It has been 5 years now since I was on a sailboat underway. It has actually been 5 years since I have been on any boat underway, as long as you do not count car ferries.
I consciously made a decision when we started the Akupara project that the next time I was sailing, it would be on Akupara.
Sometimes seems like that will never happen, but other times it seems like we are getting closer.
I am also going to sit down soon and add up all of the receipts and update the costs page. Scary thought but it needs to be done. I still reckon we are under our original estimate of $100000.00, so not too bad. A “brand new” 42 year old boat for 100k as opposed to a fully brand new boat for 450k.
taken from: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pertinacious pertinacious. If you won’t take no for an answer, you’re pertinacious. The same holds true if you stubbornly push on a door despite a sign that says “pull.” Pertinacious means unyielding or perversely persistent. We get pertinacious from the Latin pertinax, which combines per-, “thoroughly,” with tenax, “tenacious.”
This project has had many ups and downs. It has taken way longer than we ever anticipated. We expected to be sitting at anchor sipping drinks by now but we still have a lot of work to do before we are ready. To be completely honest there have been a couple of periods where we have simply lost interest. Akupara became more like an albatross than a dream. It has seemed like all we did for several years was work on her and write cheques, it has been downright depressing to say the least. We have had a few highs, the removal finally of those old stinking fuel tanks, even though the keel tank was the worst job an Akupara yet. When I finally installed the new electrical panel and had lights inside for the first time, when we installed the Cubic Mini Woodstove and had the first test fire! Those day were fun. The biggest transformation and probably the most exciting has been the painting of Akupara’s hull! It took damn near 2 years but when it finally happened, my god, she is beautiful. For the first time ever since owning Akupara, I had a small panic attack as we were removing the lifelines and a turnbuckle fell overboard dan near scratching the hull. That is a monumental step forward!!
So what has kept us going? Good question? We have had many of these conversations over the last few days and we have now made it a priority to try to remember all of the reasons we started this project in an attempt to rekindle the fire! We have been talking about everything we enjoy, and everything we miss about sailing and generally being out on the water. With each new memory (things remembered) we can slowly feel the fire coming back. It is of the utmost importance that now, especially now, we concentrate on all of the good things in order to make it through! If all goes well we have less than a year to finish her and get her in the water! It is just like running a marathon, you are tired, your feet hurt, your legs hurt, you are out of breath, you want to quit, but then you see that finish line and all of the negativity leaves and somehow you find the extra reserve of strength to push even harder!
Let’s hope we can find that last little bit! It’s time to get busy again!!
So are we pertinacious, or is there such a thing. Somehow I think that anyone who is described as such, consciously chooses to focus on the end results as opposed to the darkness and the hurdles that are immediately in front of them and I think they spend a lot of time forcing themselves to do so!
lifelines offHatches offAdmiral hard at workButyl tape, love it or hate it, but damn it works!
Once again I find myself typing a blog entry on the verge of May. A quick check and this is the 3rd May that I have done this.
The bad news – we are still way behind schedule. Loads and loads of work to get done before we are in a position to launch Akupara.
The good news – the weather seems to be changing now finally. The temperature is up during the day and the rains are trying hard to come to an end.
The plan – This weekend the plan is to get back into the game. To create a final list of to-do’s, prioritize them, plan them out, and back at it.
Vision’s of humming sanders, the smell of Cetol and epoxy, the whirring of sewing machines, and the sound of a new engine (soon I hope) are starting to fill my dreams again.
The admiral and I just returned from 14 days in Mexico, so we should be well rested to jump back into this and we both decided that we must wrap it up this year. It has been too long since we felt the ocean swell under our feet and we need that to balance out the chaos in our daily working lives.
When a man takes that last step off of the dock, and onto his yacht, he changes.
Not only does he change on the inside, but he changes on the outside as well.
It doesn’t matter how big the yacht is, it only matters that he is Master and Commander of all he surveys. His chest swells, his muscles tense and his vocabulary changes with the introduction of long lost words like yardarm, and hawsepipe, and fathoms.
He gets the 1000 yard stare in his eyes. You know he has been there. He has survived horrors on the high seas, the kind of which fill the terrors of your dreams.
His quiet confidence strikes both fear and calm, all at the same time, and most women grow weak in the knee around such power.
