Gassed up and ready to go

I'm just sitting around here right now watching the sun setting, cooling my heels until Mandy gets home. As soon as she does, we're off! Everything is looking good so far except the forecast... and that, at least, comes with the consolation prize of southerly winds later in the week, which should help speed us north. As for the clouds and rain... well, it's the Winter Olympics, isn't it? Could be worse... could be a lot colder than fifty!

We'll send Spot updates en-route.

It would have been a nice time to depart

This morning was when we would have been heading north if Mandy's work had not intervened at the last minute. I got up early to help her load some stuff for her presentation into the car. It was surprisingly warm out, cloudy, but dead calm and quiet out on the water. The floats were damp but it wasn't raining at all, and the tide was up, higher than normal, which makes for a nice ebb current to ride out north. All in all, it would have been a perfect time to head out, even without wind. In fact, sometimes I like to start out without any, to get out on the water and see the glassy calm stretching off into the distance, broken only by our own wake.

All in all, it would have been just about a perfect time to get going. We'll see how things are looking Tuesday night.

Drip..... Drip..... goes the rudder shaft

Which represents success, or partial success, at least, in the saga of the mystery leak in the stern section.

The folks at HunterOwners.com came through once again, providing better pictures, diagrams, instructions, and tool recommendations than I came up with anywhere else on the Internet. Turns out that everyone hates that fiberglass rudder support shelf... you can't see what you are doing, and you can barely feel it when you are squeezed in back there with one hand.

At any rate, they filled me in on exactly how the system works. The top nut is the packing nut; it is actually larger than it appears, extending up the post further than one can see, so that it has room to contain the packing material that is pressed against the shaft to seal it. You rotate it counter-clockwise, looking down, to loosen it up (if one were re-packing it, all the way up, when one would then futilely attempt to pick out the old packing with a toothpick or something and force the new flax into the gland), and clockwise to tighten it. The bottom nut is the locking nut, and rotates the opposite direction to secure the packing nut once you have it tight.

The folks in the forum recommended something called spoonbill vicegrips for the job, and from the picture they provided, those would have been about perfect. Unfortunately, when I got into town last night, I couldn't find any. I settle for a massive crescent wrench (which turned out to still be too small) and a large pair of channel lock pliers. In the event, only the channel locks were of any use, and they were damned awkward, as I had to try to use one hand to both keep them clamped tightly and to try to turn the nut. Toward the end as it got tight, that was very difficult indeed.

I first backed the locking nut off quite a way. As noted before, both were only hand-tight, so that wasn't difficult. I then tightened the packing nut down by hand as far as it would go, then went at it with the channel locks. A half hour later, I had it what seemed to be reasonably tight, and reduced the influx of water to a series of occasional drips only. I crossed my fingers and tightened up the locking nut against it, hoping that the rotation wouldn't loosen it, since I had nothing to hold it with, and for whatever reason my luck held and the two locked together tightly with no apparent backing of the packing nut. I went up and tried the helm, and the rudder still turned freely, so it isn't too tight. And hopefully, the bilge will start to dry out a bit.

I went and took a well-earned shower (it's super-grimy back in that space; I found loose nuts, washers, random bits of wood and plastic, and a tube of solder that all must have fallen in back there over the years) and now I am off to gorge myself at Dave's annual Superbowl party while I cheer the Saints on toward victory.

Ports and plans

So our timeline for getting into Canada for the Olympics has been severely constricted by Mandy's big corporate client eating up the first two days of next week with workshops. The soonest we can leave will be Tuesday night. That leaves a lot of water to cover and not a lot of time to do it in. I had originally planned to leave on Monday morning, take a leisurely amount of time, as the wind dictated, to get up there, and settle in a bit before getting to our event.

Now, there is virtually no margin for weather, and we may in fact wind up motoring much of the way, if travel is possible at all. Fortunately, the forecast looks fairly benign, but a storm covering the Strait of Georgia, or a missed current gate at Deception or Gabriola passes, could put us seriously off our game.

My plan right now is to head out on Tuesday night and take advantage of what ebb current is left to get as far as Everett. We might get there very late, but as there is practically nowhere to anchor, we can just tie up at Everett Yacht Club for the night and use our reciprocal moorage agreement to catch a few hours sleep.

I say a few because I figure, wind or no wind, we have to be underway at 0400 the next morning to make a 1300 slack at Deception Pass (lord help us if I have looked up the wrong dates for any of these tide or current tables). It will be a long day as we get through the pass and well into the San Juans, hopefully to Reid Harbor or thereabouts by 1800.

