovered it was now only for "invited readers." I am not so interested it anymore that I feel I need to find a way to be invited. I quit reading as it all kind of became a bit repetitious and I no longer garnered any pearls of wisdom from it. That must have been about four years ago I think and I was just starting Waterlogged. The housing issue was somewhat concurrent subject for me and still is. They were trumpeting the bad loans Freddie and Fannie were lending out and how sooner than later it would all come crashing down. And so it did.

Gee. Surpise.

A few weeks ago I came across an article on the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Click on the photo will also take you to the his web site. I think I originally found it on Treehugger or the NY Times.
But whatever. Somewhere houses got stupid big and prices out of control too. I keep hearing about million dollar homes (pool, tennis courts, four-car garages) that are going stupid cheap too ($100-200k). And in this article of a of a couple of artists in Detroit going into rather dodgy and falling down neighbourhoods and picking up shacks for $100. Bravo to them I say. Where they are starting others will follow. They will clean up the neighbourhood and build a community. (Of course one day, the prices will go up again and the gentrification will follow and the artists will get pushed out for that is the circle of things isn't it?)

But let us get back to Jay Shafer and his tiny houses and living small. (Yes, I am adding a link on the non-boat blogroll). For when I click on his larger house plans I think of the Floatie and it's hull is about 52' by 20 feet (1040 sq feet). I haven't actually measured the footprint of the log house itself but I figure with the main floor and the loft I've about 700 square feet. Heck, maybe it is more but now I am curious so I will measure it later.

He's got plans of about that size at up to 837 square feet and of a foot print of 24' x 16' and three bedrooms. Well granted it is small but I think they are splendid anyway. I see new home builds all over the Lower mainland and they are still building huge houses that pretty much take up the entire lot and all homes it seems have a basement suite which they rent out to help with the mortgage.

Around these parts the land is often more valuble than whatever is sitting on it. Still as much as I may bitch about living on a boat, it is not so much as the lifestyle as it is the amount of boats we have that I chafe against. I just don't want to be responsible for what I perceive as more than enough. I keep pushing for a simplicty that seems a bit beyond the grasp. But we are now down to three so I guess I am leading the curve? Heck living in a small space forces one to keep on top of things and cull the stuff on a regular basis. Heck it is all I can do to clean up after myself let alone anyone else. I make a for lousy minimalist even though I try to be. Still it all forces one to at least try.

Hey Matt, any chances of slapping one of these puppies up in the rents/or in-outlaws' back forty? I think I could convice mine if I smiled sweetly enough to let my folks put up one of these in the lower forty. Of course if it was on wheels would totally OK for my Pa as long as his property taxes wouldn't necessarily increase. A "non-permanent structure," in the eyes of the tax assessor would probably be a make it a go.

Poor old Dos Amores

2009-04-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Another guster hit the coast yesterday with winds up to 70 km/h. Here is a photo of the Dos Amores on Sunset Beach just at the entrance into Granville Island. That is the Coast Guard hive behind in the back ground. I think this is a beautiful shot. I thought they had taken all its sails off last fall. Ah well, they were thrashed anyway. I snagged this out of the Vancover Province newspaper as I discovered it on page A4 this morning. (Photograph by Gerry Kahrmann of the Province.)

The Dos Amore ran around at the entrance to False Creek. Apparently Coast Guard had it under tow at some point but lost their grip and it wound up on the beach. It went a ground in the fall too. Alas we don't own it anymore but when something does happen they call Greig.

Its new owner, one of the many "Ken's" in our life, was planning on taking down to Point Roberts, WA, to do renovations. Of course he keeps turning to Greig for help on such matters. It had a heck of an accumulation of marine growth and the $800 tag for a haul out seemed too expensive to undertake a few weeks ago. Greig suggested Ken send a diver down with a shovel. Well, Ken took a shovel to the growth whist it was on the beach yesterday and managed to get most of it cleaned off. Cross that item off the list! Greig is a bit sad to have lost that anchoring buoy out in the bay for it was a handy thing to have there especially during the Celebration of Light.

I think though, it will be coming up to Sather. When the Sea Ferring goes in the next few days there should be room for it as there now.

Ken got it foated on the next tide and Greig took off late last night to help him secure it temporarily in the Creek, (aka False Creek.) It was way too windy to even think about bringing it up the river last night. Greig had been working but they cancelled all water taxi runs due to the weather. He started his evening off to go take one of the boats for a fuel run and the swells out coming out of the Creek were so big that the wind was lifting up on the bow as he was cresting over the wave. He turned it around and came home, sans fuel. I guess even some of the tankers out in the

Well that is two for two for the last 24. Any bets on what three will be?

Minor disasters 101

2009-03-31T16:52:00.000-07:00

I was about two blocks away from the marina when I got the call that Glen's boat (name unknown) that it was leaning over against the bow of the Express. He tells me it was one of the first diesel passenger vessels on the coast.

It has been here for some time. At 90' is 20' less than the Express. Ken has wanted it gone from here for some time for it sits betwixt his lease and the neighbours.

We had an exceptionally low tide yesterday which are expected all week. Thus, Espresso, as the girls call it, listed and fell over. You can see in this first pic the aluminum roof laying on the deck of the Express.

With a huge groan a racket it tipped over further and the Glenn's wheelhouse fell off completely.

Oh I felt just terrible for him! For in spite of its appearance he says it actually was running. It's a big straight eight Gardner. Additionally, I noticed he's got a Lister genset too and a whole bunch of mahogany, oak and cedar that I wanted to help him salvage last night. If only to throw up on the bow of the Express if just to keep it all from floating away on him. But he was so surprised that it actually tipped over that he was in quite a bit of shock.

Plus the rain started to pour on hard as the early evening wore on and as the tide came in to cover it. Greig got coverage for his water taxi shift and they went out to pick up a trash pump for it.

So by this afternoon he had it well in hand and pumped out and a big bunch of clean up to do. Funny that as when we moved the Express in we wanted to have our bow on the inside of him but he wasn't terribly keen to cooperate. Think he may have changed his mind now.

He's got a bit of a disaster on his hands to be sure. That said, I am moreover pleased for Glen that he's been able to pump this out himself for there was no way in hell I was going to let the bottom feeder that "happened" to sneek into the property yesterday, take advantage of Glen's misfortune. He's caused enough misery for enough people and so I took great satisfaction at throwing his backside off the property. The New Westminster Police constable on scene and I had a good chuckle over it too. (Rob, I was really wishing I had a few dumpster loads of carnivore manure to drive my point home to this person!)

