“Get the ship READY!!!!” ’24

Our 20th preseason “sand and paint-athon” commences!!

So let’s be realistic. This is my 20th year of getting the vessel ready for the up-coming summer season and at some point the photos kind of look a lot alike. Hard working crews in dusty, smelly conditions putting in long days to bring the ship into top shape. The kayak guides that arrive to help prepare the ship acquire new and serious “buy-in” after working so hard to make her perfect. An otherwise obsequious guide might use pretty strong language with a guest if they see a sandy, gritty, scratchy bag placed on “their” bright-work!

So “to save my breath to cool my porridge”  . . . I’ll throw a bunch of photos here to give you all an idea of the amount of work it takes to get the COLUMBIA III ready. This year there were 6-7 crew for about 10 days just getting the exterior finishes ready.

Luke’s wheel house repairs ready for paint . . .

and the paint floats come in for the hull work . . .

and the wheelhouse/deckhouse had all its wires and hardware removed prior to sanding and painting . ..

and typically grumpy Nadya prepping the roof. . .

and bits and pieces moved to the shop for sanding and painting . . .

and I made a batch of two of cookies for crew coffee time . . . I believe that’s a Boss’s most important daily task . . . getting the coffee ready on time . . .

all the brightwork is sanded without the use of power tools . . .

 

Luke bringing the modified main engine belt guard back from his shop next door.

I tried to stay out of the way in the engine room replacing the desalinator’s sea chest that was dripping salt water into my engine room . . .

and some new finish starts to go on . . .              

 

a team of 3 paints the wheel/deck house . . . roller, cutter, tipper.

fresh muffins for lunch . . . pecan/cranberry/oat/gluten free/vegan . . . . 

the repaired corner looking almost done . . .

And of course someone saw Biggs orca passing the bay and I asked if anyone wanted to go get a tiny bit closer . . .  on payroll .  . . and I quickly found willing participants!!!!

Nadya getting ready to go to “C”.

the interior wheel house foot rest gets a face-lift . . .

Exterior wheel house stairs get attention . . .

and the decks get taped to make the non-skid coating extra fancy . . .

Steve applying the non-skid grit . . .

NOBODY is allowed on board with shoes for a day or two out of respect for the glorious  fresh deck coating . . .

and I keep puttering . . .  a new carburetor for the salon fireplace . . .

and upgrading engine room procedures . . .

She’s looking pretty shiny!

and finally the kayaks come out of the rafters . . .

and the shed gate is opened . . .

and the heavy winter mooring lines are dropped . . .

and out she comes!!!! I had “Joy to the World” blaring on a speaker as we gently pulled the COLUMBIA III out of the shed. What a huge day for me!!!

and the masts are up!

But details remain;  Luke is putting a coat on the salon table . . .

and all the bedding and mattresses need to come down to the ship AFTER the insides have been washed, scrubbed, wiped and cleaned for about 3 days to put a dent in the winter’s work dust accumulations!!!!

And the refinished wheel house step is bolted back into place after Luke’s extensive repairs to that corner. No one will even notice!

And there are always the small tasks that I thrive on . . . . the small, heavy hydrophone sensor we use to listen to orcas vocalizing  never had a proper “home”. It hung from a brass hook and as the ship rolled gently on the waves the little devil would go, ‘clunk, clunk, clunk”. Deeply annoying . . .  So I made a small mahogany holder, stained, varnished and installed . . .

Ok . . . enough is enough. I take the ship to Campbell River in a few days for preliminary safety inspections and then the big Transport Canada inspection in about 10 days. I am too busy to keep fiddling around on this blog!!

Bye for now!!!

Where did the winter go . . .?

What?!? March 5th?!?! ALREADY?!?! Where did January and February go? Let alone November? And now the ship is due to leave her shed for the first time in 2024 for her annual haul-out. Like a sneak-attack from behind, the haul-out appears from seemingly nowhere.

So Luke is wrapping up the projects he’s been working on and I am helping him and attempting to get the ship ready for being underway. It will be great to get her moving again and put the rebuilt engine through its break-in period, but there are many small tasks to complete, not the least of which is to clean up after Luke’s awesome though dusty work.

