Thankfully this has created a steady demand for books about nautical adventures that run the full spectrum from solo circumnavigations of Antarctica to the voyages of the Hiscocks or Smeetons who were among the pioneers of the modern era of small boat voyaging.

And I’m always curious to read of someone else’s challenges, triumphs and tribulations. A few weeks ago, at the secondhand book stall on the old wharf in Sept Iles, Quebec, I picked up “Taking a Little Sailing Ship – A View of the World from a Thirty-Foot Schooner” by Klaus Gehrig. The book was published in 1991 by Nimbus Publishing.

Gehrig’s account is an easy to read account of the main events of the voyage with his partner Marie-Jose. He has a dry sense of humour and while fully aware of the adventures and insights such an undertaking can give, he does not talk up the tale too much into a story of daring-do nor try to convert with his own sense of epiphany. Instead, he writes of the day to day, the routine and the exciting with knowledge and humour.

“There were times at sea when we looked at the sky and the horizon and thought our view encompassed everything. But we were only seeing the world from the deck of a little sailing ship,” writes Gehrig.

It’s unfortunate, for both practical and armchair sailors, that there’s nothing in the book about the 30-foot schooner, her design, layout or stores. It’s a curious omission, given that anyone who picks up the book would almost certainly want to know these details. From a single photo I’m left wondering if his anonymous steel boat was actually a Tahitiana, the same design as my own “Kuan Yin”.

Gehrig writes that at the start of the voyage he wasn’t sure how to put a reef in a sail. Is he trying to give the impression of being a bumbling amateur, far removed from the competent sea-salt? However, as he spent two years building the boat himself, the notion that he really set out from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, without basic sailing skills seems far-fetched.

Nevertheless, he’s a good narrator. Like meeting someone on another boat in an anchorage and inviting them aboard for a drink and story-telling, I spent a pleasant few hours curled up on the berth in “Kuan Yin” enjoying his stories.

My thanks and fair winds to you, wherever you are today.

With good reason, rounding Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America is still regarded as a major accomplishment for any sailor. Storms (one category above mere gales!) can rage for days with waves reaching 80 – 100 feet high. Numerous ships and countless sailors have lost their lives in this place where the winds that screech around the southern half of the planet unimpeded by land masses must funnel between South America and Antarctica.

Another cape – Cape Whittle on the Lower North Shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada – is not in any way famous, except very locally; it is not buffeted by the storms of folklore and is not even that much to look at. Yet, in a very modest but deeply personal and satisfying sense, for me rounding Cape Whittle a few days ago marks a small accomplishment on a long and gradual learning curve.

Cape Whittle is a long red rugged cliff about 100 feet high and stained white with the droppings of cormorants. It’s where the weather is said to change and where the east-west northern shore of the Gulf turns sharply north-east.

I rounded the cape on a clear day with light winds. A few days earlier the captain of a tug had showed me a photograph of his tug and lighter rounding the cape in a gale – only the top of a container on top of the lighter is visible above the wave about to overtake his vessel. So my rounding was extremely easy but, for me, still marks a small triumph on the long road to gain experience, competence and confidence.

Sometimes rough and anxious experience

No-one is born knowing how to sail or handle boats or anchors or understand weather. Each skill must be learned and honed through sometimes rough and anxious experience.

Don’t trust the charts!

On this 400-mile coastline from Sept Iles to Blanc Sablon even the official government charts say not to trust the charts! It’s a rugged coast with many seen and unseen dangers and quickly changeable weather. “Not surveyed to modern standards. Uncharted shoals or rocks may exist”. We’ve been warned. Sailing alone means that I must anchor to sleep each night. The rocky coastline is too near to the north and too near to the shipping lane and Anticosti Island to the south to be able to let the boat drift for a few hours while I sleep.

A few miles east of Sept Iles, I had to abandon my sailbecause of strong head winds; I was making too slow progress to reach anywhere at all. So I ducked in behind an island and anchored for two days to read and write a short story.