Well it always seems to be this. Just when you think you'll have a moment of peace to do this thing or that, some minor disaster lurks just around the corner to throw a spanner into your plans.

Some technology I can do without

2009-03-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

For those of you who chose to Twitter take no offense but I am just not going to Twitter.

Ever.

Notwithstanding this hilarious video I have jacked from Leap's blog and it is reason enough for me to not be a Twit.

I am doing even less of all that on Crackbook these days. Really I am easy to find and if people really wanna know they can call, e-mail or comment here.

Go ahead. Say something nice. And who the heck are you and why are you here?

And now there are three

2009-03-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

At our peak we had six vessels and now we are down to three. We sold the Sea Ferring on the weekend and I have somewhat mixed feelings.

Recently we'd done such a good amount of work inside that I wanted to see it finished. However, our wants and needs have changed and we've been trying to pare down for sometime. At 72' it is a heavy beast and the responsibility for all these vessels has always weighed heavy on me. One or two are fine but I have other interests and find so much of this lifestyle puts the boat, or in our case boats and ships, in the forefront. Wee me was lower on the priority list. I felt a tremendous sense of relief when we sold the Bowie last fall and it was a step in the right direction. I had hoped it would have been a bit easier at the new locale and in many ways it beats the old one in spades. However, the winter and the whole shore power stupidity really took a toll on us. I was beginning to have my doubts that old habits and expectations would rear its ugly head at me again.

Really, if I wanted to be a social worker I'd have gone to school for it. So why choose it as a lifestyle choice? I suppose I wanted to be the supportive girlfriend and things snowballed so much. Boy though, is it ever hard to extricate oneself from such a role try as one might.

It isn't going far, just up the river a bit. The reality is the bigger they are the harder they are to sell...or give away even, especially given the current economy. It is $400 a month moorage that we don't have to spend or improve upon and moreover, to be responsible for. That someone bought it AND they are taking it away?

Ding, ding, ding!

A door ajar

2009-03-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

Lately there has been a wee mystery. I keep going into the bathroom and finding the shower door ajar. It's odd for you can close it an it latches with a friction fit just fine. I like to keep it closed because if a boat does go by, I fear it swinging back and smashing up against the side of the toilet.I thought with all the kids here they were just forgetting to close it but I can't blame them. It isn't so much of a worry now but potentially will be when warmer weather brings more boat action in the neighbourhood. I fear it smashed and glassy bits all over the floor.

Tobias, aka "kitty PLUS," whom I adopted from my friend Sparrow when she went AWOL to Hungary, is the culprit. Seemingly a bruiser weighing in at 15lbs, he's a lousy mouser with a wonderful disposition. The vet only thinks he's a pound or two overweight but otherwise not really "fat." He's a pretty chill cat that has a tiny squeeky voice and he likes to body slam you and get his butt slapped hard. I mean really hard. Who know big Toms loved that?

Please excuse me while I pick my backside up off the floor...

2009-03-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

Crazy Jack emailed me that he just got married...and they are pregnant. Which normally would be not that shocking but Jack is some 74 years of age and has several grown children already who are in their late 20's and early 30's too.

His email to me:

we got married on valentine's day
got pot
got rum
got vodka
got borshcz
got coffee and tea
got pregnant
now, bloody honeymoon is over and got to get to work, buy a land, house,
red truck
do you guys feel like coffee or something on st patrick's?

elena still has a condo on 821 cambie, # 708, corner of robson till april

but we are packing for a gig out of town, marina or fishing lodge or a ship
and i am giving my notice at the end of the month.
mike, the movie maker is now a vancouver cop.
mark has signed a tour with NO HORSES across caNADA AND us.
PLS advise when safe to visit, snow and power outlook still looks bleak in new west.

shalom
jack & Elena 1

Now Jack came to live with us on the Bowie and to say he was a character was an UNDERSTATEMENT. I actually found him rather disgusting at first but he grew on me. He was a pain in the ass but still Greig and I grew fond of the silly bugger. He's a civil engineer, major bullshit artist, polish, chain-smokin' coffee drinking...a plethora of health problems. He once had called for an ambulance and when the lads came to take care of him, asked them for a cup of coffee. Of course, that request quickly prompted the crew to leave.

Jack is the kind of crazy that just starts talking to you about stuff out of the blue and often completely out of context so you always found yourself shaking your head trying to understand what the heck exactly he was on about. Usually it took a moment or two to catch up to speed. He did this intentionally to see what kind of a rise he could get out of you. I think it was to give the impression he was crazy but he was really anything but. I am convinced that for him it was sport to get his digs into some of the guys around there. Much of it on the lesser intelligent ones, hell even the more intelligent one would get so apoplectic! He'd have me howling with laughter sometimes. Did I say he kinda looked like death most of the time? Like some kind of Transylvania grim reaper with a Cheshire cat grin. ~~I actually have a photo of him somewhere lounging on the hood or roof of a hearse. I'll have to dig that out.~~ FOUND IT!

Now the funny thing in all of that when my Mother met him, she LOVED him. He had this deep, smoky eastern European accent and if I ever saw my mother swoon at the sound of a man's voice I am sure she did that the first time she met him. She's so easily swayed...

Jack could stir the pot easily with the other tenants as he was rather set in his ways. He and Evil Mark would have screaming matches over the state of the galley and well, pick anything. Mark once threw a stapler at his head and smeared butter over the doorknob to the his bedroom. Really, it was rather infantile but such was the nature of communal living. Though from what we've experienced, nobody really does that particularly well.

Well then, I suppose it is time for a cocktail party for the happy couple. Wonder if I could get anyone to come...

Spanky new salon walls

2009-03-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

Well it has begun to look like a salon again! Here are some mid-progress pictures of the salon on the Sea Ferring. The exterior walkways that used to go down either side have been eliminated and made for more room. There were side windows that we couldn't salvage, but anyone who ever lived in there covered them up anyway so apparently these were redundant.

Also too, there was lovely cabinetry and storage is gone for the time being. We can build more for there at some point but for now this will do. The sky light has been elevated and in the photo directly below and to the right of that speaker was the nasty spot that was constantly leaking and wet. We've made allowances to put in another couple of sky lights if need be but I would like to put some recessed lighting in the ceiling in the next few months.