If he happens to catch a glimpse of a reflection in perhaps the black death called a Great White’s eye, the picture he sees is very much like the one I now share below.
Of course, there are always 2 sides to every tail, and his greatest fan of all, his wife, has a much different perspective!
I am so sick and tired of spam emails in my comments that I am considering disabling this feature. Arghhhh, no I don’t need viagra, (well at least not yet, might want to keep one of these links for later in life) and no I don’t need my site to go viral, and no, your automated content gibberish does not need to be in my site. F@#$ O## to all of you spammers!!!!!
ok rant over.
If you are actually posting a comment, please be sure to use a real email address and at least a name that resembles a real name, otherwise I will just delete it. thanks
If you have been following this project since the beginning, you would have noticed that I have not been as active maintaining this blog in the last year as I was in at the start. Apologies for that.
In October of 2015 my father was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and at that time was given 3-6 months to live as it had already spread to his kidneys, lungs, bladder and liver. They performed a colostomy at that time. Over the last year I travelled back and forth to Northern Ontario countless times to be with him. He was in and out of the hospital and his overall health seemed to go up and down. At first he responded well to the radiation treatments, and it looked like he might be making improvements, but then that changed and they had to stop. Every time I went, I could see his decline and in the end we were just waiting for that final call.
I was lucky enough to be able to go and spend a week with him in August. He required 24 hour care by that point and I am honoured that I was able to be there for him, even though it was only for a week. My younger sister spent 3 months as the primary caregiver and by doing so allowed him to stay in his home as long as possible, which was his wish.
My father always dreamed about sailing off to the South Pacific. As he grew older and his dream grew farther away, he became negative about the concept in general, saying things like, the beaches are all ruined with garbage and the ocean is all polluted, and it just isn’t the same anymore. I believe this was simply his way of dealing with never having achieved his dream. One of the last conversations I had with him while I was there in the middle of the night, he asked me what it was really like out there. I told him how incredible it is to be sailing through the night with dolphins playing at the bow, and luminescent creatures rising up from the deep, and the thrill and fear of surfing down monstrous waves. These were my experiences and I was able to share them with him when he needed them the most and I pray that he was able to come to peace with it, and that he was able to dream again.
My father passed away November 11th, 2016 at approximately 11pm at night. He fought an incredible battle, but in the end cancer took his life at 77 years of age.
I think I am going to stop calling this site a boat refit site and start calling it a home renovation site. The farther we go down this road, the more it seems fitting. I mean hey, I’ve watched a few home renovation shows over the years and what is the overall plot. Search for the right project. Do a bit of planning, gut the thing, move a few walls, insulate, re-wire, re-plumb, finish, paint and voila, admire the end product. Maybe we should have Akupara TV! It is the exact same thing, just in a different shape, however we have the added excitement of once we are all done, we have to see if the damn thing floats or not. That’s more drama than the average house reno, they don’t have to pass the float test at the end of the day.
So I was talking to a gentleman at the boat yard, both of us are in the midst of a complete gut and rebuild. He is re-doing an old powerboat, but essentially the same deal. We see each other quite regularly and at the same time we see a lot of abandoned dreams in and around our 2 projects. The conversation turned to how long the Admiral and I have been at this and I told him a little shy of 2 years now and we still have 8 months left at least. He has been at it for about 6 months now. Why are we still plugging away at it? What makes us keep at it? Why haven’t we walked away and let the dream die like so many others have done. It would be more than easy! As the lyrics in the song Southern Cross attest to, “And we never failed to fail it was the easiest thing to do.” Why do I waste my Saturday’s and Sunday’s going to a dirty, smelly, boat yard filled with undesirables. Always being dirty and choking on dust of some sort whether it be wood or fiberglass. Spending ludicrous amounts of money to maintain and attempt to improve this old boat. Hell, for the amount of money we have spent so far we could have bought a very nice, ready to go, 30-35 foot sailboat. And we still have a lot of money to spend. (speaking of which, I need to update the cost page)
I don’t really have the answer to any of these questions. Perhaps I am too stubborn, perhaps I simply don’t want to be called a failure. Perhaps I have nothing better to do with my time and money. Perhaps I am a wee bit off my rocker and actually enjoy all of this rebuild stuff. Or perhaps I have had this dream for so long, that it is so deeply engrained in me, that if it took 20 years to finish the project, I would keep going. I really don’t know. Of course the insanity part is a given, you would have to be insane to start anything like this, let alone continue it.