Avoiding a lee shore

When I set off again at 6 am in the morning, the day was clear and calm. By mid afternoon after a easy broad reach and speeding at more than 5 knots (5.5 miles/hour), the seas were building with a south-west swell. This made the entire coast a lee shore –tending to drive a vessel towards the rocks. “One mile offshore there are many rocks, above and below water, therefore it is advisable to remain outside the 73-metre (depth) contour when passing along this stretch of coast” according to the Sailing Directions. It adds, “There are many shoals with the 18.3 metre contour line and they lie between 0.5 and 1.5 miles offshore.” However, I needed to find an anchorage for the night and I very cautiously approached the coast. I didn’t like what I saw as the seas were pilling up and crashing over rock ledges and offlaying sandbars. The approach to Riviere au Tonnerre was typical of all the possible safe spots to stop for the night: “The harbour entrance is bordered by rocks and west and south winds bring a heavy sea making access difficult. Drying rocks and shoals obstruct the harbour,” warned the Sailing Directions.

I decided that the safest course would be to remain at sea and to continue through the night if necessary. However, I would not be able to go on forever without sleep. Fortunately I’d managed to get the auto-pilot working just a few days earlier which meant I didn’t have to stay in the cockpit during the cold night. With thermal underwear, two layers of clothes and rain gear and a woolly hat, I was able to keep warm standing on the steps in the companionway, checking navigation and keeping a watch for any other vessel. After 22 hours I finally reached an open bay with only a few rocks along the sandy shore. I came in, dropped the anchor and 40 metres of chain and went to sleep. When I woke at noon, the day was completely calm – blue sky and the sea almost like glass. However strong easterlies were expected by nightfall. What I should have done is move immediately and try to motor to a safer anchorage. Instead, I convinced myself that the bay was protected from wind from the east. It was, but I hadn’t accounted for the sea!

Living on a see-saw

Early next morning I was woken by the boat pitching up and down in the swells. I let out more chain, convinced I had 85 metres of chain in the locker. Imagine by surprise and horror when the end of the chain came up, only secured by a short length of rope which the riding on the swell could easily snap – taking all my chain and anchor. However, in less than a minute, I was able to secure three rolling hitches around the chain to reduce the strain. And I then as the chain went slack as the bow of the boat plunged down, I was able to pull some chain back and get it wrapped four times around the Samson post. (This stainless steel post is welded to the steel deck and welded to a shaft that’s welded to the keel; so not likely to be wrenched free before the chain broke!)

Though it has often seemed like overkill, I have insisted on doing things “properly” every day on the boat as a way to make best practices my normal habits rather than extras. This is why I had line to hand and could tie the rolling hitches very quickly. The easterly wind and the easterly swells continued to pitch “Kuan Yin” up and down for two days. It was like sitting, cooking, reading and sleeping on a see-saw for 48 long hours. Although sitting in the fulcrum of the boat eased the motion somewhat, the noise of the chain dropping slack on the deck as the bow fell into a trough, that pulled tight as the bow surged to the top of each wave was both frightening and tiring. I got up many times to make sure everything was okay. What I should have done – and will know for next time – is to have reanchored the boat in the calm and used a 30 metre nylon snubbing line tied to the 50 metre chain, so that such a long nylon rope would have stretched as the boat pitched and taken the strain off the chain. (My thanks to Mick on “Hanna”, who I met a few days later, for this advice.)

At the time, I must admit the experience was quite daunting, but has left me with much stronger faith in anchor, chain and the boat. The winds died on the third day and I sailed to a delightful horseshoe anchorage in the Mingan Archipeligo National Park. After several days of a wonderful sailing I finally began to relax. I found my new arrangement of reefing lines allowed me to reef the sails within a few seconds as winds increased, thus slowing the boat, reducing the heeling and retaining control. Using the mizzen sail with the headsail allowed me to balance the boat so that she stayed on course with hardly any correction from the auto-pilot.

