Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Last night I turned to the gorgeous ex-fiancee and said “Man, I can’t believe I’m shipping out to sea again! I thought I would have learned my lesson by now”. She just laughed. So, up at 4:15 AM and rolling at 5 through the foggy vineyards of Sonoma to the 
local airport. Of course, the cheap flight to Vancouver, Canada can’t just go north, nooo … first I fly 600 miles south to LA, and from there one long jump north to Vancouver.
The mountains of the coastal ring of fire are amazing, particularly now in July when the plains have no snow. I’m going north to be first mate delivering a fishing boat from northern Vancouver Island to southern Oregon. Oh, and did I mention we’re towing another boat as well?
Another crew member picks me up at the Vancouver airport, and we drive through the city. I’d never been to Vancouver. It’s a lovely town, ringed with mountains, with a big volcano in the background. It’s a bustling city, lots going on. The most surprising thing I saw was a Chinese Christian pagoda with a jade roof, real jade … with a statue of Mary inside and a cross on top. Words fail me.
From Vancouver, we drove to Horseshoe Bay, which is a short drive north of Vancouver. There we boarded the ferry for Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. The views in all directions are awesome, long fjords with mountains on the horizon.
Once the ferry gets partway across to Vancouver Island, you look back at Vancouver, with its volcano almost floating in the sky over the city …
Too soon, we arrived at Nanaimo, and watched the ferry speed off on its return run.
That ferry was mega-sized, seven decks. During the passage I stayed on the top deck and drank in the sun. The weather has been stupendous.
Midnight finds me right about where the “d” is on Vancouver Island.
Tomorrow, we’ll get the trimaran ready on the beach, get the mast lashed on, and use rollers to get the boat out as far as we can. Then we’ll let the 15 foot (3.5 m) tide pick it up. Anchor it offshore, and then go up further north and bring down the fishing boat.
…
Day Two: Up early and back to the boat that we’re going to tow. It’s a “trimaran”, meaning it has three hulls—a large main hull and two smaller floats, one on each side of the main hull. You can see the main hull and one of the two floats below. The challenge was to get it from where it sat, well above the high water mark, out to where the next high tide would float it away.
Can’t have a boat without a mast, so the five of us carried the large aluminum mast down to the water’s edge. The boat is 30 feet (9 m) overall, and the mast is about 7 feet (2 m) longer.
And oh, dear friends, how the day sparkled. Out on the water we could see the ships and sailboats passing by … but where we were it was sunny and warm and calm. Distant mountains seemed nearby, including this odd mountain, flat-topped with what looks like an ice cap and glaciers.
After a town run to rent a chain saw, we cut up some rollers and started easing the boat down the beach to where the high tide would float it.
We used to call this manner of moving heavy things “Egyptian style”. Boards and rollers and levers. And slowly, inch by painful inch, we spent the entire afternoon moving 3,000 pounds (1300 kg) of boat down towards the ocean.
Here’s the basic plan:
Boat movement is away from the camera. Down at the bottom of the roller system you have two 2×8 (200x50mm) boards laid flat to serve as rails. The a whole bunch of logs serving as rollers. Then a layer of boards on top of the rollers to protect the boat. Then everyone gets together, five people, and pushes it forwards 6″ or a foot. (150-300mm). Then you look underneath, reset the rollers, reset the boards, move the rollers. Repeat until the heat gets to you then take a break, then move it some more.
Below you see the worksite around three pm, near low tide. What a spot. In the background you can see the white wing and one float of the trimaraa.
Finally, we determined that the boat was down low enough that the high tide would float it. I have an app called “Theodolite” on my iPhone that shows the same thing as the camera shows, that is to say the viewfinder picture, overlaid with crosshairs. There are dials that show the elevation angle, so of you set that to zero, the crosshairs are at exactly eye height. Here’s an example I just took from where I’m sitting:
We’d seen how high the tide was the night before, so I used that as my gauge.The tide charts said about the same height for today. I got down the beach and sighted using my theodolite. It showed if we moved it a few more feet down the beach, it would float at high tide.