Well, in any case, I am not abandoning the project any time soon so I guess I had better finish my morning coffee, put on my old work clothes and head down to the boatyard. Maybe one day we will actually be finished.
I have to admit I truly feel bad for the owner of this boat. I am not sure exactly what the make and model is but there is a very nice sailboat in the yard next to me now. It looks well kept and well loved. The top sides are spotless, the hull sides above the waterline are shiney and at first glance it is a really nice boat. Obviously as you can see in the pictures, the owner had quite the unfortunate encounter with something pretty hard. There is a big impact spot on the bottom leading edge of the fin keel and an associated large crack along the hull keel joint. This is why I do not like fin keels. If I am going to hit something and let’s face it, there are only two types of sailors, those who admit to running aground and those who lie about it, I don’t want the long heavy thing that keeps the stick end up to be ripped off. There was a letter written to Whitby Boat Works by an owner of an Alberg 30 if I remember correctly, that basically told the story of how the owner had run aground time and again and had not suffered any damage. The advice given was to move to an area with a softer muddy bottom. I am paraphrasing but it was quite humorous. The point being that the A30 was built extremely tough and the A30 and the Whitby 42 come from the same factory, at least the early ones. But I digress, I am getting a wee bit off topic.
What really makes me feel bad for the owners of this particular boat is the large chunk of hull that fell off. Yup, fell off. I took a closer look at the bottom and was quite shocked to see the state of it. There has to be a million blisters ranging from dime to silver dollar size. Most of these blisters appear to be deep. As well, there are a couple of other older war wounds and when you step back and take an overall look it becomes clear that there is a serious layup issue. I am not a master fiberglasser or whatever you call it, but I do know that there is a proper mixture of glass and resin that needs to be obtained in order to have a strong solid build. Too much resin is as bad as too little in that the build will then become brittle whereas too little and you can end up with dry glass in the laminate. This particular boat suffers from the latter in that there are pockets of dry glass just waiting to be knocked off. It really concerns me that the owner of this boat apparently is going to fix the localized obviously damaged areas and move on when in my opinion the entire bottom needs to be peeled and reglassed if he really wants to fix it properly. That being said, I can only guess how costly this would be and I can also guess why they are not doing it. Unfortunately the blisters will continue to eat away at the hull and eventually they will be left with a beautiful top sides and no hull.
Honestly I really feel for these folks. I am not sure what I would do in their shoes. All I can say is I am extremely thankful that the previous owners of Akupara dealt with the bottom properly by having it sanded down and epoxy coated a long time ago. If Akupara’s bottom looked like this poor boat I would have never made an offer to buy her. I have enough work to do without a complete bottom rebuild as well.
Anyway I wish these people well and hope they don’t hit anything else knocking off chunks of the hull.
Just to be clear, I am not making a connection between fin keels and blisters, it just so happens that this boat suffers from both and both of which I don’t like.
As we approach the 2 year mark the Admiral is still smiling. Hmmm maybe we should buy a bigger boat?
Sometimes I wonder if we had just saved all of our dimes and nickels for all this time, we probably could have a bought a working version of Akupara by now. But then again, we would have an unknown boat with all kinds of yet to be discovered issues. At least with Akupara we will be 100% intimate with every nut bolt screw wire fixture fitting piece of wood rope material and know for sure that if and when there is an issue exactly how to fix it.
Wow so it is September already. Where did the summer go? The leaves have begun to change colour and the weather has certainly altered course. We are back to a typical rainy Pacific Northwest. I guess the good news is that with the cooler temperatures we can get back to the hot dirty work of sanding the decks and getting ready for painting but I sure wish we were already done. The last few days have made me long for a nice cozy fire on the boat. I love being aboard when the temperature is cool and the rain is hammering the deck with a hot cup of coffee and a warm fire. Of course I love the idea of being onboard in the tropics just as much but we will take what we can get. ?
