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| Our agent, besides being an excellent dancer, is also a sailor. |
I haven't posted in some time, as for some time, it's been a very busy time. Haulout happened, and with a dodgy repair on a cracked pipe stub, I was fairly cautious about driving the boat even the short distance from our dock to the sea wall for its bi-annual appointment with the concept of flight.
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| The stick is keeping the boat off the wall . The human is awaiting instructions as to the sling positioning. |
Boats are supposed to have "sling marks", bits of tape or paint that indicate where the sling straps (as seen above) ideally go so that the boat is hoisted skyward in a more or less level attitude. The problem with the good ship Alchemy is that I am frequently in the course of our refitting moving fairly significant weigh forward, aft or , as was the case with about 200 kilos of lead shot in bags serving as "trim ballast" in the forepeak workshop, off.
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| The first attempt suggested my old sling marks had migrated. Photo (c) Frederick Peters |
The effect as seen from the water seemed, at best, "bow down".
So we tried again.
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| The "level best" was eventually located |
The reason for the migration of the sling marks was that, despite moving a large number of tools and line to the workshop, I also removed several surplus anchors stowed forward and took off the new 30 kilo SPADE anchor, as there's no persuasive reason why it should remain in place while the boat's cradled on the hard for the winter. The net effect was to raise the bow about seven centimetres, or about a finger's width above its waterline stripe. My old bits of tape were no longer in full effect. Any new bits of tape may also not be correct, if I get the windlass on deck sorted this winter.
An added wrinkle was that
Alchemy, having a full keel, requires a "cinch belt" to keep the slings from sliding on the angled leading edge of the keel. But all (eventually) went more or less well, save that the full keel interfered with the sling belt removal more than usual...
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| Padding about the cradle in this case isn't sinister |
...and involved some extra chunks of wood to both support the cradle's keel board and to make a space to draw through the sling. Some crunching of 4 x 4 meeting 16 tons of steel was heard, but she settled nicely.
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| Done. Onto the next one. |
As can be seen, the weather was calm and bordering on warm, which was nice as I had spent the previous day on the club work boat with other stalwart members of the Mooring Committee doing tows and other haulout-related tasks.
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| Tight to get a ladder and a man of substance up here, but perfefect for those needed to walk to the next boat. |
As can also be seen, it's a bit snug to get the boarding ladder up, but on the other hand, I can wedge mystelf most of the way to the top, at which point I can tie up before I tip over. Such is the life of the land-bound sailor.
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| I always like this angle. It looks...purposeful. |
Three days after haulout, I learned from my nephews that my younger sister, Dany Dacey, had died in her sleep at age 54. While this was not unexpected as she had been on the decline from liver disease (and not the self-created kind, either), it still came as a blow, although her two sons, Sean and Ryan, both in their 20s, have been coping well, or as well as can be expected.
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| She was 19 here, in happier days. |
She was very supportive of our plans, although she doubted she would live to see them realized. I am missing her very much. When we started this journey to journey, althought my mother had died, my father (the original sailor in the family) and sister were still alive. I'm now the last one. Certainly, the "do it now" notion is top of mind.
Which brings us back to the enigmatic "For Sale" sign that doesn't actually say that. It's for our Toronto house, in which we've lived for just over 19 years. It's a semi-detached, three-storey "Vic-brick built in 1900 and sits on a typically narrow (19 feet) lot that, thanks to the park directly behind it, has an unusually long (165 feet) lot for the middle of a city. There's also a large (18 by 22 feet and 12 feet high at the double doors) former brick stable being used as a garage, but as we don't own a car, it's full of boats, bikes and mancave appliance, including a radar I'm trying to fix.
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| Which is not the radar I think I'll be buying this winter. This one is. |
The house has a great location. The park behind us has been a huge plus and even allows cooling breezes (thanks to dozens of transpiring trees) in the summer. An enclosed porch at the front keeps most of the traffic noise out of the house; we rarely hear the streetcars passing. If we weren't doing this trip, I'd probably live out my days here, but we are, and to be blunt, selling up, even if we buy a place elsewhere in Canada (save Vancouver) could convert a "five-year passage" to "just keep sailing". It will give us options simply renting it out while we are off sailing in search of the edges would not.
"Exclusive", as the sign says,
means we're not having an open house and will instead attempt to sell it
to a person or person(s) who will meet our (slightly discounted compared to the surrounding market) price
with the intention of doing a full renovation, like every other house in
our vicinity has undergone, the curious fashion in which one buys a Victorian style townhouse, guts it and turns it into a skylit, pot-lighted, vaguely Scandinavian art gallery. Putting on the open market, or "listing it", in the real estate jargon, would require about $20K of scraping, painting and plastering/drywalling to get it to a faux version of vaguely current. Also, cheap by chic furniture would have to be brought in to "stage it". Then 200 people tromp in. We and our tatty inherited glum furniture would have to be out...you can't live in a house that's been staged, because it must look as if the next owners already tastefully live there, not the grubby peasants selling up. There's no use in doing a cheap paintjob if the walls are
getting replaced, particularly if we are still in residence and it's
winter, so we're seeking someone who can picture the place gutted and who has the coin to redo it to her taste.
We are living, again, in interesting times. Next, a fresh round of welding things.
