Bike to the Boat

Today after work, I decided (on a bit of a whim) to see how long it takes for me to bike from my office to my boat, and then from my boat to my apartment.

Well, the answer is about 30 minutes each leg, at a leisurely pedal rate. I'm sure if I wanted to hammer, I could do it quicker. 20km isn't too bad for a long ride home!

Not a bad after-work pedal!

The other really nice part about it, is the entire route is probably 90% on bike lanes or side roads. I basically never have to deal with traffic, which is always a nice perk.

Pretty evening at the marina

Next time I do this trip, I should probably remember to bring my keys so that I can actually get INTO my boat, rather than just hang out on deck for a bit. Details details.

The view from the the Iron Worker's Bridge was easily worth the trip by itself.

The Ripple - Mine and my Grandfathers

When I bought my boat, the first big decision I was faced with was what to name her. 

Now, I know some of you will immediately respond, "Isn't it bad luck to rename a boat?" Well, some people believe that, yes. 

However, by rather uncommon circumstances, the previous owner of my boat never actually named her (which I consider EXTREMELY bad luck). So technically, I was naming her, not renaming her. That's what I tell myself anyway (and Posiedon, if he's listening).

So where did Ripple come from then? Well, the Ripple was the name of my grandfather's 27 ft wooden sailboat, which he restored, cruised and raced on Lake Huron, long before I was born. 

The original Ripple; my grandfather's 27 ft sloop on Lake Huron

I never had the pleasure of seeing the Ripple, but my grandfather described her well in his memoirs...

Ripple was also an old wooden boat, run-down and in need of extensive repair. She was Gardner designed to be a small cruising cutter, twenty-seven feet long plus an impressively sturdy three foot bowsprit. Unlike Sea Waif, her mast was heavy solid spruce. She was a minimal cruising boat with a four cylinder engine for which parts were still available, a curtained off head, four bunks (two upper pipe berths), and alcohol stove and an ice box. We rebuilt her and raced her, primarily as sloop. We stripped her hull, working winter night knee deep in the snow with blowtorches in the empty boatyard, and terrifying the yard owner. A boat-building friend designated the rotted planks and ribs and we removed some twenty six of each, digging out scores of screws when their heads stripped. He fitted the replacement ribs and planks and we screwed them in with grosses of screws. We replaced the oak ice box, insulated with 1937 newspapers, with a built in Coca Cola cooler, bought new sails and sailed away. 

My grandfather was the master of DIY fix it projects. During my childhood, my parents would load my sister and I into the car and drive to my grandparent's cottage, located on Lake Shupac in northern Michigan. Every trip involved a series of "20 minute projects", which was my grandfather's code name for anywhere from 2 hour to 7 day jobs. My grandfather also taught us to sail in a small fleet of dinghies, some of which he built by hand. 

My grandfather at Lake Shupac with the dinghies I learned to sail on in the background

Unlike me, my grandfather was a natural racer. I would always take the dinghies out to putz around on lake, and my grandfather would stand on the lawn outside the cabin and yell to me that I was sitting too far foreward while running downwind. 

My grandfather sailed in over 25 Mackinac Races in the Ripple and later the Prester John, his next boat, landing him in the prestigious "Old Goat" club.

We gave our wives a winch for Christmas and we were off to race the annual Port Huron to Mackinac race, the longest and most prestigious sailboat race in our part of the world... In 1964, the Ripple won everything in her class, not only in the Mackinac but also in the local inter club races. 

While my grandfather was definitely much more of a racer than I am, we still had a lot in common...

After the Mackinac races, Pat and I and the neighbor couple would cruise Georgian Bay, four of us happy in a twenty-seven foot boat with fifty or more bottle of beer in the bilge. They had to be washed before consumption. 

I sold Ripple in 1966. On the demonstration ride, the bilge was bone dry and, trimmed on a close reach, she held her course with no one at the helm while I casually went below and fixed myself a drink and a pipe. She was a do it yourself accomplishment. We more than recovered the money invested. The pleasure was a dividend on Do-It-Yourself. 

My grandfather passed away a number of years ago. Sadly, much of my sailing "career" came after he died, which I really regret as he was an absolute wealth of knowledge. I would have liked him to see that his passion for sailing was passed on to me, even if it took a little while to truly sink in.

My sister and I sailing the Barn Cat, a catamaran hand built by my grandfather

But given the fact that my grandfather was the whole reason I even know the difference between a halyard and a sheet, I thought it was suiting to name my first boat in honor of him.

I hope he would approve. 

Maiden Voyage!

Well, the Ripple officially set sail this past Sunday. I managed to wrangle up two friends to crew for me, and we went out for an afternoon journey just west of the marina. My friend John who came along, coined this trip as the "figure shit out" trip, which was quite telling. 

The area just out from my marina is a busy commercial harbor (Vancouver Harbour) and sailing isn't permitted. So in order to put up any canvas, it's about a 25 minute putter out from under the Lions Gate bridge to Burrard Inlet. The most interesting part of that trip turned out to be the first 15 feet... getting out of my slip.

Our destination for the day

Now, as a bit of background for myself, I learned to sail dinghies at a young age, and made the jump to cruising boats when I moved to Vancouver about 11 years ago. All of my cruising experience came as crew for the Talofa Lee, a 50 ft Bermuda-rigged sloop out of West Vancouver. I like to think I became a pretty proficient helmsmen over my 6 years crewing aboard that boat. 