High tide was at nine pm. By eight the boat looked like this:
At nine, it was still sitting on the rollers. So we gathered ’round and slid it sideways off of the rollers, and wonder of wonders, it was back in its native habitat … it was floating.
The Captain got in the little tiny rowboat that’s all we had today, and rowed the trimaran offshore, and set the anchor. Great to see it floating, we’ve left it at anchor and come up the coast. Midnight finds me in a motel up near Campbell River. We’ll take a ferry tomorrow to Quadra Island, which is where the converted fishing boat is that we’ll use to tow the trimaran.
Fire up the fishing boat, take it to the fuel dock and fuel up, and then we’ll run the 35 miles (60 km) back to Royston where we’ve anchored the trimaran.
Anyhow, I gotta rest. Moving onto the boat tomorrow, who knows what the internet situation will be, but “occasional” is likely.
Best to all,
w.
PS: My dad’s last fishing boat was built at Duncan, BC on Vancouver Island. He kept it on the Swinomish Channel, WA & motored every summer up to the Minstrel Island, BC area to fish for halibut.
Oh, wish I’d pointed to Victoria earlier. I think there are direct flights from SFO to YYJ, IIRC United Airlines small jet airliner.
I’m currently reading a fascinating book: The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, by Samuel Bawlf. The first half is a page burner. It has everything you need to make a great action movie — gentle pirates, sea battles, mutinies, evil kings, brutal conquistadors, betrayals, court intrigues and spies. The voyage itself wasn’t so secret, it was the exact destination and the reason for going there which were kept secret. Drake would have loved to tell all, but Queen Elizabeth tried to keep it secret from the Spanish king. But the spy knew almost everything anyway and the author draws heavily upon the spy’s reports. The old world maps which we think are wrong out of ignorance are in fact purposely wrong. The author makes a very convincing case that Drake made it as far north as the southeast coast of Alaska. He was trying to find the northwest passage from the west and Frobisher was trying to find it from the East. Drake wanted to found a colony “Nova Albion” where Vancouver is now. Where Comox is now he named “Bay of Small Ships”. An old coin found recently lends some physical evidence to the claim that Drake was there first, and Cook was surprised when the natives told him his wasn’t the first sailing ship, according to their “legends”, which would have been passed on for 200 years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573229/Amateur-treasure-hunter-turns-Canadian-history-head-finding-435-year-old-British-shilling-buried-clay.html
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Voyage-Sir-Francis-Drake/dp/0142004596/
BTW, another route from YVR to Vancouver Island is Tsawwassen to Duke Point south of Nanaimo, with easy road access to the freeway bypassing Nanaimo. Notable for its early and late sailings but fewer on weekends as primarily a service for truckers. From YVR Tsaswassen is usually easier s don’t have to go through Vancouver, but going via Swartz Bay puts you into Victoria area traffic, to Duke Point bypasses that.
Speaking of those “volcanoes” Willis saw from the Vancouver-Victoria area, every few decades or oftener people get concerned about Baker and Rainier. In the 1970s people who had cabins near the SW corner could not access them, authorities blocked them for safety reasons. IIRC Rainier usually has small clouds from steam.
Perhaps today the science of monitoring and predicting is much better today.
People in the US NW and Canada SW remember Mt. St. Helens, which blew big time after much warning – we heard the noise in Ladner BC. A Pacific Western Airlines flight crew coming from Nevada to Vancouver saw it erupt in front of them.
Interesting to get close to St. Helens a decade after the blast. Parks people left it natural as a test, so vegetation was only slowly growing back, a creek had already been dammed by beavers. (Outside of the park Weyerhouser had 20 foot high trees growing, they’d logged what they could before the blast (at one time had helicopters orbiting, ready to evacuate workers), then more after the blast (the abrasive ash was tough on machinery but wood is quite valuable today).
