When I was first contacted about this and looked at the survey I thought it was a really cool boat but that I would not be able to find crew. It was as “un-yacht-y” vessel as I could imagine but after looking at the additional pictures I realized that there was one person who could appreciate it.
Doug Simmons checkin out our ride for the next week.
I dont know many sailors that could have started this old 2 stroke Evenrude.
I met Doug and came to know him during the pandemic when I saw him on his boat out on Griffin Bay when we were not supposed to leave the dock. He was in his 70s Islander 28 sailing out of Fisherman’s Bay on Lopez Island and I was on my Moore 24 and we both were flying our yellow Q flags as a quiet protest of the lockdown. I instantly recognized a fellow feral scallywag who would not be kept from sailing on Sunday. We have since gotten to know each other over many Sunday raft ups off Turn Island half way between our home ports. Doug used to run a piledriving crew who were responsible for building many of the piers and ferry docks in the Salish sea. The fact that this was a work scow was probably more appealing to Doug than if it had been a yacht. Doug hadn’t cruised the waters north of the San Juans so it wasnt hard to get him aboard. I do feel a little bad though because I promised a scenic summer cruise through waters of the Great Bear Rainforest, Broughton Archipelago, and Desolation Sound but it turned out to be a week of working in an engine room.
Its whats on the inside that counts sometimes. Having lived on a sailboat for years in the NW I have come to appreciate the light and views you get from powerboats. This vessel is a great example of the joys of a great view while inside.
The other crew member was David English who I’ve known my whole life was the older kid that lived next door when I was little. Dave is a brilliant engineer and adventurer had also never done this passage. I figured these two would get each other and be good for conversation but also good with comfortable silence..and if it came to it.. be a very handy team if we had to fix something in remote waters.
The new owner was planning to live aboard the boat on Lake Union in Seattle part time. Kind of like a apartment in the city. Quite a different life than the boat had seen with its former owner where it served as a platform for Bear Hunting Business. This may sound very strange but it isn’t as unusual as you might think in Alaska. I was once hired to deliver a boat to Valdez Alaska for a guy who had a similar business.
The business card of the former owner and the work the boat did under its last ownership.
I asked if the owner wanted to go before I agreed to do the job and found crew and he said no but then invited himself aboard at the last minute when he met us at the boat.
Its hard to explain why this is frustrating. He was a nice guy on the phone but it changes the dynamic and although the crew said they were okay with it we had to share a cabin and after days of not cooking or helping work on the boat it was beginning to test my patience. When he originally said he wanted to go I asked him if he was going to participate with shipboard duties and he said yes. He did not even do dishes..
Ketchican is a wonderful Alaskan town and well stocked as remote towns go. We provisioned and looked at the route ahead to negotiate weather and tides. The low freeboard and flat bow necessitated we avoid rough stuff and the border crossing would require that we head quite a way out of our way to Prince Rupert.
TimeZero
Underway to Prince Rupert to clear into Canada and do the rest of provisioning we get accustomed to the nav software “TimeZero”.
It is a newly installed nav system and displayed on a computer monitor. This is typical with commercial vessels, not so much with smaller private vessels. Setting way points isn't something I do often as I think it is better to have the crew as ‘hands on’ with the autopilot as possible. These waters call for a different approach. The courses we lay meander through fjords and archipelagos where there are many twists and turns and it is easy to lose your bearings. Also the tides in this area are powerful and need to be negotiated with careful timing so planning ahead and plotting in the morning is key. I brought about 20 pounds of cruising guides with me so we could be sure to have the best understanding of our options for layover and anchorage. I chose not to navigate at night because of the number of trees and logs in the water. The days are long this far north in the summer so the down time would be short. This means that we had to try and get as much distance in light as possible everyday. And as many anchorages as there are in those waters there are still long stretches with no options to stop. This and we needed to time a few tidal gates.
We were coming into Prince Rupert just as it was getting dark and clearing customs isnt as straight forward as you would hope being that this is the only port to clear back into US waters. Navionics shows a dock on the approach that has been defunct for a while and the actual clearing dock isn't clear. The bata suggests a series of docks that allow clearance. When I came though on my race boat returning from the Race to Alaska the only spot available was past town a ways and a long walk into the stores.
Prince Rupert is major hub in an otherwise
We lucked out and a breakwater tie at the end of a dock was available. I called the customs number before landing to get advice and announce our arrival and was met with the words of the least informed Canadian customs official i have ever spoken to. She told me a few confusing and conflicting things, the most confusing being that we needed to report every time we dropped anchor on our way through Canadian waters. The exchange ended in our clearance without inspection.
Unfortunately as we were docking the port engine died.
It started up but it did not bode well in the beginning of a 700 nm trip though very remote waters.
The most likely culprit for a situation like this is fuel filters clogging up due to old fuel. This was very likely because the vessel had a 3500 gal fuel capacity.
Unfortunately the fuel filters on the vessel are very old housings and there are no spare filters aboard or available anywhere but ebay…There was actually very little info on these filters.
My delivery application asks customers to list the equipment aboard and the owner had said there were spares. I remember following up asking specifically if the vessel had spare filters, belt, impellers and fluids and was told that it did. This is a serious problem. There are no spare filters and there are no filters available for these housings in PR.
I discuss with the crew and we decide to buy new Racor housing and filters before heading south. The problem with caring 3500 gallons of fuel is the fuel gets old and in addition to growing critters it collects water from condensation with eventually sings to the bottom of the tanks where the pick up tubes are and once you get in rough water this is stirred up and causes the filter to clog and engine to die.
