A very productive Monday! Pierre, who is expected to crew with me at least as far as Montreal, texted me last night suggesting that we get together for some chatting and perhaps some chores of the boat; the most important being getting the sails to the sailmaker. He gave an ETA of noon. He arrived right on time and we were soon on route to downtown Kingston to the Sail Loft.
We explained the details of what we thought needed repairing which he noted down and tagged the sails. He explained the one which would be doing any repairs would be in tomorrow to have a look at things and they would then give me a call. That sounded great by me and made me grateful to Pierre for the lift.
He then graciously gave me a lift to Canadian Tire, which is quickly becoming my go to store, where a number of items were procured. We picked up a drill pump to empty the old water from the water tank, manual pump in order to be able to removed the gearbox oil and put in new now that slightly over 25 hours have been put on the engine. Next maintenance for breaking the engine in would be at the 50 hour mark.
Also picked up wet gear to keep me dry from rain and sea spray. After my battle of spotting buoys on the way down from Scarborough a pair of binoculars seemed in order. The cotter pins purchased in Scarborough could not be found so got what we needed and more at the Sail Loft. We also looked over compost toilets while there. This is likely to be the final choice for the head. Just have to do some measuring to ensure a good fit.
At the least, thanks must be given to Pierre. Gave an added bonus of lunch on me. His choice was Fat Bastards which is a local tortilla restaurant chain. We sat in. Very tasty.
After lunch we headed back the Makina where me and Pierre worked on a number of issues. One major one was figuring out some idiosyncrasies of the electrical system that had had me, as well as Jason sometimes, confused.
We finally identified that there are two separate circuits for the AC land feed, to plug into. This would be 30A power sources coming from the Marina's slip power posts. We found wires marked "Winter AC" for one of the circuits. A picture of what Chris, the previous owner, may have had in mind when rewiring Makina, from stem to stern was beginning to emerge. Due to him having used it as a place to crash after long shifts as a EMT, which included winter, a theory began to form.
Our guess was that Chris, the previous owner, would use one circuit for electrical heating. He could then serve all the other electrical needs on the second circuit with no fuses blowing consequentially. There are therefore two input plugs for land based power. Thus different things will work, or not work, depending on which line you have plugged into. The trick will be to plug in two extension chords while docked, so as to have the best of both worlds.
The Solar has its own DC circuit by my understanding.
So tonight the electric is not an issue and the circuits are better understood by me.
The next project on the TODO list was the 25 hour engine maintenance chore. It's not that much at the 25 hour mark, yet again it familiarized myself with Makina better. Using the manual pump purchased at Canadian Tire earlier we drained the gearbox oil and added fresh.
Pierre graciously did some Boat Yoga in the engine compartment while tools and such were ferried by me.
We then decided to lay back and have a chat. It being a bit chilly for a summer evening the propane was left on for a bit after making my coffee. The cabin soon became very cozy. It had us talking about how cozy a cabin must become in northern sailing. There are boats which have wood stoves on board!
Jason and Lori had left a couple of beers which allowed me to offer Pierre a beer for the massive help he had been today.
As we talked about the upcoming passage we both agreed that we should take it in smaller steps or increments to allow Pierre to not have to commit for more than a couple weeks at a time. This put Montreal as the last port of call of the second and next leg of the passage to Halifax.
We also discussed different possibilities of maybe being a buddy boat to James, a friend of Piere's who dropped by with him on his first visit the other night. We will need to find him if we can find him crew. There are groups on FB for that.
We then went off in other tangent, some political when trying to explain crypto to Pierre. They are hard concepts to grok when first introduced to them. Back around 2013 while getting Bitcoin payments from a friend and tenant of mine my line used to be, "Its great technology but it's not money." Boy was that ever proved wrong. 😎
It seems always the case that the busier the day the less photos taken. That was severely the case today.
It's actually a little after midnight as this is being written. The day has been a long one so will get this posted and probably be asleep before the first YouTube video has ended.
May the wind be at your back!
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A chronological listing of my sailing posts:
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