Ah it smells so much better in there now. Above the garbage can in the ceiling there is a small hole that leads to the upstairs area of the entrance, galley and bathroom. We are going to make that hole just a bit bigger and put in a fan to move the air about. I think a simple bathroom fan will suffice.

Here is a merged photo of the salon looking forward. Yes, I know it is a bad photo-stitching job but you get the idea which is moreover, the point. Behind the plastic in the doorway is a substantial sized v-berth and we are going to put two bunks in there with below bed storage, plus another ladder for a secondary escape hatch from below decks. That woodstove gets it cooking in there in nothing flat. Behind it Denis Sr. has utilized the exisiting bricks to make a wood storage spot. Over on the right there were also bricks for more storage. These are being removed and in that spot we'll build a small built in armoire of sorts.

I've seen a bunch of the UK bloggers using what they call "rockwool" insulation. Denis Sr. and I discovered some at the Home Depot and while spray insulation would have been nice it was way too expensive. I had thought of a rigid foam - also way to expensive and it just didn't have the R-value that we thought was necessary. It is called mineral insulation here - I can't think of the brand name off hand now. We didn't want traditional fibreglass insulation either for it just becomes infested with mold. The package claims to say the material won't grow mold so and if you pour water on it it rolls right off the surface. So we gave it a whirl. It is nicer to use as the fibreglass is so nasty to work with. We're holding off on insulating the ceiling for a bit too whilst we save up to finish this all off.

The Greg Burger is no longer on the menu

2009-02-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

The LT Cafe (L referring Lucy, Tim's wife) was this greasy spoon upstairs at Northern Building Supply. When we lived over on Mitchell, we purchased many supplies from this family owned business as it was sometimes cheaper than the Home Depot. It is quite the compound with its hodge podge of buildings and lean-tos and a bit of a maze to get around in. We preferred to shop there as the Thomas family is a South East Vancouver institution. It was pretty much the cafeteria for the employees and often as not Bert Thomas Senior 90+, was at the table with Junior. Though doubled over with osteoperosis, the Senior Thomas made daily rounds and still drove and we'd often see them all lunching there.

So Greig went to visit today and found this...

Greig often visited Tim at the LT Cafe and they made great sport of each other, chatting about the politics of the day, Greig the Democrat to Tim the Republican. A bit of a silly business since they're both Canadian...well, maybe Tim's not come to think of it. I guess their "problem solving" got a bit heated at times. Probably about the time in the convo that Greig threw in his various conspiracy theories too which would push Tim over the edge.

Tim had a burger on the menu called the Greg Burger and it was HUGE! Funny though as Greig found it often too much, even for him. Yes, he did name it after him though the spelling was a bit off.

So it was with sadness that Greig discovered it closed today. Tim had one of Greig's acting headshots on the wall and though you can't tell in this photo, it is beside the photo of Don S. Davis, a character actor whose name isn't so recognizable as is his face.

Here's to Tim and Lucy and the LT Cafe and the Greg burger forever resting in grease...er peace.

So proud [sniff]

2009-02-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

A lovely milestone has just occurred for my blog friends restoring the Wendy Ann II over in the UK and mutual blog friend Tim, owner of the Lady Jane, has posted pictures of Seb and Becky tug taking the big plunge. I've been following them along for several years now on their journey at restoring a nearly scrapable tug. I am so happy for Seb and Becky making such a milestone. Bravo!

Here is the link to Tim's Wendy Ann II Flikr gallery. Oh Happy Day!

Sea Ferring Demolition & rebuilding

2009-02-09T21:39:00.000-08:00

With Mama and Papa Laliberte on the Sea Ferring, and Papa being an unemployed carpenter, we set about ripping apart the Sea Ferring just after Christmas. Heck of a time to do so but the Laliberte's were total keeners and well, what else were we going to do anyway but keep on renovating?

It was something I've wanted to tackle for sometime but the round tuit's never materialized. It perpetually smelled terribly musty and moldy in there and, notwithstanding the constant leaks too that it all became TIME to do it.

There were two walkways down the side that were the prime collectors of water. I wanted those eliminated as the windows always got covered up and we had a huge 5'x5' skylite in the centre. I figured we could always add more skylites if we wanted to in the future anyway. The interior had lovely panelling work that had been a light oak colour and got re-stained in a darker reddish mahogany. I saved as much of the oak mouldings and trim to put back on it when the walls go back up and we're flush enough again to do so too.

We've now replaced the roof and we're finally sealing it up again. New walls are going up and we're adding more electrical outlets and potlites for the ceiling. So, here are some of the before pictures.

And some more progress shots here. I took these a couple of weeks ago when we were all socked in with the fog. There are some neat shots here.

Its the Fluff & Fold

2009-02-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

Well one small miracle is with hydro we've now got....laundry facilities!

Woot! Woot!

Now as much I love Moon Sic and his much beloved technique of Underwear Origami, I confess I am glad to be back doing my own laundry...willy nilly...whenever I feel like doing a load.

There is still some re-organizing in there to do but the water is on and the machines are good to go and functioning.

Baby steps. Yea us!

Gone in a Flash

2009-01-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

When our friend and roommate Dave Franey passed away back in August of 2007, our friend Karen wrote him a song. She sang it for his family during the service that we did on the Eloquent but the quality of that video that I shot was too poor to post.

She recorded this again back in April of 2008, and I kind of forgot about it as we got so busy moving boats and relocating to the new marina. I found it again when cleaning up photos and files on my computer and Karen has put it up on her Youtube spot. Really I can't watch it without bawling and it is far and away the most beautiful rendition of it she's done yet.

Foggy bottom days

2009-01-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

*Update (01/26/09)- This photo is making the rounds on e-mail and Crackbook of our now lifted fog bank over the City of Vancouver, taken from Cypress Mountain at dawn. I have no idea who the photographer is so I have no idea how to credit him/or her. Too bad they didn't watermark the image.

Well, we got the big chill and now we're suffering through the big fog. Really for a port city it is rather surprising that we don't regularly have this kind of fog that we do. That said, it is a bit unusual for Vancouver proper. (Have at look at the Kat Kam link on the boat links to view the current conditions.)

