Not All Heroes Wear Capes!

I have always thought of myself as a patient person, but there comes a time when I have to take matters into my own hands, roll up my sleeves, put my nose to the old grindstone…

… and call in Jason.

There was still quite a bit of electrical work to be done, most of it related to the final wiring of the engines. This was, and still is, way beyond my abilities, but luckily, there is Jason.

In August, Leanne and I decided to leave Wiarton and make Beacon Bay Marina in Penetanguishene our new home base. We knew we would miss Wiarton, but we knew it would be a good decision. Although it does add an extra half hour to our trip, the positives were too good to pass up.

This is where superhero Jason once again appears. In late August, he packed up his tools and his family and traveled to Wiarton to wire the engines. His initial assessment wasn’t very positive. The wires were a mess, and very few were labeled from when the engines were ripped from my boat in 2022.

I wrote “ripped,” but I could also have used the words torn, dragged, hacked, or heaved. I also like the term “separated forcefully,” but I digress.

To use any kinder or gentler words would imply that there was an element of a surgical removal.

Anyway … Jason got right to work, and over the next two days, he did the unthinkable. He managed to make sense of the chaos.

Let’s just sit back and watch the master at work. I know Kevin would have loved to be in the engine room with Jason if he had the chance.

This photo was taken BEFORE he started the work. He looks refreshed and optimistic doesn’t he?

First thing Saturday morning …

My role was to hand him things and stay out of the way.

The boys watching Daddy work.

He didn’t write anything down but worked through the system. I listened to him muttering about bonding and grounding and how he was an idiot for agreeing to help but I chalked it up to the mind of a genius.

I will have Luc (our electrician in Penetanguishene) draw up a schematic for the boat over the winter.

The next day I took the boys out on the dinghy.

While Jason worked …

I’m exhausted just looking at the photos.

Jason was a machine that weekend and was able to get everything that he could get hooked up finished.

We then planned for the trip over to our new marina the following weekend.

Donald drove Jason, John, and me to Wiarton on Friday evening. Since we were leaving for good we couldn’t leave a car there.

The weather was perfect: no wind, sunny, and warm.

Nothing was going to stop us …

Yup. We were absolutely going to get to Penetanguishene.

This is where you hear the record scratch ….

You are looking at the same water that came from the bay, entered the engine with the plan to cool the coolant, mixed with that same coolant, and exited through the exhaust. Of course, this was not supposed to happen.

We were about an hour from the marina when we realized the temperature of the starboard engine was starting to rise. A quick check told us there wasn’t much coolant in the engine. Jason noticed the colour of the water coming out of the starboard exhaust was pinkish.

It was not a great moment, so I will ignore the next NSFW three hours and fast-forward to the dinner we had that night back in Wiarton when Donald had to come back up to Wiarton to pick us up.

As I have said before, if you are ever in Wiarton, you have to eat at the Wiarton Inn. It has great food!

The smiles are covering the pain.

We decided to try again in two weeks. Unfortunately, Jason couldn’t join us this time. We were running out of time and had to get to our new marina. I got a quote on trucking the boat instead but that was hard no.

We were told the leak was fixed but decided to bring a new Jerry can with a water pump just in case. Let’s just say we had to turn off the starboard engine about every hour to top it up. What should have been an eight-hour trip at around 10 knots took us around 14 hours at 5 to 6 knots.

And no … the leak wasn’t fixed.

I won’t go into the issues we had en route. I am trying to focus on the positive but I will say I learned a lot; it was a memorable trip.

Once again, whoever controls the weather was being very generous.

We ran out of daylight, so we had to anchor a few hours from our new marina, which we reached the next morning.

We have a fantastic slip with no one in front of us. We can choose to bow or stern in and will most likely not have to get bow thrusters … for a while. This means I will have to stay far away from boat shows. They are like candy stores.

Leanne and I had one nice weekend at our new marina before our modified boating season came to an end. We weren’t able to take our big boat out …

Luckily, we were able to get out on our dinghy. Even this late in the season, there was a lot of traffic in the bay, which was a different boating experience for us.

Finally, it was time to close things down, and Donald and Dennis joined me in Penetanguishene. The weather cooperated.

It has been two years since we put the winter cover on so it took a bit of figuring out which piece went where.

We took the opportunity to remove the leaking windows on the port and starboard sides. Over the winter, I will refinish them (again) and do some more research on the best way to seal them.

The windows came out a little too quickly. I thought I was using the correct sealant but it obviously wasn’t. I have time to figure it out.

We tend to have a bit of a warm spell near the end of February, so I will head to the marina on a sunny day to clean the adhesive and clean around the windows. I plan to have a new flange welded around the perimeter of the windows and then repaint them. I hope this will give me a larger surface area for the sealant.

If I can get this figured out, I can finally finish the bulkheads in the salon.

It was a long day, so I had to make sure the talent was well-fed.

Our baby is safely wrapped for the winter, and the rest of the engine and electrical work will be done in March/April. Our new marina just installed a new starter for our port engine, and the coolant leak in the starboard engine will be fixed in the spring.

We have had this boat since 2019 and have yet to have what we would call a “normal boat season.” Way back in the early days of this journey, I remember thinking that we would be in the water in 2020 with a fully finished boat.

(pause for laughter)

I won’t admit it to him, but around that time, my big brother Jim said it would take at least a few more years. Of course, I didn’t agree with him. It must have been my glass-half-full attitude … the impetuosity of youth … my natural rose-coloured-glass-wearing optimistic nature.

I now think he is right. It is definitely going to take at least a few more years.

We hope next year will be our first full season with a fully functional boat in the water.

One can dream ….