Waiting out the next easterly

When the next easterly blow was forecast I stayed in Kegaska harbour to wait it out, counting my infinite blessing not to be at sea in such conditions. I was on deck at midnight checking my mooring lines for chafe when I saw the steaming light of a sailboat coming into the harbour. I waited in the rain – wearing a sou’wester that kept my neck and face completely dry – to see if the vessel would anchor or need assistance coming to the dock. They dropped the hook away from any hard objects and came alongside in the morning.

Avoiding rocks by running over them

While in Kegaska, a fishing community of 200 people with no road connection to the rest of Canada, I discovered that my GPS chartplotter was not showing my position accurately. According to the chartplotter, “Kuan Yin” was on the wharf not beside a floating dock 50 metres away. Just the next day, after leaving Kegaska, I was coming into Wolf Bay looking for a safe anchorage and had good reason to be thankful I’d discovered the error in my position. According to the chartplotter I was running over rocks awash when I could see them clearly 200 metres away to starboard. This was safe enough on a calm, clear afternoon. But in fog I might very easily have navigated to avoid the rocks on the chartplotter and run directly into the rocks in the water!!! Until I figure out how to correct the error I’ve decided not to attempt any correction. Better to know it’s not accurate than imagine the error has been correction when it hasn’t.

All these minor incidents are no more than the normal course for any sailor in summer weather. But dealing with the situations on my own has deepened my experience and strengthened my confidence. I’m still very cautious but at least the anxiety that marked most sailing days last summer has mostly disippated and I’m able to enjoy the sailing much more. These last few weeks have given me much more faith in “Kuan Yin” as a strong sailing vessel well able to make a safe voyage to Ungava Bay and back. And for me, rounding Cape Whittle has strengthened my own commitment to the voyage and added more each day to my competence and to my confidence that the dream is attainable.

And if there’s any day of the year on which the spirit of adventure should be celebrated it is surely August 30th – the day Sir Ernest Shakleton returned to rescue his men marooned on Elephant Island in Antarctica after almost two years isolated and stranded on the ice after their ship sank.  “We intend to keep August 30th as a festival for the rest of our lives” wrote one of the party.  Their’s was not an adventure of conquest over peoples nor to convert anyone nor for more trade with exotic realms.  After the Endurance was crushed in the ice and eventually sank, these 28 men lived on the sea ice and made two extraordinary voyages in small open boats across the roughest ocean in the world.  (see my earlier posts, search Shackleton) They survived due to their skills and moral courage – what their leader, Sir Ernest Shackleton was describing when he said, “optimism is true moral courage”.

So, in recognition of the extraordinary courage and resilience of all adventurers, I propose we celebrate August 30th as a day to celebrate past achievements and to encourage all people to live their dreams and never to give up their determination to live rich, fulfilled lives.

Within an hour of heading north, the wind picked up, the seas started to build and I had a reef in the sail to ease the pressure on the sail.  On the radio the Coast Guard was giving a Gale warning for the region. 

This was my first sail in “Kuan Yin” in such weather and the boat behaved wonderfully.  She rode the waves comfortably – rising and settling and facing the next oncoming peak without beating, slamming or heeling uncomfortably.  It was a wonderful experience.  I kept a good look out for shipping and saw three ships passing some miles off.

A little water came on deck and into the cockpit but drained quickly and never left threatening.  At no time did the boat feel stressed.  “Kuan Yin” demonstrated that “she’s a game little sailor”.  It may see strange to speak in such personal terms of a boat made of steel but ait seems completely appropriate.  There’s an intimate relationship between a sailor (especially single-handed) and a small boat.  Each needs the other for a safe passage.  So it was great relief to me to discover that “Kuan Yin” can be so comfortable in a near gale.

Here are two short videos – neither shows the scale of the seas but it’s at least a glimpse of the day. (Apologies for these not being instant play – still earning!)