The other night, I went out one evening on a run on the water taxi and English Bay was glass and the city was glorious but we came around Point Atkinson, en route to Bowen Island and hit a big fog bank. Greig is trained in navigating through fog but I found it completely unnerving and would find the stress of doing so on a daily basis for days on end a bit beyond the pale for me. That he is one of the only captains managing to maintain the schedule with only a five minute deviation is a testament. The conditions are horrible out there. He says there is lots of noise on the Vancouver Traffic channel and they are really earning their wages out there these days.

He went in to fill in on one shift the other day and had a family on board. The were a bit unnerved too with the visibility at zero. So, to ease their anxiety they started singing campfire like songs. Apparently the tune went a bit like...

No death today,No death today,
NO death today,No death today!!

As always I am forever facinated by the tools with which some people manage to cope with stressfull situations. I think humour is always the best way too.

I feel the same way too!

2009-01-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

The Ubyssey is the student newspaper for the University of British Columbia. A colleague sent me a link to this very clever letter and I found the link to it on their website.

The Breakup Letter (Dear Snow)

Oh I feel the same way too!

Bandiditos!

2009-01-05T13:47:00.001-08:00

They came...

...and they made a hell of a mess.

Final Seasons's Bleatings (or the Big Chill of '08)

2009-01-03T21:18:00.000-08:00

The Silly Season seems to be finally winding its way down. 2009 is going to be much better than '08. Oh and I've a few pics from the last few weeks. We've had the our other daughter's Payton's family with us for the last couple of months as they lost traction for a while and have been helping us maintain ours. We are managing to maintain all our mutual sanity together too.

Accomplished:
1. shoveled snow
2. thawed pipes,
3. kept a genny running,
4. kept bellies full
5. kept boathouses (yes plural) from ripping asunder or sinking all together
6. righted collapsed tarps
7. on-going finishing of the roof on the floatie
8. Mmm....shortbread! Butter tarts!

Many thanks for having us over for Christmas Eve Kat and Co. Oh and New Years too.

And the best thing in this mess of photos is...

Three guess as to what he's helping bring...oh yes a belated Christmas wish for ME! Well, not JUST me but for all of us. YEA!

Shut down!

2008-12-22T08:19:00.000-08:00

Sunrise this morning, looking toward Annicis Island, from our galley window.

We're officially having a winter here on the south coast AND a white Christmas. As is the thing when snow hits, it throws the whole place into a tizzy. This is the view from the kitchen window this morning. Check out our icebergs! We didn't get slammed again as it has warmed up to a balmy -3C this morning.

We ventured out into the neighbourhood yesterday. Tried to pick up some LED christmas lights at the Walmart but they were sold out. Reports on those trying to get around on transit were dismal. Some had to wait over 2 hours for a bus that never came. We saw one lone snowplow around Queensborough but I bet it was a private outfit.

So, Dillon and I made Butter Tarts (hey, I am Canadian after all) and shortbread cookies. We had much fun as this is the first time in many years since I've ever had any time to make Christmas cookies. Dillon rolled and decorated the cookies, which is the part I like the least.

Tobi supervised...

The water didn't freeze overnight either...

The news is urging people to just stay home if at all possible. We made it through the night without frozen pipes too and we figure we must have at least eight inches on the docks here.

Here are some more pics.

Playing icebreaker in Wee Orange Skiffy.

2008-12-20T10:43:00.001-08:00

We froze up again last night and so we set about to get that all thawed and moving again first thing. The whole line didn't completely freeze this time so it was a bit easier to get it all up and inline again. Once again, rather than putting on pants he just doubled-up on the bathrobes and helped me start the wee portable genset so I could get heaters on the hoses thawing in the garbage can.

I dutifully called my mother to report in on our status here for she is freaking out and worried sick. I've gotten used to this with her for she ascertains its her job. They've got -18C in the interior and were sitting at -12C.

Of course she's is doubly-freaked out and worried because the news is saying that the Fraser River is currently completely unmanageable and won't it slice through our lines and have us drifting out into the river. Well, were a bit frozen in place, Ma.

Anyhow, it really never get that cold in this part of the world that we have a bunch of icebreakers about or on standby.

I reiterated that newsy bit to Greig and he said, "HOOEY, I can get out there and break up that ice with the wee skiffy!"

I said, "No you can't!"

"Watch me! Get the camera!"

So here goes him. Too bad you can't see his the big fat smug look on his oh-so-self-satisfied face. Crazy Viking!

All he needed was a ice-skier to pull behind him and don't think he wouldn't do it either.

Ice, ice baby

2008-12-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

So as I have been posting for the last week or so, it's kinda cold. How cold is it? Well, take a look. I am lucky I had had the forethought to grab my camera. Keep in mind this is a slower incoming tide. We'll be on yellow to red alert on the outflowing tide.

Oh, and please excuse my Captain's (actually our) salty tongues. It was a dramatic moment! And it was a bit like from the movie, Day after Tomorrow.

Tuesday's full of...ICE!

2008-12-16T22:58:00.000-08:00

Yup, we left a tap running as is our habit all these winters of living on a boat. Still at -16C the darn thing still froze up on us. The whole works froze all the way up to the shut off valve up on the road. Greig brought in the hoses, stuffed them in a garbage can and brought the whole works inside. We took one of the little electric heaters and threw that in the can to thaw the hoses out. Greig went to check on the connection there and it burst apart on him. All in all it was a wee chore.

The connecting valve here on the float house was all frozen too. I took my hair dryer, layed it beside the valve and draped a bucket over the works for a few minutes to get that thawed out. All in all we had water again by 3:30pm. It is still freakin cold and has started to snow again. This cold front is to remain with us until after Christmas I expect.

Minor Sunday morning disasters

2008-12-15T21:57:00.000-08:00

We are working hard trying to stay warm for another winter. Our first blast arrived on Saturday night with snow throwing the lower mainland into a complete tizzy. It turned cold by Sunday morning (-6 Celsius) and I woke up to the sound of gushing water again. This time a hose connection entering into the floathouse came apart. Inside damage amounted to the bulk of my clean towels on the shelves above the toilet getting wet.

Exterior only giving the outside of the house a good and thorough soaking and covering the bike and the breezeway there in a fairly solid layer of ice. Motivations to take the wet towels to the laundromat quickly fizzled due to other chores so I just hung the whole mess of wetness over the upstairs railing in the loft. I've still some drying out.

