A wise and experienced boater once conveyed with a deep felt sigh: “At any one time there are 5 things wrong with your boat. The problem is… that you usually only know about two of them”. Ach, dear readers… If you happened to read my recent blog post “Following in the Footsteps of Sisyphus”, you may recall that our little tribe experienced several systems failures in rapid succession: Crane Hoist and Naiad stabilizer blown hydraulic lines, both unknown issues at the time. That was followed by overheating issues with Ginny, our 9 KW genset. Also unknown but not that unusual for a genset, being one of the more persnickety and frequently used engine systems on a boat.
Hmmm. Take a nicely designed Kubota diesel engine. Pair it with a generator. Stuff it in a sound shield that makes it harder to stay cool. Run it at 1800 rpm forever. Attach a hose to a through hull and route it to the intake side of a water pump that uses a problem prone, spinning rubber impeller to move cold salt water into a heat exchanger where one side is cold salt water and the other side is engine coolant (antifreeze). What could go wrong with that arrangement. Plenty! Turns out that the impellers are fairly fragile little niffers that require constant replacement. Best to have several on board. Then there are belts, engine zincs, oil, oil filters, heat exchanger end caps, o-rings, and gaskets… who all have a life expectancy…
Delta Marine dealt with and fixed our hydraulic issues, and I broke out my favorite tools and gave our Ginney a new belt, impeller, oil filter, oil and patched a broken wire. Back in business or so I thought…
With all the mechanical choreographies under our collective belts, we felt that Great Northern was again ready for more gallivanting. So… we set out again to continue our adventures, exploring the Salish Sea.
We made our way through the San Juans visiting some of our favorite anchorages and entered Canada at Sidney. After tootling around the Gulf Islands for a bit, we made our way through Dodd Narrows and landed in Nanaimo on a very windy afternoon. The anchorage at Newcastle Island looked to be quite congested. Not the kind of place we like to anchor in windy weather. The dock at the Nanaimo Yacht Club was full so we got a slip at the Petro Canada Marina. They assigned us an upwind slip and we had a hell of a time getting GN to the dock and tied up. With the big diesels counter rotating, and both thrusters thrusting we did make it to the dock. The wharfinger assistant “dock hand” they sent us was incompetent to say the least. Les had to do most of the dockline work and tie offs, and in her exuberance, cut the back of her hand while attempting to tie lines to the bull rails. That didn’t stop her at all, and she gallantly finished the job and retied the wharfinger’s poorly applied “knots”. We bandaged up Les’s paw, went to the store, bought some gin, tonic, and limes, and returned to the boat to slake our jangled nerves. We have been very conscientious to bandage and care for Les’s scraped up paw. It is healing nicely.
Les and I are not particularly fond of Nanaimo, but it is a good place to top off ships stores. A BC liquor store is adjacent to a large grocery just steps from the dock. There is also a reasonably good chandlery if boating items are needed, and repair shops abound. They do have a great public pool for swimming laps, and some of the restaurants are very good. So… it is a good place to restock before crossing the Strait of Georgia or making way up North to the Discoveries and further North. That was our plan.
So… back to the 5 known and unknown boat issues… I knew we had an issue with the starboard engine tachometer (Issue 1). And… one of our depth sounders was sometimes a bit puckish, but we had two and could always tell how deep the water was that we voyaged through (Issue 2). That being stated, it meant that we were unaware of 3 issues that were ready to spring forth and be known at any time.
By the morning the wind had died down and it looked like a good day to continue our Northerly campaign. We were up early and planning on a 0700 departure. I started the equipment checks at 0600. Engine oil, genset oil, house battery bank health and the condition of the thruster battery banks, water levels, electronics, setting up a course to either Deep Bay or Comox… I opened up Ginny’s sound shield to measure her oil level and I noticed… (Issue 3 as it were): Ginny had a pool of oil shimmering in the tub that she sits in. Ginny had an oil leak. Malas hierbos!!! There is a military saying: “One is zero, two is one”. Having two engines means one can get you home. Having two gensets means that you can always charge your batteries and operate other electron greedy devices. Having one genset meant we were closer to zero in that area, and heading North into areas with little mechanical support options didn’t seem prudent. We are not risk takers as we have been in earlier times… and we still had two unknown issues lurking in the wings. The un-diagnosed oil leak changed our plans. We left Nanaimo with the intent of going South. South meant more protected anchorages and access to mechanics who could fix Ginny’s little issue if I couldn’t. We made our way back through Dodd Narrows, Stuart channel, Sansum Narrows and settled into Genoa Bay where we anchored. Genoa is a grand and exotic location to perform boat work. I set up my work benches so I could comfortably examine Ginny’s innards, figure out where she was bleeding oil and repair it. If I couldn’t manage the job, then Delta Marine, Phil Brooks, or Raven were just around the corner.
I quickly determined that the source of her leak was the joint between the water pump and where it attached to the engine block: A failed gasket. I didn’t have a spare, but being the itinerant boat captain that I aspire to mimic, I had purchased multiple types of gasket material and a nice little tool to make proper holes in gasket materiel. The end result:
After coating each side of the gasket with Permatex Aviation Gasket Seal… I reunited the water pump with her supportive engine block, tightened all of the bolts, hooked up the hoses and gave Ginny a test. She passed the test. She passed water. She did not leak more of her vital fluids. I ran her for about an hour, checking her progress every 10 minutes or so. All good. Ready to support us for more adventuring.
We stayed in Genoa bay for a few days just relaxing, doing cruising boater things. Why not. Looking at the upcoming weather in the Strait of Georgia and Juan de Fuca, we decided it would be a reasonable option to head back to Port Ludlow for a few weeks to let the high season crowds dissipate a bit. We will spend the rest of our 2023 cruising during the shoulder season. We made our way back to the States. This time our CBP Roam application worked just fine. We settled into Hunter Bay off Lopez Island for the evening. When we woke up after a quiet night at anchor we were rewarded with a fabulous sunrise:
In our travels we’ve met Thither and Yon, Daylight, Dusk, Twilight, Darkness and Dawn. Where and who is next? We just might know by tomorrow morning or by next week. Port Ludlow is a good choice for now, so that is where we decided to return… for restocking etc. Fall is coming and that is the best time to be cruising. In the interim we do a bit more boatwork, hit the gym, and do some hiking and kayaking…
Why knot…
Salish Sea Cruising With Blair, Les, Leo, and Bliss 