From the northern tip of the San Juans, we'll jump across to clear Canadian customs at Bedwell at a time of our choosing. It's a short crossing, so if we need to recover from the long day before, or if we lose a day for some reason, it's easy to absorb into the schedule. We have the remainder of that day to rest up.

The next day, we work our way north in the protected waters of the Gulf Islands, passing out through either Porlier or Gabriola passes to get a hopefully early evening anchorage in Silva Bay. The latest word from Waggoner's is that the bay is so crowded with derelicts and other permanent moorings that anchorage can be hard to find, similar to Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island, so there is some chance we won't be able to stay there, at the closest Gulf Island anchorage to the lower mainland. If that's the case, there are almost no safe alternatives on the east side of the islands, and we'll almost certainly have to duck back in and anchor somewhere inside and be forced to deal with another current gate the next morning (not to mention a correspondingly earlier departure, on a day that's going to be plenty long enough already).

Assuming all is well in Silva Bay, we'll get up around 0300 and head for Vancouver, a five to six hour crossing. That will put us into False Creek around 1000, and we should be able to slide right in to our reserved slip at the Harbour Authority. Then it's off to find the ticket office and pick up our will-call tickets, because the luge is the same day! Straight from the ticket office to the Sea Bus terminal on the south shore of Coal Harbour, across Vancouver Harbour to the Sea Bus/Olympic Bus Network terminus in North Vancouver, then onto a bus for the three hour ride to Whistler. Watch Olympics, get back on bus and do it all in reverse, save the sailing bit. If we're lucky, we'll be in bed by 0030.

If things go wrong further south, and we don't get out until Wednesday, or some other evil befalls us before crossing into Canada, our backup plan is to pull an all-nighter on the 12th (after resting up, hopefully, somewhere in the San Juans). We've gone from the San Juans straight to Vancouver before, and it's not a super-fun trip, particularly if we have to motor the whole way, but it is possible, and we can clear Customs at the marina in False Creek. Somebody is bound to be super-crabby if this turns out to be the case, however, because that's a lot of long night watch to stand. Particularly if the radar isn't working. Double-particularly in the debris outflow from the Fraser River. So, we're very much hoping against having to take that option.

After all that, I am very much looking forward to the remainder of our stay in Vancouver. We have a few days after the event, and it's going to be nice to just wander around and soak up the atmosphere in the city. We couldn't ask for a better location, and in fact most people staying around False Creek, so close to the Olympic Village, the GM Place ice hockey and BC Place opening and closing event venues, will be paying outrageous sums to be there. As is often the case on the water, we feel as if we're just sneaking in to the best part of the city, right in the heart of all the action, way out of our league. I'm excited at the opportunity... even if we get there late, and flush all the money spent on tickets and bus transport to Whistler, I'll still hopefully enjoy something of the trip just by being there.

Drip drip drip goes the rudder shaft

So, just to get it out of the way, we did go to the boat show, and I was pretty severely unimpressed. Very few boats (very, very few sailboats) to look at, morose salesmen who looked as if their next step might be off the edge of the dock seeking the comfort of a watery grave, and nothing particularly new or interesting to hold our attention. I very much regret having bought tickets for two days, as both turned out to basically be a waste of time and money (well, except I got a cool light-up yo-yo from the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority booth).

So anyway, I put Mandy on a bus for Hadlock this morning and got down to the business of preparing the boat for the trip to Canada next week. If that doesn't sound like a lot of time to prepare to you, well, it doesn't to me either.

But it was sunny out today, and warm, and reasonably dry, and things went pretty well. I cranked the engine over and it started up on the first shot and ran solidly despite some really cruddy fuel coming in to the separator. I changed the primary fuel filter, and we'll fuel up before we head out, which should dilute the remaining crud and hopefully filter it all out. I checked and topped off the transmission fluid, and checked the transmission itself... it shifted smoothly in and out of forward and reverse. I lubed the steering gear and the transmission cable, and stowed our spare mainsail in some unused space under the helm lazarette.

The oil change went smoothly, too, and without much mess. Since everything was going so well, I decided to take a crack at tightening up the leaking rudder post, and that's where I hit a wall.

Apparently the thing seals with two very large (2"? I can't really see them) counter-rotating nuts atop the shaft. They are, however, right beneath a fiberglass shelf which apparently provides support for the entire rudder assembly, so they are the very devil to get at. This all happens, I should mention, at that point in the hull where it is sweeping up toward the transom, so the closer one gets, the more squeezed one becomes.