It is so cold we have been running the genset steady. At 3am, it stopped and Greig got up to check it. Dressed again only in his bathrobe,* he decided it need an oil change on the spot.

Forecast is for the temp to go down to -16 C tonight and we are slated for snow on Wednesday and this chill is suppose to last another week or so.

*Many a emergency has occured where Greig is often found to bolt out of bed, donning only a his bathrobe and slippers to spend two to three hours tending to said emergency. After, and only after when things finally get "under control" he realizes that perhaps it is finally safe enough for him to put on pants.

Rumour has it

2008-12-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

The shore power may finally be coming! Could it be that I actually get my Christmas wish? Please, oh Shore Power God, say it so please!

We have a family staying on the Sea Ferring for the time being and they are adjusting to living on the water. The father is quite a land lubber and his wife is loving it. He's going through the adjustments and quite undecided about it all. The kids, well, their two oldest are quite used to this as they are best friends with Greig's kids and so we actually feel more comfortable with the kids in charge as they've been in training for a couple of years. They have stronger sea legs, not that serious sea legs as much as a different mindset than on land.

We've been on that diesel genset for about a month and it suddenly started leaking oil. Greig picked up a cheap (*$850) gas genset from Walmart and promptly had to return that for another as it crapped out within the first 48 hours. He's taken the King back to KMS tools to see the what/where/why of this oil leak. (And Tim, you're probably right as it may be a piece if crap genset too for it works but poo's out oil.) Alas, Big Cheese had asked our guests on the Sea Ferring to plug his two sport fishers in occasionally as those bilges need pumping too but he didn't tell them HOW MUCH pumping would be required (nor did he chip in for fuel) and so guess what happened? Well, it didn't entirely sink, just all the new mechanical. Sigh. Well, if he wasn't so stubborn and cheap about getting that shore power in that would have been less likely to have happened 'cos his boat would have been plugged in!

Our man about shore, Len, says he over heard the Big Cheese on the phone the other day finally doing the deal and ordering the power. Yes, we know he's been blowing us off for months on this issue. Back in June we even told Big Cheese that we would pay for the shore power mast etc and since then we've paid that in bulk diesel in generators and so it seems like a waste of resources but such as it is in this boating life.

The Malacite has gone back down the river today as it does have a few charters for the meager amount of Carol Ships that are booked until Christmas. These are totally down over last year and I am so glad Greig has the new job. Phew. It will be back up again in the new year until the spring or depending how bookings go.

Here is hoping I can solely rely on electricity to heat the boats - enough so they are all relatively warm. There will be much more hydro available to us here than there ever was on Mitchell Island.

Life and good times with the Goblin

2008-11-28T20:42:00.000-08:00

We sold another boat! Yipee. The Green Goblin, is a 22' Fibreform and we called it that 'cos it was green and gobbled up the gas. We had many lovely times on the Goblin. Enjoy Andrew!

Greig's daughter Dosha, aged 9, Aug 2005, coming back from an afternoon on Wreck Beach.

And his son Bui, 12 here and in this picture I could see the
handsome young man he was becoming.

I know I have more pictures of us playing on the Goblin, but most of them were pre-digital camera. Fun times.

Tips for new paupers

2008-11-16T18:37:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, Matt in Portsmouth, NH, kindly sends me an email or a link to something interesting. It was completely depressing given the current state of my health* at the moment but I've read it several times and felt the need to share. Apparently some elements in this article, reminded him of some of the things I have written about in this blog. That said, both Greig and I had to nod our heads in agreement with the writer, John Dolan. Yes, there is a mention of boats in the article too.

Favorite bits:

"They’re flinchy people, mainly, who spend a lot of time waiting for things. When you’re waiting, you get very frustrated but you don’t want to shake things up. So they’re tense, bitter, sociable, gossipy and treacherous—a fine cross-section of the population."
"They’re not going to mug you. They are going to try to get any cash you have, and God did they get a huge chunk of our last resources, but it was friendly, schmooze-based extortion, just like in the middle-class world."
"Tom Cruise can go fuck himself. Prozac saved our lives. I won’t go into the sordid details but really, I don’t think we’d be here now if Saint Prozac hadn’t extended a sacred hand to us.
"If you want a break from the relentless olfactory fact of being around unwashed large mammals, sidle up to somebody who smokes. That’s the one good thing about cigarettes, and it may be why losers all smoke. Don’t smoke just for that, though. Cigarettes are insanely expensive and turn lots of poor people into cringing beggars."
"The old world is very much alive, and has it in for you. Do anything to keep it from killing you."

Thanks Matt!

*(I am recuperating from 2.5 months of various and sundry antibotics for a strep/bladder infections which has turned out to be Mononucleosis. I had been taking Cipro but had a terrible reaction and handed the pills back to my doctor. It has really thrown my liver out of whack, given me killer migranes, nausea and the lymph nodes in my neck, particularly the left side are swollen out the wazoo.)

"Wake up!"

2008-11-11T18:56:00.000-08:00

"You're sinking," he said. It was 5am.

"Oh crap," I bolted up out of bed, my fevered brain bouncing inside my skull with a solid thunk.

Gawd. It just doesn't bleedin' end! One thing after another. Well, I wasn't really sinking but I was taking on water. And this is a weird one.

I have two black tanks for this boat. I have no where to pump these black tanks to so they are bypassed. This black tank on the port side was dribbling out a steady stream of water from the 4" drain pipe and into the hold. It isn't connected to any of the interior plumbing and there is no where it could fill from the out drain. So where was the water coming from?

"Let's just get a pump in it and then just go back to bed and sleep and we'll finish this off when I get home later," Greig said, as he was off to drive for the new Granville Island Water Taxi.

What happened was the 1" vent pipe that leads from the top of the tank through the hull must have got below the waterline enough to and siphon enough back into the black tank, causing it to over flow even though it sits above the water line.

I literally didn't have the boots for this but I needed a pair of gummies anyway. And I needed Tylenol and ginger ale. When you are sick, as I have been for this past week, you don't always have the luxury of just ignoring things. Especially when the other half is working on another boat across town. Besides, he is too big to try and contort himself into that hole, bend over that cross brace and stuff a shoulder up under that rafter and twist around to get at that pipe clamp behind the black tank. Ya, baby, fun times with old poopy water dripping on you. (Some men find that hot apparently). Ah well, plumbing is one of those blue chores I don't mind tackling normally but when I am sick it makes me a big weepy crybaby.