I have too much experience doing intensive engine work on boats I'm supposed to just be moving so there is as much built up frustration about this as there is savvy. First thing i have learned is that despite the time pressure you are under you have to remember you are not in a city and things do not run quickly or efficiently however one of the great things is that because you are not in a city your problems are a form of entertainment to the locals and these locals are very resourceful people. So the best approach when trying to tackle a job like this without waiting for things to be mailed in is to take the time to explain the entire situation (without the rush) to everyone you can. The guy working at the hardware store knows the guy that makes the custom fuel hoses and knows that he is in a nearby town till tomorrow but that he would come in on the weekend or stay late to help out some wayward southerners like us.
A few days of running around and conflicting info and people digging around in the back we have the parts to install two beautiful new Racor filters in a convenient location (as opposed to the former location).
The owner has asthma so he doesn't want to be exposed to any fumes so me and the crew do all the work.
Once underway we try to figure out the fuel tank routing. We are getting info from the new owner, the former owner, and eventually the designer and builder.
Mislabeling 5000
The labels on the hard lines in the engine room turned out to be courtesy of the former owner and wrong and the space between the gravity pulloff on the side of the built in tanks ends up being attached to L shaped pick ups making it even more likely we will pick up sediment. We can feel the sludge when we “dip the tanks” (use a stick that is marked to measure the levels.
The vessel has two detroit 671 which are very common engines and are quite thirsty (11 gph) so my concerns are not quelled too much by our new filters. Instead visions of us losing both engines in a high current area give me some stress. This makes me investigate the ground tackle. The vessel has a huge anchor and hydraulic windlass but only 200 feet of chain. This is minimal for this area because anchorages are often 50 feet deep. 4 to 1 is okay but there is wind in the forecast ahead and if we lose power we will be in deep water with little hope of the anchor catching before we hit the rocky shore.
Windlass work
Our first stop from PR is Curlew Bay on Fin Island. The gypsy is locking when we try to use the windlass clutch to lower the anchor so we use the reverse operation with the hydraulics to lower the big anchor. Once it's down we disassemble the clutch and see if we can replace the friction cone and regrease everything.
We also get skunked trying to crab which is hard to believe in this remote anchorage.
Dave on one of the starboard tanks
The next day we see how the scow performs in some small beam seas. The low side decks are awash and the motion is snappy. We stop at a battered reservation fuel dock in a place called Klemtu. A few elders are situated up top of the headwall and are entertaining themselves watching the bustle at the fuel dock on a sunny day. Some jokes are cracked about the current US administration after a brief and failed attempt to not look American. (NOTE: convert to liters your estimated fuel requirements before you pull up, asking for gallons is a dead give away) We push for Dyer Cove on Reginald Island. A beautiful place and what looks like a fishing paradise. The next jump is another exposed hop. Despite getting some swell relief behind the Goose Group the swells show us we wouldn't want to be out in too much seas in that flat bottom boat. The packing glands are old style and drip into a sump that has no bilge pump. Instead of a bilge pump with a float switch like regular designs we have to flip a switch to activate a pump that pulls a belt off one of the engines and use a big hose to vacuum out the water from tupperware containers under the stuffing boxes. This goes with every other engine room check.
The next leg is the last exposed leg and we pull into Miles inlet just as its getting dark. This is a magical place. There is a narrow inlet to a small anchorage that sits between two tidal rivers. There is just enough room to turn around this 50 footer.
Just came out of a fog bank and into this tiny entrance
As the tide ebbs the water froths and the wind blows these little froth islands around. One of the most beautiful spots in the 700 miles. Dont tell anyone.
Next stop Port Hardy. I looked at flights to Seattle for the owner who was dealing with drama from his kids and family back home and he flies out. I grab some fresh provisions and things we missed in PR while the boys put 800 gal onboard.
Not in Kansas any more Toto
Some of our work to figure the 3500 gal fuel tank design.
Now everyone has their own cabin and the vibe feels much better. The tank design is still baffling us all. There are 6 tanks built into the steel hull and they sit at different heights to the waterline so we are trying to correlate the fuel manifold and sight glasses to the fuel we have onboard.
Heading south to Port Neville; a small wayside with a dock and the ruins of a postoffice outpost not so long ago left.
The dock is full as to be expected, arriving at the last minute so we anchor behind some aluminum purse seiners.
The next push gets us through Race Passage; an infamous tidal gate and often very windy cut. Some of the most drama documented on the R2AK is in this narrow stretch. We are visited by a huge pod of dolphins.
The weather window we were so lucky to have for this delivery and that was largely squandered in our laydays working on the boat in PR has run out. We come out of the narrow confines of the part of the inside passage most dominated by tidal currents into a mixture of fog and smoke coming from a big fire in port alberni on the other side of Vancouver island. The fog eventually gives way to a building southly. We are now in the northern waters of the Straits of Georgia and the bows of the scow are throwing water into misty sheets covering the windows. We have been using “Rain X” to help with visibility as there are no wipers. It allows for visibility about %50 of the time. We are going to have to find a place to wait out the southerly gale that is building. I choose Courtenay with the hope that we will be able to get ashore but after poring through the cruising guides I decide there is too much fetch and as we will be setting the anchor in the dark for the first time that it's better to drop the hook a little south east of the town in the lee of Denman Island.
Anchor down and anchor alarms on; we use the down time to do some laundry. There is a full size washer and dryer in the engine room.
The scenery is very different in this area. It feels like the waters we came from are very far away. Industrial scenes seem so foreign after even our short sojourn through the wilds of BC.
5am wake up and 10 anchor down catches up. Almost better having a set watch on 24 hour deliveries.
Doug is getting calls from his kids who are visiting Lopez and I can tell he is ready to get home. I discuss with Dave if we are okay to drop him off in the San Juans and continue alone and he's fine with it. The rest of the passage is uneventful and we arrive in Seattle at the Shilshole Marina in temp moorage.
Dropping Doug off in friday harbor but not before a picture