Last weekend was the first time in almost 2 years of working on Akupara that I got fed up and had to walk away. We were working in the galley and had a surprise inspection. Of course it never fails that everything is a giant disorganized mess when this happens and the progress does not show but in any event, I think we passed. ?
After they left we returned to work, completed what we had been doing and started trying to run some wire on the port side. For whatever reason, something that should have been super simple turned into a nightmare of events. I realized that this just was not going to happen and whatever else I attempted that day was just going to result in the same thing so I threw my arms up, gave up, packed up, and we left.
Strange how a week later I am still worried about a repeat of events. Not sure if I will work on the wiring today or not. Might be better to have a minor accomplishment first before returning to complete this job. In any event, fingers crossed that we have a good day of work and that things go a little better.
I am not sure of the exact date that I last sailed Kismet, our previous sailboat, but I know it was around the end of August. I have not sailed on any other boat during this time either. As a matter of fact, I have not been on a boat underway of any kind since then. I have had lots of invites but I will wait until Akupara is in the water. Both the admiral and I miss it tremendously. We miss our friends at the marina. We miss packing up Thursday night to be ready for Friday. We miss waking up on the boat Saturday morning. We miss being underway in the early morning and anchoring out at night. We miss the escape it provides from the hectic day to day life.
For many many years now I have dreamed about retiring and cutting the dock lines to sail away. The strange part is that I can see perfectly how it will go down. I can see us sailing away from the marina to start our great adventure, but I cannot see beyond that. Perhaps it is just too great of a dream to be able to capture it all in my thoughts but it could also be that this is the exact reason I have wanted to do this. No plans. No responsibility no deadlines or emails or text messages or phones ringing or having to finback to work Monday. Maybe it is best to just let the winds guide us to our destination and be content knowing that we have managed to break free of the chains. Every time I raise the sails I have this feeling even if it is fleeting for the time being.
Damn I can’t wait to feel that again!
Our new launch date goal is June 2017 which will make it 2.5 years since I last sailed a boat. Hopefully we remember which way is up!
I have been wondering lately how much time we have spent on Akupara and I am a little disappointed in myself for losing track.
I know that the majority of the time that we are there I write a blog post but I also know that some of the posts cover a full weekend while others only account for a few hours.
So in true mathematical fashion, I checked the number of blog posts and there are 121. If I assume a value of 6 hours per post, which would be a good guess as to how long we are typically at Akupara, I end up with 726 hours and considering the admiral is with me 3/4 of the time I will multiply that by 1.75 to arrive at a total of 1270 hours.
Now, it I divide that by 40 for an average work week, I get 31 weeks. Is it possible that in total one man by himself would have spent 31 weeks on this restoration? I doubt it.
I think a more accurate number would be a lot less than that as this math does not factor in all of the lost time for setup and tear down, Getting your head back in the game and all the rest. I honestly think a grand total of 121 days would be pushing it. So approximately 24 weeks.
At $75 dollars an hour which is the typical shop rate, I think we have already saved about $72000 in labour costs by doing it ourselves as opposed to hiring out the work.
That makes me happy!! Now I have an extra $75k to play with?? Ya right….
21. That is the number of months we have not had a boat in the water. We miss the feel of the ocean, the gentle rocking that puts us to sleep at night. The moments of absolute calm and the moments of absolute terror. The fresh air, the sunrises and the sunsets. The closeness to nature. Being in tune with the tides. The list goes on and on.
There is a certain type of person that is attracted to old boats. There is a certain type of person who is attracted to the idea of restoring old boats. There is a certain type of person who dreams of someday cutting the dock lines and sailing off into the sunset. When you take these three types of personalities and you combine them all together, you end up with one of a couple of different sub types of person. You have the doer’s, the dreamers, and the derelicts.
The doers are the ones who no matter what, find an old boat, fix as much as possible and then take off.
The dreamers are the ones who no matter what, find an old boat, continue fixing it for as long as they own the damn thing and never leave.
And finally you have the derelicts who no matter what, find an old boat, start fixing it, figure they can do everything on the cheap, lose interest, lose money, probably end up divorced, move onto their boat, eventually the boat begins to sink and they end up on the hard where they continue to hoard others cast offs. The decks continue to be accumulate detritus with new “treasures” appearing often, the hull grows a great colour of green, the rust settles in, the strawberry plants are in planters around the keel, and there are 101 different projects on the go that will never see completion.