I pulled the spare bilge pump out of the port side engine hatch and stuck it in the forward leaky one and kept up with pumping it most of the day until I got the validation to fix what I thought had to be fixed.

I cut off that vent pipe and stuffed a cork in it and clamped it up. I'll shop vac out that hold when I am feeling better and figure out a way to get all that water out of that tank. I don't need the extra weight in my bow.

That all said, old poopy water isn't as bad or toxic as old gasoline gone bad. I will take the former over the latter in a heartbeat!

All I want for Christmas is shore power.

2008-11-06T15:34:00.001-08:00

Much to our chagrin and desperation, we bought a diesel genset. And a schwack of fuel from Mini-Tankers.

The first one (6000KW) ran fine (after we got it home and lugged it down the dock and into boathouse) but it produced no juice. We lugged it back over the dock and up the ramp again, and came home with a used 5000KW King.

The whole shore power issue is indeed tied up in property development and Big Cheese is trying to get plans for the electrical from his architect who is apparently not so johnny-on-the-spot with returning calls. But now at least it has met the approval stage from the City so it is in process.

All I want for Christmas is shore power.

Alas, I fell into a fevered sleep thanks to the onset of the latest bug I've caught and so I let the Nagata run out of fuel the other day. BIG MISTAKE. Greig has not been able to get that restarted and will take it in to KMS for a stroke and a tickle to get that back going.

Now our new (used) King, has a "silent" sticker on it but it is anything but. Greig was only able to get it half power up the floatie. We had to run an extension cord for the fridge into bathroom to run it. Hopefully if they build a generator shack on the dock those gensets can go in there and maybe we can shut a door on that racket.

In the meantime, the November misery has begun. I fell into another fevered reverie whilst he puttered about to get everything hooked up.

There is no way I could do all this without him. Well, maybe in a non-run-down-marina-with-real-infrastructure-and real-systems in place.

Maybe, but I live in lower Dogpatch.

One genny, two genny, three genny more.

2008-10-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

Last fall the Big Cheese had removed all the hydro service at the marina we're in presently, as he'd had so many tenants in arrears in moorage and hydro that he pulled it out. It eventually lead for most of them to leave and so thus, room for us. All summer he kept promising that it is going back in and the "six weeks" is now becoming six months.

For years he'd been between a bit of a rock and a hard place for the city had deemed the property and old barns historical and thus have been really restrictive on development. It had one time been a big boat building yard and they wouldn't let him renovate the barns. One of the barns burned down a couple of years ago and now only one remains, such as it is and so he has been waiting on approvals from various and sundry municipal and provincial officials to proceed with future development.

All summer I've used this big coffin of a cooler for a fridge. It is a pain as the lid is broken and it doesn't stay open properly and the fridge runs on electricity. I would LOVE a three-way unit (batt/electric/propane), and it is on the round-tuit list to look into the RV places and see if I can get one. My folks had to replace the fridge in their RV and found buying a used/reconditioned unit came with a better warranty than with new. That darn cooler has proven to become quite tedious for the constant need to keep ice in it and perishables perish quickly.

We made do for the summer for a little bit as we have a 4 kw gas generator that I can run lights and my computer. However you can't have too many heaters on the system as it just doesn't have the jam and it blows its breaker. The Malacite, which the Big Cheese recently sold to one of his captains, pulled into the marina for the next month or so. The Malacite, got a thorough going over as it had been damaged in this storm back in July. It was out for most of the summer getting a major makeover. Captain Mort bought it a month or so ago. It has a 18kw marine genset and with all the renovations to the vessel, Greig urged Mort that he should keep the Malacite heated or all that new wood work would soon go to crap - especially with the onset of a rainy winter. However, Mort didn't know that there was no shore power at Sather so Greig agreed to keep an eye on it and heated if we could tie into the genset on the Malacite and contribute for diesel. We're feeling frustrated that the Big Cheese keeps blowing us off where Hydro is concerned (but we aren't the only ones) as if he isn't or wasn't really going to get a new mast put in then it would be really nice if he'd just say so. We even offered to put the service in our own name just so he wasn't liable for the bottom line. I guess maybe because he owns the property that is a no-no.

Just additonal frustration on top of EVERYTHING else as we've been trying to clean up post-Bowie debacle and all the parasitical behavior therein. That said, there are things I can make do and live without, electricity being far more expendable than water and that was fine. FOR THE SUMMER. The saving grace is that at least I have water and a propane hot water tank and my stove is propane too. If those were all electric I'd have gone off the deep end. Camping has only so much cachet, for only so long in this miserable wet coast climate.

We've been looking at purchasing a genset to keep the three boats here heated. I told Greig to tell Big Cheese that I'd rather pay him moorage than have to go the the extra wasted expense of a genset just because he can't be bothered to put in a new mast. So Greig paid him this months in advance and he brought another back up genset down from the office for us to use.

We are already hauling down three kinds of fuel - propane for my stove and hot water tank; gas for that genset and kerosene for a big heater we're using in place of the wood stove. I am not using the wood stove for we just don't have a place to store wood nor do we have the same kind of access to firewood that we did on Mitchell. Besides, with all the firewood that we split over the past five years, we're both a bit grateful for the break. I do miss the fire though for it sucks up the humidity in the air like nothing else and I have noticed far more condensation on my boat that I've not had in the previous two winters on the Partnership. Everything in my cupboards has some condensation as well as the windows. I guess kerosene is a damp heat like propane. Still in all, none of it is all that efficient and I hate having to depend on those different fossil fuels. Though the kerosene heater is not like the hippie killers of old, it still sends out a puff when you light it and extinguish it and it, well, stinks! Belize is calling to me...

Greig spent yesterday setting up a bypass that we can run the boat off both the two gensets when we need to. I am not entirely clear on where the third one is going and how that will all pan out but I know he has a plan and it specifically entails getting the two-person hot tub on the Float house going We never used it really for we had the big one on the Bowie and I felt maintaining two was just silly. But Greig fell down a hatch last week and has been missing soaking especially now and so his priorities have shifted somewhat.

I just look forward to not having to listen to a bunch of generators going and only having to haul down ONE kind of fuel down icy ramps - propane for my floatie.

