Welcome to the Jungle

                             

                       "Hey man, thanks!!!!!!"
                         -The Tragically Hip


           So, here it is, August 14th, and the weather is hot and sweaty.
         
           Just like yesterday.

           The forecast is hot and sweaty tomorrow.

           In fact, the forecast is hot and sweaty for at least the next week, with no relief in sight.
       
           No wind.  Might as well take a nap.

         ***************

           *Yawn.*

           *Stretch.*

           Uh-oh.

          Great googley-moogley!!!!!    How the HELL did it get to NOBLOODYVEMBER  DEDAMNCEMBER already?


          This has definitely moved me into the quarter-finals of the World Procrastination Championship  (Playoff schedule to be announced shortly, maybe.)

     *sigh*


         Well, in the words of Inigo Montoya,

       "There is too much.  Let me sum up."

         It's been an interesting few months.

          Might as well begin at the beginning, way back in August:



          Completely off the Dock, but worth mentioning, because it was such a unique experience- SWMBO and I got to see The Tragically Hip play the Air Canada Centre on August 10.

          I have never felt so damn Canadian.

   
   See, here's the deal:  The Tragically Hip is like Canada's house band.  They aren't the soundtrack of our 20something to 40something lives, The Hip is more like the score:  always there, always in the background, sometimes swelling to take the spotlight, and, sometimes, taken for granted,
 because they were always THERE.

There was always another tour next year, another album, another chance...

.... until there wasn't.

  The band's quirky writer and frontman, Gord Downie, announced in June that, well...

... he was dying.

  He had a brain tumour, and while the prognosis was clear, that he was a dead man walking, there was some time.

  The band decided, as a band, (because make no mistake, even though Gord was the face and voice,   these five guys were a unit, playing together since high school,  nigh on 35 years,) to launch one last tour.

   What followed was a uniquely Canadian event- a concert tour that was equal parts concert, party, wake, and tribute to Gord.
(Yeah,  I think every Canadian calls him Gord- it's that kind of band, he's that kind of person, and we're that kind of people.)

Shows sold out across the country, and by the time the band rolled into Toronto, it was obvious this was no gentle victory lap of greatest hits.
 

   I am lucky enough to work in the radio industry,
   Further lucky enough to work for a small network run by a guy who loves what he does, and likes his crew-  he held a contest for employees, giving away a pair of tickets,
   and I was lucky enough to WIN!

  Thanks, Jon!

 

   From the opening chord of "Courage (for Hugh Mclennan)", that dead man walking worked that stage for almost three solid hours that night in Toronto.  Gord was occasionally teary eyed, and some say he looked frail,

   but he flat ran that room.

   And if you didn't tear up at least once, you weren't there.

   How big a deal was this concert tour by the best band you've never heard of?

This is where things really get Canadian.

   The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, often maligned, often unappreciated, often viewed as an anachronistic irrelevancy in the 21st century, lived up to it's name, reclaimed it's role as CANADA'S media, dropped the bomb, and then dropped the mic:

   The CBC stepped up and  decided to bring the party to the people, by broadcasting the final show live, on all of it's platforms. Television, radio, online, on demand....

.... for free.

   So, we saw The Hip again, on August 20th, at the Marina, broadcast on a sheet hung in one of the pavilions at the foot of  Dock One, along with a hundred or so others...

 ...and over 11 million other Canadians .

   And if you didn't tear up at least once, you weren't there.


     Paul, Johnny, Gord, Rob and Gord:  Thanks for everything.

                                                        -video courtesy of VEVO and YouTube




     As noted earlier, the summer of 2016 was hot.

     The winter of 2015/16 was not cold, nor long.

     That made conditions perfect for a bumper crop of Dockgrass, aka Eurasian Water-Milfoil.

      This shit is evil.  It grows rapidly, it grows long, and it grows tenacious.  During the month of August it quite literally clogged the fairways of the marina. It wraps props, snags centerboards and generally acts as a hazard to navigation.


