the Inside Passage
the San Juan Islands
Reid Harbor, Stuart Island
Wednesday, May 23, 2012TheCambrians
We’re still waiting in Reid Harbor for the weather to improve and have used the past couple of days to put all of our ducks in a row. Because the issue with the leak is under control, we decided to stick to our original plan and move down to Orcas Island tomorrow for a couple of nights to visit our friends, Bill and Sylvia Emmens from the yacht Salubrious. From there, we’ll go to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island to check out of the US before crossing the border and checking into Canada at Bedwell Harbour. We’ll take a couple of days to work our way up through the Gulf Islands to Nanaimo where we’ll haul-out, possibly as soon as Tuesday of next week. If all goes well, we may still make it across the Strait of Georgia to Pender Harbour in time for the Blues Festival, but that’s a big IF. As well as things are going, we discovered another serious issue that has to be resolved while we’re hauled out of the water.
After stroking the lever on the valve he removed from the engine room, David could see that the ball wasn’t closing even though the handle was moving properly. In other words, we were no longer closing the hole when turning the valve but had no way of knowing that before removing the fitting, which is obviously unacceptable. We’ll have to check the other seventeen through-hulls while we’re out of the water and may end up replacing all of the fittings, something that would not only be expensive but time consuming.
I absolutely hate hauling out. Boatyards are dirty and dusty places where the work is hard and the days are long. But it has to be done and I’m actually looking forward to this one (or maybe I’m just looking forward to getting it over with). At this stage in the game it’s difficult to have any confidence in the current fittings so, more than anything, this exercise will help restore a piece of mind before we head to some of the most remote areas of the Canadian Coast.
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