A three minute fairy tale.

2008-10-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

I read Swiss Miss daily. It is a pretty popular design blog and there is usually something clever to me there. She posted this link by the poet Rives from TED, another site that I love.

Most of the emoticons are a bit of a mystery to me and so I thought this is a pretty clever love story that had to be shared.

Just a little bit so my butt doesn't hurt tomorrow

2008-10-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

These familiar babies have been hiding in the back of my closet now for some 20 years. Yup. 20+ actually as I think Mum bought these during my last year of skating in 1985. Small town Canada has ice rinks out the Wazoo so most kids are pretty much born with these babies on their feet. Mum put me in skating to keep me out of trouble and teach me how to fail. Yes. That may seem like some twisted logic but she felt that we learn far more from our failures than our successes in this world and one must not be discouraged by failure.

My size nine Wifas with the then spectacular MK Phantom Blades cost my parents a pretty penny back in 1985. I think the boots must have been $350 and the blades almost that, then. I'll have to look and see what it would cost me to replace them today. I skated for 14 years and by the time I was 19, I'd had enough of skating. I felt there was so much more to do, like, say tennis, and that I should play it instead. I think that I've had these on my feet about three times since, the last time about six years ago when Greig and I first started dating. I still have a second pair back home with different blades that were for doing patch or figures (tracing figure 8s on ice). Do they even do figures in skating anymore? I was on of the strange girls that actually liked my patch sessions as I found them meditative and therapeutic. And after all these years, I've yet to take any real tennis lessons. Sigh...

I've a collegue who works in the Payroll Department at the College who's been trying to get me onto her Precision team for I've commitment issues. Last year they made it to Westerns. Probably not that big of a deal really when there may only be a handful teams in Western Canada (BC to the Manitoba border). It sounds impressive don't you think, being a part of a team that went that far holds some cashet for me.

Lorna on the Serenity (aka Peter) had me thinking I should try roller skates and do that Roller gurl thing with those Terminal City chicks but I've actually never roller skated in my life. Small towns don't have nearly the amount of sidewalks that cities do if any at all. Plus I as much as I'd enjoy bashing those bitches about, I've had enough of injuries and really, don't like hurting that much anymore.

So the skates are IN the closet and are waiting and it was always such great exercise for my butt and legs that regardless of Precision or bitch-bashing, skating is still skating and I better remember how. Tonight, I went to the tail end of the public skating session at the Moody Park Arena.

Arena's have that smell, like boats do; mildew and diesel. Guess that is why the boat smell didn't bother me - it was a familiar kind of comfort. All that residual Zamboni exhaust, the smell of the ice, sweaty skates and hockey bags.I can't smell pine cleaner without thinking of mildewy, guy-stinky- sweaty, uriney- hockey lockers. Nope, it is not a smell that makes me think, "Ooh so clean and sanitized!"

No sheet of ice that I have skated on is the same. They all feel different. Some sheets are faster than others. I always felt I skated fastest on the Nelson Rink. Some stick to your blades where others make you feel like you can skate faster. There was a technique in tying my skates so they wouldn't come undone too. I always skated bare foot and had a perpetual callus around the ankles where the top of the leather met my calves. I guess I never thought that after twenty years the foam tongue would eventually break down and turn gooey. It left blue bits on my ankles!

Still, I think I am motivated to deek out at lunch time from work and hit the rink for a nooner workout. Gosh, maybe there is hope I can get that skater's backside back again.

Vanity complete

2008-10-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

No, I am Joe the plumber. Of course it took far too long finish this project but now I am close to having a functioning vanity. It sure LOOKS purdy.

Instead of coming out from the wall, the drain and water comes up from the floor. I found the right double joint fittings and then realized I had to make another trip to the hardware for the right kind of ABS pipe to fit the actual drain from the sink. It all came together and then...

It leaked...from the sink drain...

Sigh. Perhaps it was the cheap plastic/nylon drain assembly? I have put a drain in a sink before and that came together easy peasy...what gives?

I picked up a metal one from Canadian Tire and it went in quick as you please.

No leaks. Yea me!

Drool..

2008-10-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

One of the first people I met having a website for the Bowie and also via the blog is my friend Rene from the Netherlands. He is a YMS (yard minesweeper) buff and for sometime had a web site dedicated to them for several years. (Until one day he forgot to renew the URL and it got scooped up by a granny porn site.) He just sent me a link to the Calisto, a YMS that charters out of Thailand. While the Bowie was a PCS (Patrol Craft Sweeper) class and there were only 57 built, the YMS or BYMS (British Yard Minesweeper) had some 500+ about. Over the years, I have stumbled across several YMS, but never any PCS. It seems the Bowie is the last of them and would LOVE to know if there are any others out there but chances are there aren't.

The Calisto is bleeding gorgeous! Oh and now with this dreary winter upon me and gazing through the site for it AND its location has me drooling...slurp. Alas all the white interiors is EXACTLY what I would have done to the Bowie had we ever really been able to do anything right about it. Of course, painting all that woodwork white is viewed as a crime to most of the sodding men out there but dark interiors are so depressing - especially in below deck spaces. If ever there was a prime example of WHY you should paint it white, well, the Calisto does it grand justice. Drool.

And it only charters for $84K a week. Sweet.

My cat is a Conehead

2008-10-12T20:40:00.001-07:00

I should have realized something was amiss before I left for Savannah. So, when I came home I realized poor Tobi was really ill.

He usually insists upon sleeping up by my head at night. So much so that I tend to leave a spot for him though he usually likes to stick his butt in my face when I'm sleeping. But on my first night back he stayed downstairs and didn't come up. He usually tries to body slam me regularly and he just wasn't his usual kitten-y self. I mean he is a bruiser at 15lbs but the usual Tobi-ness just wasn't there.

I noticed a scab on his side and that it was quite a bit swollen there and tender. He wasn't eating, not using his litter box as well as trying to constantly go in and out.

A nasty abscess was removed and he spent two nights at the "spa". Its is a vast improvement over the Tobi of two days ago. Now, I just don't know how I'll keep him inside. We're already arguing that point.

Crab cakes, shrimp and buttah

2008-10-09T08:31:00.001-07:00

I just got home from a conference in Savannah, Georgia. As luck would have it, our room at the Hyatt looked right over onto the Savannah River. Did you know it is the fourth busiest port in the US of A. I don't know who claims spots 1 to three but four seems a bit of an anti climatic posi to be in.