Typically, after backing out of our slip and leaving the marina 2 knots slower than usual,  a quick blast of reverse would clear a ball of weeds from the prop that looks like this:

    We are responsible for keeping our slips clear of weeds, so every couple of days, our Dock looked like this:

   That's two days worth of growth, in two slips.

   Down the Dock it's even thicker, as wind and wave action tends to push the floating mass into the corner, where the Dock meets shore.

   The marina has a dedicated harvester, but it's one machine fighting a losing battle- it's payload is relatively light, so the bulk of running time is spent transiting to shore to offload into a 40 foot bin, then transiting back to the fairway in play, and then back to unload...

   There's no easy solution, so we bear it and keep sailing.



   I have a suspicion that Dockweed hastened a soon-to-be discovered problem aboard Karma.

   SWMBO and I took an extended Labour Day weekend  and on Friday decided to make an afternoon run to Pottahawk and back.  We motorsailed out, making good time, clicking along at a happy 5-6 knots in 8-10 knots of wind.  Motorsailing, because I'd been having some concerns about our engine-  Karma had felt down on power in recent days, so I thought a good 2-3 hour  run wouldn't hurt.


    We scooted past Port Ryerse, then past the site of Bushstock, a new 2 day music event in the 'folk....

Then sailed past Fisher's Glen...

...making good time, we continued past Normandale....

 ...two hours out, we spy Turkey Point to starboard...

... as the beach trailed behind our transom we turned to port to cross the gut that separates outer Long Point Bay from the Inner Bay, and headed to Pottahawk...

  It was a damn near enough perfect day for sailing- decent wind,  and fairly typical bay chop, but we had the Bay pretty much to ourselves- in 20 miles-ish of travel, we saw just a handful of other boats.

 
We reached Pottahawk, turned to port again to head for home, and with the wind on our nose, it was all engine now, so we furled sails and throttled up to 2/3 throttle, call it 2200 rpm, which gave us...

... a blistering 3 knots.

Huh- maybe the headwind is stronger than it feels.

So nudging the throttle to 3/4, about 2700 rpm, we found ourselves pounding along at
.... a blistering 3 knots.

Which shortly decreased to 2.8, then 2.7, then 2.5 knots

"That's not right," methinks.

Throttling back, SWMBO and I chugged along at a now steady 2.5 knots, and troubleshot:

 Maybe a ball of weeds around the prop?

SWMBO throttled down, shifted into reverse, boat speed jumped to 4.5 knots,  no telltale mulched weeds arose from under the boat.

Back into forward, back to 2.5 knots.

Huh.

I go below, retrieve the service manual for our mighty Yanmar YSM-8 powerplant and start reading.

Shit.

The transmission on our iron genny has two "friction discs", essentially clutch discs  that do the job of taking the 8 hp created by the engine and transferring it to the prop shaft to drive the boat.  One clutch disc handles forward go, one clutch disc is tasked to handle reverse.

Guess which one is used more?

Guess which one signals it's decided to retire by no longer transferring all of the engine's mighty 8 hp into usable propulsion?

Yeah- obviously the reverse disc was still good to go, but the forward disc would go no mo'.


Yay, problem diagnosed!  But, there wasn't a damn thing we could do, except motor along at 2.5...

...2.4...

...2.3 knots.
...and dropping.

Oh well, lots of time to surf for replacement parts on my phone, which led me to discover that, like many parts for boats built when John Lennon was still alive, the friction discs in question were rumoured to be No Longer Available.

Great.

Five and a half hours of feathering and nursing the throttle after making the port turn at Pottahawk for home, we limped into the marina, in the dark, inching into our slip at 1.5 knots.

I stopped into  Bridge Yachts on the Tuesday after Labour Day, and requested they find the part, if possible.  Three days later I got a call- they found two discs.

The last two YSM-8 friction discs on the planet allegedly.
In Japan.
They would be here in three weeks.
I ordered them both.

Meanwhile Karma lay forlorn in her slip.

Where Karma largely remained, until Phil and Corinne and Compass Rose towed our burdened beast up the river to the Bridge Yachts yard  at the end of October.

The last two Yanmar YSM-8 friction discs on the planet finally arrived....  in the third week of November.

I'll deal with it in the spring.