Anyway, I didn't have a wrench large enough to get on the nuts, let alone two, and if I had two, and they were big enough, I doubt I could fit them both into the space at the same time, and if by some miracle of modern industry all that could happen, I don't think I could spare enough arms to turn them.

This wasn't what I had expected to find at all. I had done some research when I first discovered the leak and the few references I could find to my model of boat talked only about a single packing nut; or maybe the whole assembly is referred to as the "packing nut" even though there are two components. I found someone discussing another model of boat talking about holding the top nut in place and rotating the bottom to tighten, which I suppose is basically what I would try anyway... but it's the sort of thing (hole in boat) where I would like to have a little confirmation before I go messing with it.

I would take a picture but it's dark out now and I don't have my flash camera with me. Anyway, I'm posting the question to HunterOwners.com and there is probably someone there who can clear me up on the matter, hopefully before I am back next weekend to finish all this up.

As far as finishing goes, the big thing I would like to have done is radar troubleshooting. I am pretty much resigned to having to send Mandy up to look at it again. She can't lift me, and even if she could, I'm really the only one who can operate the controls on the console to test it adequately (and safely) with someone up there. Bizarrely, it's easier to talk her through tracing wiring connections and measuring impedance and voltage values than the display console controls. Either way, I am pretty well resigned to the thing still not working, which is bad considering much of the trip will be happening at night and quite possibly in marginal visibility.

Fueling up and pumping out are really the only other things, and assuming the engine doesn't quit on us, that should all be done next weekend.

Getting there

Before we got our slip reserved in Vancouver during the upcoming Olympic games, the trip seemed very much as if it weren't going to happen at all and I had halfway planned to auction the tickets off to the highest bidder and settle in for the predictably crappy US television coverage of the events and whatever I could glean off the Internet. But now we're into the trip not just for the cost of the event ticket, but the reservation fee, bus tickets, and soon, various boat preparations, so I am starting to feel compelled to make it up there and actually see people sliding down the side of the damned mountain.

As the saying goes, though, every time a window opens a door slams shut, and just as we found out about the slip space, we also found out that Mandy's big contract of the year was scheduled to start the day we had planned to leave for Vancouver. For two days at the start of the trip, she is now committed to teaching here in Seattle. The earliest we can get out is the evening of the 9th, and our tickets (and slip reservation) are for the 13th. By bus, car, or plane that would leave all kinds of time to get from here to Whistler, but by boat, it's a narrow window indeed.

By conventional routing we can get to Port Townsend or thereabouts in a day, across to Canada's Gulf Islands in another day, and then over to Vancouver on the third day. Leaving on the 10th, our first full day of travel, then, we could just barely hope to get into town in time to catch the mandatory bus up to Whistler when it pulls out around two in the afternoon (this doesn't even count the fact that we need to find time in there somewhere to stop by the will call office and get our tickets to the event itself).

But that is making some stiff assumptions about conditions along the route, namely, that they will be at a minimum safe to be out in, and yet hopefully brisk enough to push us along at relatively high speeds. This time of year, that's asking a lot. There are two significant passages to make (possibly; more on that later): the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia. Either of those could be slammed shut on us at any time by gales, and we absolutely have to be able to get across at least one (Georgia). We can sneak around Whidbey Island and cut through Deception Pass to avoid the most exposed parts of Juan de Fuca, but Deception Pass presents its own challenges and demands a very precise timetable of its own, which may not fit into the large timetable (if we were forced to wait too long for the current gate to open there, we may not have enough time to get to Vancouver later). There is also the Swinomish Channel, which avoids the Strait of Juan de Fuca entirely, but isn't necessarily bullet-proof either and has a heart-stopping least depth of only 9 feet, which isn't a lot of room to spare in a blow.

Once we get across to the San Juan's it's a fairly easy run into the Gulf Islands, where we can clear customs and head north in considerable shelter. But sooner or later we have to cut back out through one of a number of narrow passes into the larger Strait of Georgia and scoot across to Vancouver; probably no later than very early the morning of the 13th (but also not much earlier than that, since that's the day our slip becomes available).

It's a tight timetable, which is always something you are told to avoid with sailing vessels. "Pick a time, or a place, but not both," the wisdom goes; you can get anywhere you want to go, eventually, or you can be wherever you want at some point in time, but attempting to predict when both will coincide is often futile. Worse, it can be dangerous if you feel pressured to make a passage in less than ideal conditions simply to make your time commitments. I'm afraid that may be a position we will be put in before the trip is out.