The first thing I saw when we looked out the sliding doors onto the river below was this big charter yacht, Magic. I never planned a life with boats...they just sorta happened and keep showin' up. Savannah is a beautiful city and I could live there quite easily there is this thing called "immigration." The weather was warm and lovely. So I don't shovel much snow up here on the coast but the climate here has grown quite tedious.

I need more heat. I am tired of trying to keep warm. Of course, I am a sucker for architecture and gardens as it was more of what I was "into" in life "B-G" (life before Greig). I could spend many, many hours walking up the side streets and looking at the gardens and buildings and gorging myself on crab cakes and shrimp.

Ya, that would suck wouldn't it?

Here are more pics!

Just how livid am i?

2008-10-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

So completely lived in fact that I just may go into an apoplectic rage.

For sometime I've not heard from our friend and former roommate Evil Mark. Out of the blue I got an email (Happy dance, he IS still alive) inquiring about the sale of the Bowie and things we not going well for him. He is unable to prove to the satisfaction of ICBC (Iky-Bicky aka, Insurance Corp. of British Columbia) and WCB (aka Worker's Compensation or now known as Work Safe BC) that he really truly did work for Dave. Some of you recall my post of the accident back in August 2007 that seriously rattled all of us down at Mitchell Island.

To bad Dave's dead and can't validate that salient fact either. But there are a bunch of us WHO CAN. Apparently pulling both their bodies from the wreckage of going off a bridge isn't evidence enough?

BAH! "Working to make a difference" my ass WCB.

Oh Splendide...I covet thee

2008-09-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

Your company's use of black letter in your branding platform aside, it's that wench on the Katherine Jane I choose to blame. Now I have something new to covet and the damn vanity isn't even installed yet.
GEEZ! I'll get no "new vanity high" from this at all now. Darn you Jamie!

You see as much as I dig on the Underwear Origami from the fair Moon Sic at Cheers Laundry, I tire of sloggin' bags of laundry hither and fro. I'd gladly ditch the service for something as cool as this.

I gotta find me one of these.

Greig's gantry and other improvements

2008-09-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

In order for us to bring the Pacific Express up to the new digs, we had to wait for a few things to happen. Glenna and her boat the Shorebird were in the little boathouse for most of the summer. She's a carpenter from Ladysmith and was working on the set of the new science fiction series called Sanctuary. A god-send she was as sometimes we'd come home from an evening slog and she'd have a bite to eat or a glass of wine for us .

She left last Monday and Greig was able to build a gantry inside it, hook up and hoist out that diesel engine out of the Westmark. He then dropped the engine into the Green Goblin, our 26 footer. Once he was able to do that, he pulled the Hari Mai back into the boathouse.

We've had some really, really low tides in the last few days and the big boathouse, aka Mt. Kleeman was sitting twisted on the mud, as was the Sea Ferring inside of it. Boats going aground all up and down the river is in the news again, and why aren't "they" doing anything about it.

Here is the hoist and the engine sitting all wonky here in the boathouse as the Westmark was aground in the boathouse here too.

So some more organizing and re-jigging of docks has to take place still for the Express to arrive. Location of that here seems to change daily.

My next improvement will be to finally get the sink working in my bathroom. I had bought an antique dresser thinking I could re-configure it with a sink and all that but in the past year that just hasn't happened.
I've splurged on this pretty thing and Greig and I got the legs on it last night and moved it into place to check for the fit. OOOH it is so very sexy! I do have to cut a hole in the bottom shelf to make allowances for the plumbing but it otherwise fits in just fine into the spot.

Everyone say, "Yea! Storage!"

The floathouse has now been here for three months and three months with no hydro is wearing very thin. I thank god I have a propane hot water tank and stove. As it stands we've been running a gas generator for short periods at night and that is when I can use the computer and internet. It is funny to tell this to people that my landline only works when my genny is running and they look at me, somewhat confused. I assure them it is OK 'cos if Hurricane Katrina would hit me, I'm mostly off-grid already and they'd be screwed. Well, it makes me feel better at least. That all aside, I am getting really tired of the big fat cooler that has been my fridge for the past four months. As small as my fridge is, I really, really miss it and that good working triangle between the fridge, sink and stove. I think I was able to sufficently bitch at the Big Cheese today, to facilitate the action of a temporary hydro mast at the very least.

Still, it is very pretty at night up here and I don't miss the dust a whit.

Sold!

2008-09-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

Really, I am still in shock. We sold two boats this week. The Dos Amores on Wednesday and the Bowie yesterday.

I am glad to be free of the responsibility of it. But I have always struggled with that as far as the Bowie was concerned. There was just something about that boat that left me so restless. I couldn't sit still. I never found it restful living on it. I always saw some fresh mess that would distract me from whatever chore I was already trying to finish. Only when we bought the Partnership did I really comprehend how sleep deprived I had been for so long.

Yes there were some tears and the kids loved the boat so much. Especially Dosha and Payton as I think they have missed it the most. We put a lot of work into it that didn't always yeild the results I had hoped for but that came through in other places. Sometimes you plant a seed and something comes up you didn't expect. Well, that was life on the Bowie in a nutshell. Maybe that is just life on the river.

The two things biggest things about Mitchell Island that I don't miss are the driftwood and dust. We just don't get the volume of wood over here that we got there. Really, that was quite phenomenal.

All in all, its a good thing. Guess I have to loose the mvbowie URL now eh?

Bear attack on a boat

2008-09-11T08:57:00.001-07:00

Though bear attacks always make the news it is actually a rare thing and this story out of Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island in the Vancouver Province today tells of a man mauled on his boat. The bear, of course didn't make it and was apparently in poor health. The victim is recovering in hospital.

When wildlife like that, be it a cougar or a bear, attacks humans that you find out that the animal is sick. And it is that time of year when the pickings for food up in the hills grows more scarce. There is no doubt a dearth of berries for them as it has been a lousy summer and so, opportunities that bears are will go where the easiest source of food is as we humans are so piggish.

And speaking of bears, Peaches, is still hanging around at my folks too. Dad has put up an electric fence around the garden to keep him from the peach and apple trees. Really, it may not be the same Peaches who raided the tree last year but that's what we're callin' him anyway.