boat | wordsfromanneli

July 7, 2021
by wordsfromanneli 37 Comments

Travel Lift

This travel lift can pick up a boat and take it right out of the water. People work on their boats after they are set on a parking lot. It allows access to all parts of the boat when it is sitting up high and dry.

Here the belts are being lowered into the water and slipped under the boat’s hull. You can see the front belt resting in the water, waiting for the sailboat to float over it.

Now the belts are snugged up, making a cradle to lift the boat out of the water. The travel lift, basically a frame on wheels, rolls along over the water, bringing the boat closer to the parking lot.

As it gets quite close to dry land, the operator of the travel lift must make sure that the boat is sitting securely in the cradle and that it has been lifted high enough so the keel clears the level of the pavement.

The lift operator is standing front of the boat in the photo below, using a remote control gadget to lift or move the boat and the “frame on wheels.” You may notice that there are two belts lying on the pavement. These are spares that are not necessary for a small sailboat. Two belts will be enough to lift it. But when it is time to lift a heavier boat such as the Captain’s troller (which weighs over twice as much as this sailboat), the extra straps will be needed to lift it.

A week earlier, the Captain had his commercial troller lifted out and put on the parking lot so he could work on the hull of the boat. Now it is time to lift it up and carry it back to the water.

How powerful must that travel lift be to raise up a 39-ft. troller and roll it across the parking lot back to the water. Notice the extra straps, front and back.

Let’s hope the operator gets the wheels of that lift aligned with the pathways for it on either side of the water. You wouldn’t want to miss. I see floating containment “booms” to keep something scungy away from the boats and the shore. Not sure what that is all about. Probably to catch any oil or fuel that might leak from a boat that is in need of repair.

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September 14, 2019
by wordsfromanneli 38 Comments

The Maple Leaf is not “Forever”

I went to the wharf to make sure the boat had weathered the weather. It is tougher than I am, withstanding the first system of wind and rain that marks the end of this summer.

On the way home I took a small detour to dash out onto the beach for a photo. After many wipes of the lens I got a couple of wettish pics to show what kind of day it is.

Thoroughly dampened, I drove home, but couldn’t resist taking a picture of this very old house on the way. Too bad the upper windows and the skylight are a modern style. They don’t quite go with the rockwork, but it’s still a unique house. Not just the huge chimneys, but even the walls are made of rock.

As I pulled into my own driveway a few minutes later, I saw a pretty, bittersweet sight — a maple leaf landed on my car, marking the end of summer and proving once again that, contrary to the old Canadian motto, the maple leaf is not forever.

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But it will come again in the spring.

July 11, 2019
by wordsfromanneli 38 Comments

The Islands

Vancouver Island is surrounded by many other smaller islands. It’s an easy boat ride to go for an overnight picnic on one of them. With our troller and the sporty boat of our friends, we did just that. Here we are snuggled up together.

The aluminum skiff is handy for ferrying us to shore for some exploring and picture taking.

So many plants and shells are different from those on most beaches of Vancouver Island.

Our friends’ dog may have been a bit nervous at first, but he proved to have sailor’s blood running in his veins. He had a great time and was as good as gold.

Dogs and people all got along fabulously and had a good time.

Ripple Rock

Every year when the captain (my captain, that is) takes his commercial troller from Vancouver Island to the Queen Charlotte Islands on the northern coast of British Columbia (and back again), he has to go through a tight passage called Seymour Narrows.

Located just north of the town of Campbell River, this stretch of water was described by Captain George Vancouver as “one of the vilest stretches of water in the world.”

Whenever I have accompanied “my” captain through the narrows, I’ve nearly given myself an ulcer beforehand, as Seymour Narrows has such a terrible reputation. Yet each time, going through the passage has been a piece of cake, with calm waters. That’s how it should be, if you wait for slack water, between tides.

The passage through Seymour Narrows is now much safer thanks to the removal of the tops of Ripple Rock, a submerged twin-peak mountain that lay just nine feet beneath the surface of Seymour Narrows. According to Wikipedia, it was a serious hazard to shipping, sinking 119 vessels and taking 114 lives.

In the case of the William J. Stewart, when it struck Ripple Rock in 1944, I’m not aware of any loss of life, and the ship was beached and later restored. It was due to be scrapped in 2017.

On April 5, 1958, after twenty-seven months of tunnelling and engineering work, Ripple Rock was blown up with 1,375 tons of Nitramex 2H explosive. It was quite the project. A 500-foot vertical shaft was built on Maud Island, and then a horizontal shaft of 2,370 feet was drilled out to Ripple Rock. From that point, two vertical shafts were drilled up into the peaks, with shafts for the placement of the explosives. Very advanced technology for 1958.

I think those columns of smoke are blowback from the explosion, coming out through the drilled shafts.

The explosion spewed debris almost 1000 feet into the air falling on land on either side of the narrows. After the blast, the two peaks were 13.7 m (45 ft) and 15.2 m (50 ft) underwater.

Some very smart engineers had the foresight to detonate the charge at a time when the tide was running its fastest, so the rocks blown off the tops would not fall straight back down onto the peaks, but rather, be swished along beyond them.

Even after the top of Ripple Rock was removed, it remains a challenging route. In March 1981, the Star Philippine, a freighter, ran aground in the narrows.

When the captain was coming home from a summer of trolling, he took pictures of his navigation instruments as he went through Seymour Narrows quite close by Ripple Rock. The red triangular icon represents his boat as he is heading south, just past Ripple Rock. Arrows show the direction of the tidal flow at that time. You can see the depths of the peaks as 15.2 m, and 13.7 m.

In the monitor of the depth sounder below, you can see the twin peaks of the rock. The reading is taken on the far right where the scale is marked. This tells me that the boat has just passed the second of the peaks of what is left of Ripple Rock.

Even knowing that the rock has been topped, I still have a healthy respect for this stretch of water. The colour photos (near the beginning of this post) of the swirling eddies are recent, well after the explosion of Ripple Rock, so you can see that going through Seymour Narrows when the tide is running full is still not a good idea.

My preference is to stay on land whenever possible.