St. Lawrence near gale – 1

St. Lawrence near gale – 2

I made the small harbour at Godbout late in the afternoon.

The North Shore of hte Gulf of St. Lawrence – the largest estuary in the world – is very different to the southern coast.  The south has farms.  The north has granite rock with veins of pink and pines trees.  It’s also considerably older – time for thermal underwear.  At night, the temperature can be as low as 6 C even in the middle of August.

Next morning at 7 am I was brought on deck by one of the two other yachts in the small harbour telling me that we all had to clear out because the car ferry was coming!  And an invitation to dinner that evening was also shouted across.

In afternoon I went ashore with Gaiton and Max from “Lilou” to visit the Inuit museum – the reason I’d chosen Godbout as my crossing point.  The museum is the private collection of M. Claude Grenier who spent 10 years in the Canadian Arctic, mostly at Rankin Inlet, in the 1970s.  He is also a painter and sculptor. Both he and his wife provided a very warm welcome to their museum in the old post office of Godbout.  The museum is a fascinating collection. It’s remarkable that everyone I’ve met who has spent time in the far North has been deeply touched by the experience which continues to be a focal point of their lives long after they have lived elsewhere for many years.

Looking east along the coast from Godbout

The evening brought a convivial dinner with Gaiton and Max and Christine and Jeff on “Bum’s Rush”.  We had to clear out of the harbour again twice the next day into a nasty swell.  So the day after I decided to leave and head east to at least get around Point des Monts.  The day was drizzly but a westerly wind offered a pleasant passage.

The figurehead of Kuan Yin in the dying rays of the day

My destination was the Baie de la Trinite – Trinity Bay.  Evening on the next day was magnificent.  Here’s a 360 degree video of the sky at sunset.  The sea was calm, the wind surprisingly warm and the sky magnificent.

Video: Sunset panorama in Trinity Bay

After that, it was onwards due north and two days later I arrived at Sept Iles – 7 islands – a town of 20,000 people.  It’s a processing centre for iron ore concentrate from Labrador and the export port. There’s also an aluminum smelting plant.  The town is pleasant, with two museums and though the summer here is brief people have worked hard to make their gardens bloom.

From here, it was be straight eastwards towards The Strait of Belle Isle and the Atlantic Ocean about 500 miles away.  Keep you posted!

]]> http://dennisonberwick.info/?feed=rss2&p=1874 1 http://dennisonberwick.info/?p=1864 http://dennisonberwick.info/?p=1864#comments Sun, 15 Aug 2010 23:17:05 +0000 Dennison http://dennisonberwick.info/?p=1864 I’m still trying to get over my shock and disappointment to receive a big, new and extra bill from the marina in Rimouski almost two weeks after paying the bill, checking twice that everything was paid and leaving.  This extra billing has happened before at the marina (see below) but I’m trying not to let  it spoil my memories of the many months “Kuan Yin” and I stayed in the town.

I met some great people, received a lot of help, accomplished an enormous amount of projects on the boat and generally had a happy time.  Though I don’t speak more than a few words of French – but am always willing to trying to listen and to try to explain myself in French, I found people very very accommodating and more than willing to help whenever they could.

For example, within days of returning to the boat in chilly April, a driver stopped to offer me a ride and the next day returned with a bike for me to use.  Later – after meeting M. Paul’s family and talking boats for hours, he loaned me the keys to his car in exchange for the charts from Montreal down the St. Lawrence!

M. Marcel loaned me one of the steps he had designed for the mast on his boat and I was able to arrange for a local welding shop to make 30 beautiful mast steps in aluminum.  After an etch primer and three coats of paint and installing with 240 rivets, the steps up both masts are a wonder and incredibly useful.

The welding shop Les Soldures DCM proved so helpful, high quality and good value that I returned to them for about eight other jobs – lots of little tasks that together make the boat more shipshape and life easier.