I think every marina in the world must have all of these types of people.
The sad part is that in Akupara’s current marina/workyard, as in most I would suspect, this class distinction is completely evident in the order of the boats placement in the yard. The boats nearest the gate stand the highest likelihood of ever returning to the water, and the boats closest to the back fence, well let’s just say, if they do not burn down, get crushed by another derelict when it finally falls over, or the owner dies onboard one cold winter night, will probably never move again.
Akupara was moved by the yard and was placed at the very back of the work yard. We are not happy. As a matter of fact, we are very insulted. And, to add to that, we are now very worried about Akupara’s safety. In all seriousness, the back of the yard has quite a few undesirable characters to say the least.
The back of the line
Now I will admit that we have been unable to get down to Akupara recently as I have been extremely sick since coming back from Ontario and I will also admit that we have purposely not completed any work on Akupara’s exterior, but to move us back to where the derelicts live is a wee bit insulting. We thought we were making good progress for the most part.
There is one positive thing that has come out of this. And that is a renewed sense of focus to getting Akupara back in the water as soon as possible.
As Captain, I have cancelled all shore leave going forward. The entire crew will be on deck both Saturday’s and Sunday’s until we are able to launch. If you are suffering from a cutlass wound to your right arm, that is fine, I will reduce your workload, as your left arm will still function and there are a lot of one handed jobs that need to be completed.
We need to get serious again and we knew that before discovering that Akupara had been moved. This is just a big enough kick in the ass to drive the point home.
We are now re-evaluating our plans to determine if there is a quicker way back into the water and will probably have work to complete once we launch, but it is better than leaving her where she is as all of our hard work could be stolen, destroyed or otherwise ruined by the locals.
I had a very productive day yesterday on Akupara. I was there for approximately 6 hours and accomplished a lot of little tasks that had been piling up. The admiral over the last couple of months had competed sanding a lot of cupboard doors and drawers but I had not been installing them as I did not have any screws. Now I know that sounds a little funny. I mean there are a hundred stores within 10 miles that all sell screws I am sure but, the problem with all of those stores is that they are newer up to date modern stores. Like Home Depot or Lowes. What these stories lack in my opinion is a couple of really important things, like customer service and in a lot of cases, quality items. So I have been holding off on buying screws as my favourite store, which is about a block away from Akupara, is Wolff’s Marine, but Wolff’s Marine is not open on Saturdays during the winter months. Good for them but bad for me. Wolff’s Marine is an old time kinda store. The kinda store where there is a greasy stained old coffee pot that is always on and the coffee is free. The guy behind the counter knows almost every item in the inventory and precisely where it is in the store. The entire store has a distinct feeling and smell to it that reminds me of going to the hardware store with my dad when I was a kid. Wolff’s Marine has 2 floors of goodies and the aisles are narrow and the shelves go almost to the ceiling. It is a paradise. I am sure that somewhere inside that goldmine is every single part I will need to complete Akupara’s refit times 2. When Wolff’s makes an order for new items, they don’t buy just 1 or 2 to have in stock, they must order in the 100’s. Case in point, I will need 2 new heads, West Marine downtown Vancouver might have one on the shelf, and 1 in the storage room. Wolff’s has 10 piled right to the ceiling. So to make a long story short, ok shorter, Wolff’s Marine is now open on Saturday mornings for the summer again. Hooray! I bought a can of Bilgekote, a can of Cetol, 5 boxes of number 8 Robinson screws and 2 boxes of finishing washers. I bought 1/2, 3/4, 1, 1 1/4, 1 1/2 inch stainless screws and lined them all up inside a drawer like prized possessions.
My screw drawer, all Robertson screws.
It is amazing how happy I was, okay still am! I wanted to hug the guy and tell him how much I have missed him since October. I refrained of course, but I did tell him I would see him every Saturday until October. 🙂
So after buying all of the screws, I hung what seemed like 100 cupboard doors. I also permanently fixed another issue yesterday and that was a leaking chainplate. I had temporarily “fixed” it a while back, but it was still leaking but I had to wait for a day of no rain in order to fix it properly. Now I only have another 9 to go. The gigantic pile of wooden pieces in the cockpit is almost gone now, hopefully today we will see the last of it and I can complete the rough sanding of the decks in preparation for painting the next time we are down.
