adventure | Our Off the Grid Home

….of OTG’ers. Yesterday morning, we got a neighbour’s report of a pipe-break in the water-line that feeds the system from the creek. The one that starts at the collecting pool with the pick-up way up deep in the forest that Sal has to climb and clean all the time. But summertime work on the length of the line that is attached to the cliff is controlled by the tides. The tides are deeply low in the day time and, of course, rise when it is dark. And the line is fastened higher up. A smidge inconvenient to say the least because the line is set about 5 feet above high tide. At low tide, you’d need a very long ladder. So, we went about our other chores and waited until dinnertime. Dinnertime is still not HIGH tide but it is higher and so off we went. I drive the boat. Sal stands on the bow and, by reaching as high as she can, she accesses the mile long poly pipe that is our waterline.

Sounds simple enough………………..but nothing is simple. Nothing is ever simple.

We got to the leak (an inexplicable hole in the pipe that is jammed in a rock crevice) and I floated the bow up against the face of the cliff. Once properly positioned, I add a bit of forward thrust to keep the bow in place and to give Sal a firm footing against which she can push and wrestle plastic poly pipe. Her working platform is a moving bow of about 3 square feet. It’s slippery.

We had earlier gone into the bay and halfways back to shut off the flow using an inline valve. And, on the other side, we shut the second in-line valve of the pipeline to ensure the water in that half didn’t flow back out. Sal took her saw and cut the pipe. Water everywhere. She was instantly soaked. And then she went about inserting a new two-foot section into the now-cut mainline. That requires pipe clamps, soap (to get the fittings to slip into the pipe) and then a big screw-driver to tighten the four clamps once the insert has been set.

Then, when all is in place, Sal gets a ride back into the bay to open the feeder valve and we go back home to open the other half’s now feeding-valve. Time planned for: one hour. Total elapsed time: 2.5 hours. Why the difference? Plans of mice and men oft go a’gly.

When Sal grabbed her pipe clamps, she inadvertently grabbed one too small. Discovered at the cliff-face. We had to go back
We did NOT close the first valve when we first went. Discovered as she first cut the line. We had to go back.
We did not close the feeder valve the first time. Discovered at the time of the first cut. We had to go forward-back.
Sal did not bring a jacket, it was blowing, the seas were rocking and the temperature had dropped. She got pretty cold. Her hands stopped working. Hard to do that stuff with inoperative hands.
Sal likes the dogs to come with us and so they did. But we did NOT hit the shore except to put the bow in at a few places. Daisy took exception to such inconvenience and jumped in after Sally and so getting Daisy back in the boat became a new challenge. Gus was content to ride with me.
In case we needed it, we had taken a short aluminum ladder. But the tide was high enough. We did not need it but it got in the way occupying part of Sal’s miniscule work surface
As soon as we hit the dock, Sal had to go home and get in a hot shower.

I mention all that because normal urban-type septuagenarians do not have to ‘rock climb’ wrestling pipes and hose clamps from the bow of a boat in a bit of a tipsy sea at dinnertime. Not usually. Unless………...ya live off the grid.

If you have a boat, you have boat chores. Ignoring those chores goes a long way to making even MORE boat chores. And I have been bad. I have not cleaned my boat’s hull in a couple of years. It’s a jungle down there.

Of course, I have my reasons, coupled with excuses and I had a bazillion OTHER chores to do all the time so I am bad but I have really great excuses. The boat, like all things, doesn’t care about my sad, little excuses. And, if there is any part of a boat that ignores excuses totally, it is the hull-that-lives-in-the-ocean part. The main excuse I had for that was that my marine ways was broken. And that is true. But also true was that the fact that the original ways were scrabbled together in a couple of days to deal with pressing hull matters over ten years ago. Well over ten years. It was not my best executed project but it worked. Until it didn’t.

Now it doesn’t. I have to make a new marine ways.

The basic concept was sound but, at my age, I need to improve the concept and the outcome. This time the boat will rest out of the water (on the hard) a few additional feet in height. Last time, when I hauled, the boat was out of the water but it was still only about three feet off the hard (rocky foreshore). I had to crawl around on rocks and boulders to scrape and paint. This time I wanna stand.

So today Sal and I clambered down the 100′ cliff to the ‘haul out’ site and took measurements and angles and stretched the tape and used the tools and came away with a better concept. The first ways came out of the water at a 10 degree angle and this one will rise up at a 15 degree angle. That extra 5 degrees gives me a boat about 5 feet off the hard and that means I can work hunched over. Yes, I might up the angle to 16 – 17 degrees and make it full standing room under.

The first ways was limited to basically just an inclined slide. Forty feet of beams that had HDPE on the top (plastic) that the boat hull slid up on. It worked. But this time the 40 feet of new beams will just serve as the tracks for a 20 foot wheeled cradle to ride up on. The cradle will be made of 4×4’s and the track will be made of 6×6’s and so there is a bit of a challenge keeping the cradle on the tracks as it climbs out of the water. The weight of the boat and cradle will hinder the cradle from floating away but, if it can go off the rails, it will go off the rails so I kinda have to figure out a bit of a track/cradle containment system. The good news is that the most I have to worry about is 40 feet.

The biggest of our boats is 22′ long. But friends will likely use the ways so I really should make it ‘good for others, too’. The good news there is that just about everyone out here uses boats under 20 feet. Sal’s is just 16′.

So, instead of just beaching the boat and cleaning the hull while lying on the beach and tipping it one way and then the other, I have decided that it would be better to design, engineer and construct a marine ways complete with a winch to pull the boat up.

I must be mad!

My last winch was an old manual Marpole winch from yesteryear. This one will be electric and have a button.

“So, what are ya waiting for, Dave?”

I need two more 6×6 beams 20 feet long. And, well…..for the heavy lifting and all that, I’d like one of my kids to visit. So, there’s that……..T

There is a real possibility that this is the last you will hear of the marine ways…..