Special thanks to David (transplanted many years ago from Ireland) for his welcome to join the meditation sittings at the Rimouksi Zendo.  Most Tuesday evenings, it was time to forget boats and projects and just BE.

Robert and André and their wives welcomed me to their homes with wonderful suppers.  Such hospitality at a time when “Kuan Yin” was still out of thew water and I was unable to reciprocate to them directly.  Thanks for the friendship and the help with the electronics.

And once the boat was back in the water, a man looking at the boats struck up a conversation and appeared the next day with six fresh garlic bulbs from his garden and sack of dry kindling wood for the wood stove.  What generosity of spirit!

Such a great time in Rimouski.

After being out of the water since October last year, I was looking forward to getting back in the water and living on a boat again, not a work project.  However, there’s no budget for living in a marina – which typically costs $60 a night!!!  After three days in the water checking essential items, I went to pay my bill.  There was no charge for being in the water and I double-checked that ther was no charge.  I thought the marina was giving me some slack after being there so long (it’s normal to give a boat a couple of daysd to get sorted once in the water.).  I’d make it very clear to the manager and to the staff that if I was going to be charged the full fee per night like a one-night visitor that I would leave immediately.  I’d even arranged with the Harbourmaster of Rimouski to be allowed two days on the Government Wharf if necessary.

The night before leaving I checked again that all accounts were settled – and took bottles of good wine for the manager and the staff – and was assured that everything was up to date and settled.

Now a new big bill has arrived!  This is the second time the marina has extra billed me.  Last fall after paying all the charges for the haul out and winter storage – and after I’d left Rimouski, a new bill arrived for the rental of the steel stands giving the boat extra support.  I did not mind paying for the rental, but the charge was almost the same as price to BUY the stands from a marina catalogue.  If I’d received the bill while still at the marina I would have made supports from lumber.

This new bill has certainly put a small damper on the experience; but the peple I met in Rimouski were wonderful.  Thank you to all!

Strunk’s original text was completed revised by E. B. White in an updated edition published 51 years ago.  What makes The Elements of Style so effective and therefore has maintained its popularity is the clarity of their guidance.  Many people imagine that rules are for fools and not for them.  They point to celebrity authors famous for not following the rules.  Yet, as Strunk pointed out, “The best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric.  When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation.  Unless he is certain of doing it well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.”

This is not merely rules for the sake of rules:

“Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worked roadsign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram…When you say something, make sure you have said it.”

Much of the trouble comes, I believe, from a flagrant contempt for the listener or the reader.  If someone can’t be bothered to spell correctly or to observe common conventions of a language that make the writer’s meaning clear, is that not showing contempt for their audience? “(Strunk) felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least to throw him a rope,” writes White in his Introduction.

The Elements of Style has only 71 pages yet its impact on the English language, particularly in North America, has been profound.  The book has guided millions of people who cared enough to pick up the book and read it in order to write and to speak with more control, strength and effectiveness.

The book ranges from explaining that parenthetic expressions should be enclosed between commas  – “The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot.” – to a list of cautions.  These include avoiding fancy words,  not using dialect in speech unless you really can accomplish the challenge, and above all, being clear.  “Clarity is not the prize in writing, not is it always the principal mark of a good style…But since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue.”

The revised edition of The Elements of Style by  William Strunk Jr. was published in 1959 by Macmillian and Co.

Buy now: The Elements of Style (Original Edition)


Why The Greater Depression Still Lies Ahead

By Michael Pento

July 01, 2010 “Forbes” — If policymakers do not understand the real cause of a problem, they will in all likelihood be unable to provide a genuine solution.

Messrs. Barack Obama, Benjamin Bernanke and Timothy Geithner do not understand the real cause of this debt crisis. They are politicians first and economists or students of the market second–if at all. Therefore, it is not wise to count on them to tell us when the Great Recession is over, or to provide a plan to prevent another one in the future.

The cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007, was one and the same: an overleveraged economy. Excessive debt levels are the direct result of the central bank providing artificially low interest rates and of superfluous lending on the part of commercial banks.