So we did unpack the box from England . . .

and carried the new head down to the engine room. Luke and I removed the old head and installed the new one. . . twice . . . We failed to install one important gasket on the exhaust manifold the first time around, and it got a bit stinky in the engine room . . . but we were so practiced up that the second time through we were amazingly fast!

So shiny!

Luke reinstalling the ancillary bits . . .

Boy, it feels good to finally understand and remedy the decades long problem with the coolant leak on the number one cylinder. Thanks to the Gardner mechanics from England!

While the coolant was drained from the system I changed the coolant-flow alarm. This rings the VERY LOUD general alarm bells if and when the coolant for the engine stops flowing, which is a very serious condition and spells near immediate damage for the engine if this happens . . . it can also sound in the middle of the night, when the engine was NOT running and no coolant was flowing anyhow and when everyone is sleeping peacefully for no apparent reason other than to give the skipper heart failure and a bunch of explaining to worried guests . . . . So I replaced the little bugger!

and another on-going project:  We finally got the replacement fire pump back from the machine shop where they created a custom bearing carrier for the pump and Luke and I took a couple of days to get it installed.

On a separate note. . .  as if one classic wooden vessel wasn’t enough work . . . I have been helping my life-time skipper, Dennis Mattson, now 89, with his magnificent fishing vessel, the B.C. Pioneer. He hand-built her 50 years ago but it is now too much for him so I took it to Campbell River to get it painted, cleaned and listed for sale. Dennis lived 70 years on fishboats; he never owned property or even a sofa, always just a small galley bench and table. I met Dennis when I was 16 and he has lived with us here on Sonora Island for the last 20 years. My son, Tavish, remarked as I steered the B.C. Pioneer away from our dock. “Dad, this is the first time since 1975 that the ship had moved without Dennis aboard.  . . .”

I took the ship to Campbell River and hauled her out. Ocean Pacific crews painted her hull and put new zincs on. I rented a car and lived in a motel for a week dealing with cleaning the ship and listing it with a boat brokerage . . . .

I fished on this ship 45 years ago as a kid!. . . . End of an era.

 

Then i had my own ship to get to the ship yard!  . . . Without further fanfare,  Jonas and Steve arrived at Sonora Island to help get the COLUMBIA III loaded up with tools and supplies and out of her shed for her annual out-of-water maintenance.

We motored the 3 hours to Campbell River the night before haul-out.

Here Steve captures “nervous Ross” as we get our first glimpse at the undersides after 5 months on tour in 2023.

I never like this day for numerous reasons, not the least is having my precious ship hovering 20 feet in the air!

And work starts right away. The life raft comes off with the aid of a fork-lift as it heads to Victoria for bi-annual inspection.

Steve had loaded up the supplies for the shipyard . . .  I don’t think he left much behind!

And the sanding and painting begins. Here Steve touches up some cement on the lower edge of the gumwood to ensure no toredos (ship’s worms) find their way into the planking.

This year I asked Ocean Pacific Marine to assign 2 welders for a small modification to the ship’s fore-foot. At some point before my time the ship had hit a rock and damaged the timbers at the forward end of the keel. The repairs were fine but always a bit messy looking. As the bowstem already had steel cladding I wanted the steel to extend further aft to “tidy up” the fore-foot.

Here is the “box” that was custom crafted. We covered the keep and inside of the box in tar . . .

and then clamped, through bolted and welded the “box” to the the existing steel “shoe”.

then a coat of primer . . .  

I tried to stay out of trouble in the wheel house replacing a non-functioning compass light switch, adding an AIS transmit indicator panel and  . . . .         

. . . being the Big Boss kinda guy, I also tackled some navigation equipment upgrades in the wheel house (adding a new NMEA 2000 back-bone and new heading indicator) I knew you were dying to know . . .

and running the Mothership office in the salon . . .

And by week’s end, the ship was ready to go back in the water. The good weather and good crew made for a smooth time ashore. Here Steve quickly touches up the copper paint after the travel lift picked up the ship exposing the spots where she sat on the blocks for the week.

Hero shot of the big boss . . .

 

And back she goes for our 20th season!

Easy, easy, gently back into the water . . .

and the work goes on . . . .

Ok.ok.  Sometimes, just sometimes, my fountain of inexhaustible boaty maintenance enthusiasm wanes . . . just a teeny bit . . . you know, I’m human. 24/7/365/20 years is a lot of boat-bonding time, boat bondage perhaps? So after a long season and an epic main engine rebuild I was ready for some boaty down-time.