There has not been a lot happening with Akupara as of late for a couple of reasons. As my last post mentioned, the Admiral and I were in Cuba and we had left on a Thursday so we lost a weekend. We returned the following Friday and I spent the weekend completing homework from the Java course that I am taking for work so we never made it down to Akupara either. And this weekend, I have the mid term assignment due Sunday at midnight, so I doubt if I will have time to work on her either.
It is frustrating on the one hand to have Akupara sitting there waiting to be worked on and to not have the time to do anything but I guess it can be a fact of life. Work has been super busy and with school, family, dogs and everything else, there simply are not enough hours in the week. Between work and school alone I have been averaging 14 hour days and it is bloody tiring. 5 more weeks to go and I will be complete this class, and I will have a break until September once it is complete.
I did manage to contact one of BC’s most well respected riggers, Steve White from Steve White Rigging and obtain a ballpark quote to replace all of the standing rigging on Akupara. It came in at a little over $5000. Not too bad. Expensive of course but not that bad, and this includes all new turnbuckles! All of Akupara’s rigging is rust stained and questionable so when we purchased her, we knew we would be replacing all of it! Steve will be dropping by Akupara to have a close look at her masts and at some point I will connect with him to give him all of the old rigging for measurements.
If there is one thing I do not need to experience, it is having a rigging failure and losing a mast due to not fixing it when we have the chance.
Well, I guess I better get back to the homework…I almost miss the sound of the sander. Wait, did I actually say that?
No matter where in the world you go, beaches are always amazing! To me at least. Some are worn and ragged while some are as soft as a babies bum, but they are all amazing in their own way!
We had the opportunity to take a little trip 2 weeks ago, and had the pleasure of experiencing a totally different kind of uniqueness. We managed to get ourselves to Cuba for 8 days and boy did we enjoy it!
Cuba is like stepping back in time, from the architecture of the late 1700’s right up to the 1950’s, everywhere you look you are surprised by what you see!
Of course, no trip to a foreign country can be complete without visiting at least one marina, I snuck in 3 ;-)!
And of course everyone likes to talk about the old cars and how well they have been kept…
But I think what most people forget to talk about is how necessity is the mother of invention. The Cubans have had to make due with what they had for many many years and it has brought them to a whole new level of resourcefulness. Take our hired car in the picture above. It is a 1955 Chev Bel Air and it appears almost mint! The interior is immaculate, although it is missing one door handle, and the paint more than passes the 2 foot test. (As in from 2 feet away it appears flawless.) What is fascinating about this car, which is prevalent through all of Cuba, is the lengths Cubans will go to in order to preserve it. For instance, the original engine died completely a long time ago, and rather than scrap the car like we would, they pulled the engine and transmission out and somehow got a Mercedes Diesel and 5 speed manual transmission installed. It is a column shift by the way!
And when you look at the working boats, you can see that they have been repaired more times than you can count! Probably more repair material than the original boat now.
We could stand to learn an awful lot from the Cubans. Think about that the next time you are about to throw out that thing that does not work. Does it really not work, or are you just too lazy to make it work? I know I will.
I tell ya, visiting Cuba made our project of breathing new life into Akupara a walk in the park! I can go to a store and buy what I need to fix her, and yet people still think we are nuts for undertaking such a massive project!
We have nothing on the Cubans at all! They are the true masters of keeping old things running and looking like new, I can only hope Akupara looks as good when we are done!
BTW, if you get the opportunity, Cuba is an amazing place. We plan on going back and just spending a week in Havana alone!
The realization has started to set in that we may need another year on the hard to complete Akupara’s refit. There is a battle raging in my head as to whether we launch without being 100% finished, or if we wait until we are 100% finished. The issue is several fold. On the one side, if we gave the old Lehman a tune up and completed enough jobs to at least look complete, we could spend the summer on Akupara while she is afloat, working on the jobs that still need completion. On the other hand, it would basically amount to 3 lost months of work as when we are at the dock, there at times can be a bit more socializing than working going on. On the other hand, if we wait to launch, we can complete more of the jobs we have scheduled, like replacing the Lehman etc.