I'm quite looking forward to actually being there; I imagine the city will be an exciting place even without attending the events themselves, and if it weren't for the money we've already spent being on the line I would say to hell with it and just get up there as quickly as I safely could. And maybe everything will be sedate and we'll have easy crossings; the weather this past week has been almost spring like (I mean good spring-like, not bad spring-like) and we can only hope that continues, or recurs. But it's an unpredictable time of year. No matter what, if we make it at all, I think the four days we have scheduled in Vancouver are going to seem a heavenly respite after the difficulty of getting there.

I have to take a hard look at charts and tide tables later this week, but right now my thinking is that we will head north the evening of the 9th, hole up somewhere just this side of Deception Pass to sleep, and get up and through at slack near dawn on the 10th. That should let us into Rosario Strait on a flood, which will help carry us through the San Juan's and into the Gulf Islands by nightfall on the 10th. That gives us two days to look for windows to get through the various passes into the Strait of Georgia and across the Strait itself to Vancouver. The current gates in those passes may prove critical, because the crossing time to Vancouver at our best possible cruising speed under power is at least six hours. It may well require a night crossing; so an extra day to rest up first would probably be best. False Creek, at least, is a harbour we've entered after dark before, so it wouldn't worry me to get there before dawn. Whether or not the slip would actually be open so early is another question, but one I am willing to wait to have answered if we actually get there.

A long shot

A primary challenge during our housesitting gig has been getting reliable Internet access. We hadn't wanted to pay for phone service, cable is not an option at this remote location, and satellite is too expensive. Cellular is both expensive and slow. Yet both of us have jobs that require regular and somewhat speedy Internet access. Fortunately, due to the location right on the water in Port Hadlock, another option presented itself: five miles north, visible across the water, is the Port Townsend Boat Haven, a marina served by the same wireless provider as our slip at Shilshole in Seattle, BroadbandXpress. Although it's a bit further away, it has the virtue of being a solution that has already been paid for.

We picked up an annual subscription last year before we left on our trip, since BBX has hot spots all up and down the Pacific Northwest coast. We could use them in most of the marinas and ports we hoped to visit, and although the service is somewhat limited and definitely not customer-oriented (they refuse to provide support for any equipment other than their own, which is over-priced and under-performing), it's about as good as things get in the marine environment.

Our standard on-board setup for receiving the wifi signal is good up to a mile and has connected at up to three miles, but the basic 8dbi omni-directional antenna and 500mw signal booster wasn't going to cut it across 5.25 miles of open water. Although the straight, open shot was a blessing in that it was absent any foliage or terrain that might block the signal, it was far enough that the dreaded Fresnel zone could be partially obstructed by the bulge of the curvature of the Earth. Moreover, a directional antenna that could be pointed directly at our desired access point was necessary so that other, closer but unrelated signals would not swamp it out.

I settled on a 24dbi grid antenna, which would allow a very tight beam to be directed at the marina hotspots.

We mounted it on a plain old galvanized pipe planted in the ground near one corner of the house, putting it up high enough to eliminate the Fresnel problem but close enough to reduce the cable run into the house.

To power it, we initially used the same Alfa 500mw booster we had on the boat, but it got to be a pain to drag it back and forth, and the ability to tweak the signal for the distance involved was limited, so we picked up and installed an Ubiquiti Bullet2. The Bullet is better designed for such distant connections, with more configuration options and the ability to tweak for the best possible connection. That said, it hasn't actually improved our speed much... we get by with a average .16Mbps which is about what you might get with an old ISDN type connection. Still, it beats the alternatives and it has been very stable and averages lower ping times than our connection in Seattle!

The problem we have is that we control only one end of the link. The BBX folks claim to support connections out to three miles but they probably are simply relying on the normal maximum capabilities of their equipment. Really getting good connections at anything over a mile requires some timing alterations in the signals. We can, and have, made those changes on our end (which means that our upstream bandwidth, what we can send out to the Internet, is roughly double the downstream bandwidth--pretty much the opposite of most connections!) but BBX has no incentive to tune their systems for the distance when most of their customers are actually in the marina itself.

Still, it's proven an adequate solution, if not ideal. I'm impressed with the Bullet, which works across a standard network cable with power injected into it at the house side. It's very compact, has a good management console, and a signal meter built into the device (which itself mounts very near the antenna) which makes it very easy to align the dish with the highest signal strength. It works on a 12V system, which means it could be fairly easy to integrate into a boat-based system in the future without the added complication and waste of power inversion (which most other such dedicated devices require). And because it is a stand-alone device, it doesn't muck with our computers the way the not-ready-for-prime-time drivers for our Alfa 500 booster do.