But thankfully for me and the COLUMBIA III, my son-in-law, Luke, was willing to jump in and tackle some projects on the ship, just when my spirits were flagging. Some tasks are seriously invisible to all guests and almost everyone else, but essential nevertheless.

Project number 1: A vexing issue was the header tank on the main engine coolant system. It has been mounted to the deck-head in the engine room for all my time and perhaps for the last 60 years, but it was installed incorrectly.  It was a nice, tidy installation high between the deck beams, but too high and too tight. The vent-line off the top of the tank was on the very top of the tank between the deck beams which meant the vent line had to go down hill from the top of the tank before it proceeded up to the roof of the ship. This seems like a small matter but in fact is was a very vexing set up. The downward bend in the vent line ensured the vent was ALWAYS air-locked with the air “captured” in the bend under the deck beam. The result was the system didn’t vent correctly. This caused the engine coolant to”burp” onto the roof of the ship as the coolant warmed when operating, and it made it nearly impossible to add anti-freeze to the system for top-ups, routine replacement or after major engine work . . . (See the last few years!!) So I asked Luke to lower the tank 6 inches. How hard could that be? Well there are a lot of pipes, tubes and wires connected to the tank but Luke performed the surgery perfectly and a long standing, mis-installation has been corrected.

Project number 2:  Luke has been attending to the deck planking over the years. A big project was the foredeck a few years ago. And he has also been eyeing the side decks. Some of the older deck planks had split lengthwise and water was causing rot to set in. These are not simple projects as the underside of the deck planks are the ceiling of the staterooms and engine room below. But we decided that Luke would “dig into” the starboard side this winter. (Port side next winter??) We never know what he is going to find and how big the project will be. Once he sands off the deck finish he can decide which planks need replacing and which can stay.

Questionable planks removed . . . 

New planking starting to get installed . . . .

The boat shed work bench is awesome for these kinds of projects.

And grandson, Theo, continues his apprenticeship . . .

and the planks are screwed down, plugged, and then caulked with oakum and cotton . . .

and Theo gets some practice . . .

and the seams are finished off with Sikaflex sealant . . .

But the boat certainly becomes a construction zone and it seems like there is lots to do to get the ship spotless by next May.

Project number 3: The COLUMBIA III remains a very tight ship . . .  in this context she rarely has drips below decks from rain or seas. The exception has been the port wheel house door. Normally it’s not an issue but if the seas are pounding the port side, or if tied to a dock with driving rain on the port side and the ship is unable to feather into the wind as on the anchor, water would hit the door and run down in behind the door sill and drip on the crew bunks below. A long standing issue that is annoying when the conditions are just wrong . . . So I tasked Luke. We made up a game plan and then he started the surgery. Here he has exposed the problem and replaced some “studs” with new clear yellow cedar. Note the vertical tie-rod that bolts the wheel house to the decks for strength.

 

Then a new door sill was made from teak and installed and the wall surface replaced . . .

It takes a fair amount of epoxy glue to secure and fair smooth the repair . . .

Project number 4: This is a big project with few pictures for now. But I will post more soon. We are replacing the main engine fire pump and Luke has been removing the old system and starting the mounting plate for the new pumping assembly. The pump is currently in a machine shop in Campbell River getting a custom drive coupling made . .  More later.

Project number 5: This one is still in the box! The replacement head for the #1 cylinder on the Gardner has arrived from England and waiting for me to install it . . . its part of my New Year’s resolution . . . to get out of holiday mode and get back into Boaty Mode soon!!!!

And on a final note for this post. Luke is a very good wood-worker, and he is a good teacher. This Christmas, Luke and grandson, Theo, made a crazy “sandwich” of pre-cut strips about 18″ long and glued them all together. After allowing the glue to cure for a week, they sliced the “log” with a large band saw into 1″ slabs and then cut them round and sanded them to PERFECTION! Then Theo and Luke gave 8 perfect, dazzling, cutting boards as Christmas presents to some very lucky recipients, including me!!! . . . (+ 64 pieces in each board).

The take-away? The COLUMBIA III is very lucky to have Luke and Theo caring for her!!!

More updates coming as work progresses . . . and the annual shipyard date is now set for March 11.
Oh, the fun of it all!