Of course life has a way of getting in the way as usual. Braces, college tuition, school trips. All these things add up to subtract from the refit budget. Another year would help ease that financial pain.
I am about half way complete sanding the decks. I still have the aft cabin area, and the cockpit to do. Not to mention all of the stanchions still need to come up. But, the majority of the decks have had a good rough sand with 80 grit. The shrinkwrap cover is a blessing and a curse at the same time. It allows us to be dry and get a lot completed but it makes it very difficult to work on deck as you can only stand up in the centre line and have to crouch somewhat on the sidedecks.
We will continue slogging it out for a while yet, but there may be a change of course coming up. It would be nice to feel Akupara move a little bit in the water.
I flew to Northern Ontario on the Thursday night redeye with a 2 hour stopover in Toronto. When I arrived in Sudbury Friday morning I picked up my car rental and headed off for Killarney.
It has been almost 10 years exactly since I have felt a Northern Ontario winter and if I have anything to do with it, it will be another 10 years before I see another one!
As I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for the car to warm up, my mind was trying to understand why anyone would consciously choose to live there. At some point over the course of the weekend it donned on me. All of the people in all of the freezing cold, snow covered places, honestly do not believe that the warm tropical islands they see on television are real! It is the only answer. It must be. I mean come on, if you have never been to a place like the Dominican Republic, or Jamaica, or Cuba, or Mexico, or Belize or 1000 other places, and you were sitting in your living room burning the furniture in order to stay warm, you would look at these places on the television and truly believe that they were a fantasy. There is no way as you turn your head to try to see through the ice covered window, and back to the warm tropical paradise on the TV screen that you could completely understand that it was real. Or as your hand is slowly freezing solid to the nozzle at the gas pump and you haven’t felt your toes in years, that you could mentally make the switch to a cold beer in your hand and warm sand squishing between your toes.
Well we have been to a few of these places and to everyone that exists in the frozen wasteland of the north, I am here to tell you that you are 100% correct in your belief! These places do not exist! It is all created inside a monstrous film studio for your viewing pleasure. As soon as you step outside the truth is there, it is exactly like your outside. In fact, the entire planet we call Earth should have been called Snow or Ice. The stories you hear about the ice age ending are lies, it has never ended. Just read through this blog and you will see the truth, I mean why would I spend time insulating Akupara if those places truly exist? And as the Admiral and I continue to work towards completing Akupara, and when we finally one day set sail for some of these places, it will only be because we have been selected to be in the film studio.
So in closing, to all of you who live on the planet “Ice”, lock your doors, do not travel, and save yourself the disappointment of learning the real truth. We will take care of that for you. And if we must continue to trudge through the deserted ice and snow covered beaches in hopes of someday finding a place like that while you are safely staying warm in your homes, it is a cross we are willing to bear.
Because if there really were places like that, and the general population actually learnt about them, they would be ruined and over run with people trying to thaw out.
So, as the beer guy on TV says, Stay safe my friend (and warm)! We will search for you and you have my word that the moment we find a place like that, we will be sure to share it with you..
And that is the long winded explanation as to why there was no work completed on Akupara this weekend!
We had a very fruitful information gathering day at the Vancouver Boat Show yesterday. Unfortunately the boat show itself changes very little from year to year and to be honest, in my opinion, is not really worth the money paid to get in the doors anymore. I guess once you have gone to a whole bunch of these, they start to all just become the same. The same vendors, the same dealers, the same products with “Boat Show Sale” plastered all over them.
For new boaters or for someone who is shopping for a new boat, it is probably a fantastic show, but as we do not fall into either of these categories, it could have been a lot better.
Andrea and Paige came with me and we did the rounds of all the booths stopping to talk at several that were of interest. Before going down there were 3 things that I wanted to get some answers for. Engines, watermaker repair, and interior cushions. On top of that we did get some current prices for items that we know we will want down the road, but as for spending money, I think grand total we spent less than $200 including admission. The only reason we spent so much, is that I found a great set of LED Spreader lights that I knew we needed, and of course I had to restock on Rescue Tape.