(As for Tswassen-Duke Point ferry, that route also bypasses the dreaded Malahat Mountain Highway northwest of Victoria – significant danger of long delays or worse due idiot drivers. One inexperienced driver couldn’t handle hydroplaning of her small SUV’s almost bald rear tires, crossed the centerline into a full-size pickup truck. Truck dove for the ditch but did not have enough time to avoid, collision tore the SUV apart, at least one of the dead was not wearing seat belt so was ejected, a child who was belted into the back seat survived without major injury.
Vancouver’s view is Vancouver’s. International boundaries can’t change that. Why are so many of you using Willis’ remark regarding Vancouver’s view as an excuse to jot off an unnecessary geography lesson? Would you do the same for tourists who speak of Seattle’s Mt Rainier? In both cases it is the view of which they speak.
brians356 says:
August 1, 2014 at 1:03 pm
“Willis, Vancouver is indeed easy on the eyes, but the not-so-white underbelly is her high crime rate (the third highest of 17 major North American cities – yikes!) and brazen Asian gang violence.”
I’m from (Metro) Vancouver and I have lived in the city of Vancouver, although I’m currently in the suburbs. I take strong exception to your comment about crime rate. Vancouver does have its share of crime and gang activity (by no means all or even the majority of which is “Asian”), but quoting a statistic like that without any qualification of what it’s measuring is very misleading. Please quote your source. If you want two sources that contradict yours, read “Crime in Toronto” and “Crime in Canada”, both on Wikipedia. For example, from Crime in Toronto, in 2012, the homicide rate in Detroit was 54 / 100k but only 1.2 / 100k in Vancouver. As far as violent crime is concerned, according to “Crime in Canada”, Vancouver isn’t even third in Canada, let alone WRT American cities. You can walk around anywhere in Vancouver, including the downtown east side without the slightest worry about getting mugged. Try that in practically any major American city.
Comox Glacier gets most of its snow with the usual winter storms that blow in from the South East.
Then when the mainland gets sunny winter weather it can include an outflow of cold air from the interior. As it rolls across the Straits of Georgia it picks up moisture and dumps it as more snow on Comox Glacier. It has filled in the depression between two minor peaks.
Is that the trimaran name, “Nandi”? Nandi, as in Fiji? What’s the story behind that?
USA: white 79.96%, black 12.85%, Asian 4.43%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.97%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.18%, two or more races 1.61% (July 2007 estimate)
Canadian: 32.2%, English 19.8%, French 15.5%, Scottish 14.4%, Irish 13.8%, German 9.8%, Italian 4.5%, Chinese 4.5%, North American Indian 4.2%
Canada and the USA are simply different. Discussing crime is irrelevant here.
Boat looks like a Newick Val 31.
http://www.mostsailboats.org/1980-newick-trimaran-val-31-trimarran-2/
Designer Dick Newick, a pioneer of modern western multihull designs, died last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/sports/dick-newick-sailboat-design-visionary-dies-at-87.html?_r=0
Here’s Nandi under sail. http://bcmultihulls.blogspot.ca/ (scroll down)
Many Newick designs were things of organic grace and beauty.
Daryl M said:
>I take strong exception to your comment about crime rate. Vancouver does have its share of crime and gang activity (by no means all or even the majority of which is “Asian”), but quoting a statistic like that without any qualification of what it’s measuring is very misleading. Please quote your source.
Voila!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-crime-among-worst-in-north-america-1.967033
A bit out of date, perhaps, but I doubt the crime rate has fallen precipitously since, it could have even risen. My own family has been victimized in Vancouver, but don’t bother demanding details, please.
Willis -I really enjoy reading your stories – they are so informative and entertaining !
But when are we going to see a picture of your “gorgeous ex-fiance” that we hear so
much about ?
Peter Stevenson
Apparently the inside passage isn’t Internet friendly – was hoping for some tales from the tiller en route.
Dick Newick boats are art pieces , well done and very good luck to repair this beautifull trimaran, c’est ma-gni-fi-que !