The easy money provided by banks eventually brings debt in the economy to an unsustainable level. At that point, the only real and viable solution is for the public and private sectors to undergo a protracted period of deleveraging. The ensuing depression is, in actuality, the healing process at work, which is marked by the selling of assets and the paying down of debt.

Unfortunately, our politicians today are focused on fighting this natural healing process by promoting the accumulation of more debt.

During this latest economic contraction, the Federal Reserve took interest rates to near 0%, and the Obama administration is leveraging up the public sector to record levels in a bid to re-leverage the private sector. The government’s philosophy is tantamount to sticking a frostbitten man in the freezer so he won’t have to suffer the pain associated with the thawing of his extremities.

During the Great Depression, real gross domestic product plummeted 32%. The Great Recession, which we are still struggling through, began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. In contrast to the 1930s, GDP during this recession shrank only 3.6% from the fourth quarter of 2007 through its low point in the second quarter of 2009. Between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of this year (the most recent period for which data is available), GDP contracted a mere 1.1%.

The contraction in GDP during the Great Depression was the direct result of consumers paying down debt and selling off assets. Household debt as a percentage of GDP reached nearly 100% in 1929. To put that number in perspective, household debt did not go back above 50% of GDP until 1985. It was not until the first quarter of 2009 that household debt once again approached the Great Depression level of 100% of GDP.

Between the start of the Great Depression and the end of World War II, household debt fell from 100% to just above 20% of GDP. Getting there was a painful process, but such de-leveraging was the only real cure for an economy swimming in debt. Thanks to government efforts to carry on our debt-fueled consumption binge, during today’s Great Recession household debt has barely contract at all; it fell to 92.5% of GDP in the first quarter of this year.

To make matters even worse, during this current crisis our government’s response has been to dramatically increase its own borrowing. At the start of the Great Depression, gross federal debt was 16% of GDP. It peaked just below 44% when the Depression ended. While the national debt did increase significantly during that period, it was still relatively benign when viewed from a historical perspective.
The U.S. entered the current Great Recession with gross national debt equal to 65% of GDP. It has since exploded to 90% of GDP! Comparing the relatively innocuous level of the 1930s with today’s pile of government debt clearly illustrates the perilous state of the economy.

National debt did rise dramatically during World War II, topping out at 120% of GDP in 1946. But consumer debt plunged concurrently. So while the nation was adding debt to fight and win a global war, households were taking the necessary steps to ensure their balance sheets were well prepared for the aftermath of the battle.

Today, gross national debt and household debt are both at or above 90% of GDP for the first time in our history.

Many observers–unfortunately including most of those in power–have concluded that the government must spend more while consumers rein in their debts. Their strategy is based on the belief that once the economy perks up they can unwind that debt.

There are two problems with this Keynesian theory. One is that government spending doesn’t increase GDP; it only chokes off private-sector growth. The other is that politicians never regard the present as a good time for the government to pay off its debts.

The result is that the country is left with a private sector reducing a massive overhang of debt. As households curb spending, GDP slows, and the ratio of debt to economic output grows even further.

Since we have yet to address the real cause of this recession, we are moving inexorably closer to causing The Greater Depression. If policymakers do not understand that the progenitor of a depression is debt, they will also be unable to provide a genuine solution.

Michael Pento is chief economist at Delta Global Advisors and a contributor to www.greenfaucet.com .

With more than 18 years of industry experience, Michael Pento acts as Chief Economist for Delta Global Advisors and is a senior contributor to GreenFaucet.com. He is a well-established specialist in the Austrian School of economic theory and a regular guest on CNBC, Bloomberg and other national media outlets. Mr. Pento has worked on the floor of the N.Y.S.E. as well as serving as vice president of investments for Gunn Allen Financial immediately prior to joining Delta Global. He also serves as Director of Research for the firm and has created several investment products that are sold throughout Wall Street. He has carried series 7, 63, 65, 55 and Life and Health Insurance Licenses. Mr. Pento graduated from Rowan University in 1991.