Rescue Tape and Spreader lights
Rescue tape has become my standby for more uses than I can possibly explain here. For those of you who have never used it, I would suggest buying several rolls and throwing them into your toolbox on your boat! I always buy Rescue tape and I always have several rolls hanging around! This time I bought 3 small rolls and 1 large one for $50. I don’t like plugs for products but this is one that has saved our bacon on a couple of occasions, including when the water pump bearings disintegrated and I had to MacGyver a fix with an old deck wash down pump to get us home. Another time when a cooling hose rubbed through on the alternator and we did not have a spare hose. It was not pretty, it would not have went 1000 miles, but as long as we kept the RPM low we were able to limp 30 miles back to the marina on an absolutely windless day. Check out their website Rescue Tape and seriously get yourself some. You will find a million uses for it. And maybe they will send me a few free rolls for this plug! 😉
The spreader lights we purchased were not a planned item but in this case I managed to get them for about $50 each.
We spoke to a representative from La Fabrica Marine and discussed high level the overall plan for the upholstery, the mattresses, the cockpit cushions, and the dodger and bimini. This is going to be a very expensive endeavour with initial ball park estimates of $8000 plus. That being said, we are not looking at this project as a weekend boat where it would be okay to have 3-4 inch mattress pads, and will be going with real custom mattresses and we also have some fairly specific requirements that I will not give away just yet. As well, La Fabrica does very nice work. They have our name and number and we will set up an appointment post boat show for them to come out and take some measurements and give us a more accurate quote.
Lots of information to review
And finally the big reason we went to the boat show. To get some information and pricing on the repower. Let me start this by saying any time I have a hard time getting a price online, I smell a rat. Try searching for a price online for 75hp diesel engine from one of the name brands. Good luck and if you find a place that actually lists prices let me know, and I will post it here for everyone to have access to. The second thing that makes me squirm is when they pull out their little list of model numbers and prices exactly like a slimy used car salesman. Their is no mystery to the fact that the 10% off boat show special is a crock. And you only have until February 29th to make a deposit and secure that price. I happen to know that the price for a Yanmar is almost the same this year from last. Hmmm. In any case here are the numbers and the models for each of the engines we looked at.
Beta Marine – Beta 75 – $18871
Beta Marine – Beta 60 – $15535
Nissan – SN110 – $14897
Mitsubishi – SM105 – $19123
Yanmar – 4JH4 (75hp) – $16917
All of these prices include mounts, basic panel, and gear box with slight variations as to what each of those are.
The gentleman who we spoke to from Beta Marine actually ran the numbers for the Whitby 42 and although I do not have them memorized, the 60hp would do the job providing for hull speed at max RPM but there would be nothing in reserve. The 75hp would provide hull speed at around 2800 rpm and still have quite a bit in reserve. That sealed the deal and eliminated the 60hp. I have been in a situation where I needed a bit more power and didn’t have it, and I do not want to be there again.
I have not studied the graphs yet as I said but high level the Yanmar claims to be the most fuel efficient.
The major question I have in my head right now is something that the Beta marine dealer said. He claimed the Beta is a lot more like the Ford Lehman in that it is a big solid engine that will last forever. The Yanmar on the other hand seems to be the favourite. Everyone claims they have a Yanmar as though it is a status symbol. I am concerned that it is marketing hype and perhaps not of the same heavy duty construction as the Beta.
Everyone we spoke to ball parked the install at around $5-$6. So with taxes, we are looking at a $25000 job. I will take my time with this decision as I do not want to have to do it again that’s for sure.
Repower info
As we dream about getting closer to launching Akupara the inevitable question of where are we going to find moorage is starting to come up of course. All of our boats since we moved to Vancouver have been kept at Point Roberts Marina in Point Roberts, Washington, and we had the good fortune to run into Tanya who works in the office at the boat show. Tanya has always been fantastic to us! She is always happy to see you and always willing to find a way to help you out. We have never had a complaint at the marina that was not taken care of almost immediately, and so far, we have never been concerned about the safety of our boats in the marina. There is quite a community at the marina and we have made lots of great friends there. Tanya assured us that when we get close to launching to let her know and she will do everything she can to get us into a slip. It is nice to know that some places actually value and want your business. I think we will be putting Akupara there until the day when we move aboard, at which point she will need to come back into Canada.