The great thing about owning a fleet is that, while the big boat may be down and out, SWMBO's ride, Ereni, was more than happy to stretch her legs.



Ereni is no faster than Karma-  in fact, if you belief PHRF, that sleek little race-pedigreed one design daysailer is owed a little time by Karma-

but she FEELS faster.

It's like stepping out of a cabover Kenworth truck and stepping into an E-type:  The same speed feels entirely different.

Sailing Karma  is fun.

Sailing Ereni is FUN.

  Brutal honesty time- too often, sailing Ereni  is a bit of a shitshow.   The mainsail reefing line too tight, or too loose...

....the topping lift hung up on the backstay....

  Her sails are blown out, her bottom is fuzzy, she needs new standing rigging, new running rigging, new mainsail tackle, her fuel tank relocated, her brightwork brightened, the list of what she needs goes on and on...



  .....but when we get it right, it is pure magic:

    So, that brings us (mostly) up to current- the boats are on the hard, largely put to bed, all gear is now occupying our dining room and den, waiting to be stowed away, and the winter punchlist has begun. Hopefully, I can bring you up to speed on that little ball of mission-creep before the boats splash for the 2017 season.

In the meantime, if I don't talk at you in the meantime...


   Merry, Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year, to all y'all.




    Thanks for checkingin, and as always, please, "Talk the Dock!"

It's THAT day!!!

     "Oh, I've been missing you, and the way you make me feel inside...."
                                                                 -Gregory Abbott


    Finally, SWMBO and I can stop looking homeless.

    Winter here in Southern Ontario is a time of slumber for our vessels, stored on the hard, and, for sailors, a season of  dirt-stranded planning , forethought, and inevitable procrastination...

....  which means all the jobs that SHOULD have gotten done during the depths of winter get compressed into a frenzied fortnight of forced labour leading up to splash day....

... which means every spare minute is spent in the Bridge Yachts boatyard, punching through all the planned punchlist projects that were  pushed off by the punishing winter...

.... which means that one is always travelling with a vehicle packed full of tools, work clothes, paint, epoxy, generator, ladders, wood...

... leading uninitiated onlookers to wonder if we are indeed living in our Ford.

  As usual, we fell prey to mission creep.

We knew we wanted to remove the carbuncle, a dead depth through-hull transducer installed ahead of the keel:

   Which we did.  Beveled, backed, filled, and faired...

  While slathering on eleventy-seven coats of Interprotect 2000, we realized that this would be a good time to repaint the blue boot stripe, which clashed with the bottom paint, and if we're going to do that, we might as well removed the worn cove stripe...

... which we did, and then realized that, without a cove stripe, NextBoat's already generous freeboard looks beyond generous- it looked like Liberal spending in the 905 prior to an election.

...So clearly a new cove stripe was in order in addition to the boot stripe:

Since we're changing colours, red bottom paint is out, black bottom paint is in...

  with the stripes and the bottom looking good, it behooves us to clean and wax and buff the hull and make it all shiny.  Which we did.  Leaving us to finish installing the head, hoses, pumps, tank, new hose clamps on cooling hoses, and a list of more unsexy nobody-will-ever-see it stuff the night before we splash.


   We got it done, and NextBoat is now hullwet.

   NextBoat is also no longer NextBoat.

   Before:

  Now.  Please meet Karma:

The weather was nothing but cooperative in the weeks leading up to launch.  The last two weeks have been dry, sunny  and warm, culminating with HOT weather during the last few days before Karma  was launched...


....which ended the moment she began her transit from the yard to the Dock.

   
     (Frank and Lorraine were on hand to watch and take pictures)

By the time Karma  and I passed under the lift bridge, the clouds had rolled in, and long sleeves had been donned.  We figured we'd get the boom hung and sails bent on at the Dock, rather than waiting another half hour for the next bridge opening.
 

   
   (Okay, she ain't pretty, but she's purposeful)
  It was a prudent move.
 
    By the time we had cleared the river mouth and made the turn to port to the marina cut, the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up.

     After tying her up safe in our slip, we realized rigging could wait.