A few days later, a very cheerful and very skilled welder patched the one-inch hole in the hull so well that you could not see where the problem had occurred.  A couple of coats of yelow prime and Kuan Yin was ready to take to the water again.  However, other work has delayed that event.  I found another soft spot later and was able, by using considerable force, a small screwdriver through the steel.  This was also easily repaired by the welder.  However, the two holes point up that the weld all along the stringer (interior framework) needs to be watched.  Probably eventually much more drastic repairs will have to be made. I may have to learn welding in order to be able to do the work myself.

All in all, the experience has not been too painful.  A wonderful friend made available a substantial line of credit in order to pay for what at first I feared might be a horrific repair bill (and certainly would have been in Toronto!) but the total bill was less than $200 for ultrasound, welding and a marine surveyor to take a look.

Through all the refitting of Kuan Yin over the last two summers, I’ve always tried to apply the highest standards that I’m capable of achieving.  Sloppy work always has to be redone and costs more in time and money in the end, in my experience.  But I have to admit I was tempted just to let this one little touch of rust go – paint over for another season and attack it next spring.

However, I got out the grinder, brought the power line and started to work.  Imagine my horror less than a couple of minutes later when I discovered a HOLE in the hull of my steel boat.  Half a screwdriver disappeared!

At first this was quite a mystery.  Two summers ago I stripped the inside of the boat, took a sawzall and cut out the original cabin sole to enable me to reach all areas of the hull.  I scraped, ground, hammered and wired brushed all spots of rust over every inch of the hull, except behind the old fridge and under the toilet holding tank.  But no where did I see any rust to give me cause of worry.  I’d painted with special two-part epoxy paint and was happy that the hull of the boat was in such good shape.  So where could this hole be in the hull?

I cleaned out all the soft rust and discovered the hole was about one-inch in diameter.  Enough to sink the boat within a few minutes – and a particular danger when sailing alone!

The steel plates of the hull had been welded to the frame of the hull.  Part of this frame is a steel tube that runs the length of the boat and is called a stringer.  And this was where the hole in the boat happened to be – right inside the tube stringer.  It may have been flooding with water for many seasons, gradually allowing the hole to grow.  That was why no water had appeared inside the boat.

Finding a big hole in the hull of a boat is every sailor’s nightmare – but actually I was both pleased and disappointed.  Pleased because I found the hole before the boat was back in the water and the damage could continue or cause some other catastrophic event.

I made a cup of tea (one of my answers to all things that need a moment or two to think about) and sat down.  I’d lost Ungava Bay – at least for 2010.  hopefully I can still make it north up the coast of Labrador and around into Ungava Bay next year.

In the meantime, I needed to get all of Kuan Yin’s hull tested.  Were there other areas of the hull that had holes or corrosion that was making her steel skin paper-thin?  I have to find out.

Length 31′ 6″ – 9.60m
Beam 10′2″
Draft 4′6″

Price  AUZ $35,000

Though the designer is listed as Jack Hanna, this is not correct. John Hanna designed the Tahiti ketch, which Weston Farmer modified with more canvas (more horsepower for a sailboat) and adapted the design for steel rather than wood.

Builder  Warren Hayes
Hull  Material Multichine Steel
Engine  29hp MWM Deutz Diesel
Fuel  100 litres
Water  200 litres
Dinghy   Inflatable
Toilet  Enclosed manual

Accommodation   Double berth forward, two settee berths.
Galley  4 Burner gas + oven
Refrigeration   12v Waeco fridge
Electronics  Not a lot of electronics on this one. VHF, 27mg, tv/dvd/cd etc.

Sail Inventory  5 good sails incl main, genoa, jib, staysail and spinnaker.
Remarks  Comfortable liveaboard boat, simple and solid. Owner moving ashore.

View Photo Album