  Within minutes the winds picked up, the temp plummeted and we were deluged.

   It hasn't warmed up since.

   No matter. We're back in the water, where we belong.

   We're home.






Thanks for taking the time to read the D6C.  If you liked what you read, please Talk the Dock! Spread the word.

Up The River, But Not Up The Creek, Part One

"...in the face of a hurricane west wind..."
                                  -Gordon Lightfoot




  This time last week, the temperature was below freezing, and the first snow of the season was flying.

   Today, the snow is gone and the temp is positively balmy, but we are getting slammed by a meteorological freight train that hasn't slowed down since it left Kansas.  Steady 40-50 knot winds hurt your face.

   Here's how the Lake looked this afternoon:

     Steady 40-50 knot winds hurt your face.


   So, I figured this a good time to revisit a more placid day in Port Dover.

   It's mid-September, and the weather is well and truly balmy,  not too hot, not too cold, not too humid, not too dry, a little underwindy, but oh, well... one of those late summer/early fall days that are too good and too rare to waste.

   SWMBO and I decided to put it to use by making a Quack run up the River, seeing what we could see.

  Th is is hardly the Canadian equivalent of a Joseph Conrad/ Coppolian saga- the Lynn River is the tributary that inconveniently divides Port Dover...

                                                                                         -image courtesy of portdoverwaterfront.com

..... it is also the source of some small controversy.  As you can see on the map above, the Lynn flows from Northwest to South, through the town of Simcoe, then into the town of Port Dover, where it meets Black Creek, flowing Northeast to South, and then discharges into Long Point Bay.

      The controversy arises below the Y- is the waterway south of the confluence the  Lynn River, or Black Creek?  Some refer to this stretch as "the creek", others as "the river", others, noting that aforementioned body of water has been dredged, widened, straightened and breakwalled, refer to it as "the channel."

       Personally, I figure a creek can flow into a river, yet a river cannot flow into a creek, just as a town can grow into a city, but a city cannot grow into a town...ergo, it is the Lynn River which empties into the Bay, not the Black Creek.

      (Not that anybody really gives a shit. -ed.)

      Er, anywater, we had been up the River and up the Creek dozens of times, always aboard the mothership, but had never turned left and taken the Lynn less travelled, as it were.  Concerns over the uncertainty of draft, airdraft and general  there-are-never-any-sailboats-there-so-sailboats-must-not-be-able-to-go-there logic led us to mark the upper Lower Lynn with "here there be dragons" on our mental chart.

     But, not wishing to leave any local waters unexplored,  we decided to take an hour or so and make a Quack attack.

    We tied up NextBoat opposite the old Misener fish plant, clambered into Quack, our 7 foot long inflatable, cranked up our trusty Suzuki O/B, bid our floating condo adieu...

...and headed upstream.

   We putted past the Port Dover Harbour Museum...

  ... past the new dinghy dock, snapping pics of the intriguing boat tied up...

lifeboat/tender/pilot boat from a freighter?

 ( Please comment if you have any info.)

     ...then under the lift bridge and past the Scruton fleet...

... then past the Bridge Yachts yard, and then past Dave Matthews yard,  into the heart of tug town...

   I admit, I am a sucker for tugs...

    and who doesn't like a beautiful woody?

  ...  get your minds out of the gutter.

   We pass the Nadro Marine yard...

... bear to port and head up the Lynn, into the elephant's graveyard of the Harry Gamble shipyard.

  Meanwhile, to starboard...

The juxtaposition between banks is almost jarring.

   and back to our port side...

   

 and then things start to get ...interesting.


     The Gamble yard is acres of old tugs, barges, lifeboats, pleasure craft, engines, winches and rust, covered with an increasingly impenetrable cover of foliage.


      It's intriguing as hell.

We spotted this inlet....

...before we noticed the cottage beside it

 

Of course we had to steer in, to see what we could see...

      As our outboard began to bounce along the bottom, I realized how silted up this basin had become.  That tug  is never leaving again.


      We retreated back to the Lynn and continued upstream.

  More to come later this week.


  Meanwhile,

"Talk the Dock!"