HOWEVER, up until Sunday, I had never sailed a boat with an outboard and rudder (Talofa Lee was inboard with a helm). On top of that, I took about a 4 year break from sailing ANYTHING after the Talofa Lee was sold... So needless to say, navigating the close quarters of my marina was quite the "trial by fire" situation. 

Exiting the marina after some stressful maneuvering

Didn't help that the previous owner had forgotten to mention that the outboard on the Ripple has a locking mechanism to lock it in the "down" position. Without that latch engaged, the whole engine kept rotating upwards whenever I gassed it in reverse. This would lift the prop out of the water, resulting in no propulsion and making quite the embarrassing sputtering noise.

(This whole debacle was witnessed by a power boater and his wife, watching silently from 20 feet away and no doubt chuckling to himself...)

Anyway, after a few hairy moments, we managed to get the Ripple pointed towards open water. 

Open water at last!

20 or so minutes later, we made our way under the Lions Gate Bridge and into Burrard Inlet. We managed to time slack tide pretty well, so there was almost no current in the narrows (which can kick up to 5-6 knots at peak tides!).

A new perspective of the Lions Gate Bridge

Once we made it into Burrard Inlet, it was time for some sailing. There wasn't much of a breeze at this point, but I really wanted to get the mainsail up, just to work through the process for the first time. Raising the main took a bit longer than normal for a few reasons. 

One, being the first time in about 4 years that I had done this, I was a bit rusty on the procedure. On top of that, Brett and John had never done this, so they were entirely foreign to whole thing. You forget just how many sailing terms there are until you're trying to walk someone completely new through something like raising a sail. 

However, after a bit of fussing, we got the main up. We didn't put out the genoa as it currently has a tear in it. Even so, we tacked our way back and forth just west of Stanley Park for an hour or so. So nice to be back on the water!

Sailing!

Eventually we decided to start making our way back toward the narrows. We had a bit of an exciting moment as a large container ship was steaming its way towards Vancouver Harbour and decided that we were in their way. A horn blast from a boat that size (even when she’s 5km away) certainly gets your attention in a hurry. I saw her coming from a long way off (not sure how you’d miss her!), but I suppose she wanted to make sure.

So we let her go by, rather than brave the narrows side by side. 25 minutes later were back at Mosquito Creek. I did a bit of low speed maneuver practice (with the engine locked down this time!) before heading for my slip. Docking went smoothly and the maiden voyage was complete!

And then some more cleaning!

On Sunday, I made my way back to the Ripple in the late afternoon to continue cleaning out the interior. I had left the boat a bit of disaster on Saturday evening, and my conscience wasn't going to let me leave it that way for long...

More cleaning!

After working my way through most of the cabinets, I started onto the wood with some Old English Lemon Oil. That stuff always reminds me of being a kid in a kinda funny way. My mom would occasionally assign me the chore of polishing a bunch of wood furniture in our house. As a kid, I of course hated the task. But as an adult, I consider it one of the most satisfying cleaning tasks ever! It makes everything so shiny (and smell like lemons!)

2 hours of oiling and the teak interior was starting to look amazing

I made my way through the v-birth and hanging closet. When I have the rest of the cabin done, I'll share some nice glorious pictures of the end result. One of the things that really drew me to this boat was all the wood in the interior. I think it's going to look amazing once it's all freshly oiled.

As a nice surprise, my neighbor Steve came and knocked on my hull a bit later and invited me to join him and a friend who were cooking up a roast on his boat. So after 4 hours of cleaning, I went and hung out with them for a few hours. Such a friendly marina! Loving it.

Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning

The majority of my sailing experience came as a crew member on my friend's uncle's boat, the Talofa Lee, based out of West Vancouver. Captain Speck, the previous owner of that fine vessel, did well to instill very high boat standards into all of his crew. As a result, I've realized that I'm going to be a neat freak when it comes to my boat (which I consider a good thing).

Before I bought her, the Ripple hadn't seen much action for at least a year prior. As a result, she was a bit rough around the edges when she came into my life. Nothing a few brushes, a hose and some good old fashion boat work can't fix though!

This just won't do...

So this Saturday was the first official 'Ripple Cleaning Party'. I started early, tearing out just about everything in the cabin and giving it all a good scrubbing. It also served a chance to really explore the nooks and crannies of my boat, as well as inventory what I have/need.

Cleaning/Inventory

The more I dug into the boat, the more impressed I was with the amount of storage I found! Really quite impressive for only a 27 ft boat. Just about every wall panel has a cabinet behind it, as well as both settee births and the v-births. I was also impressed by how dirty some of said cabinets were...

Before and after!

After a few hours of wiping down the cabin, my friends Rhys, Shannon, Leilani and Max showed up to help the cleaning effort. I had thrown up a bit of bribery on Facebook the day before, saying that anyone that came and helped clean would get priority on trips this summer. I was more than happy with the turnout.

Once everyone arrived, we started in on the daunting task of "de-greening" the topsides. At first, we went at it with scrub brush and soap.

Making some headway the old fashion way

While we were cleaning, we met two of my neighbors, Steve and Sean, who both live aboard boats in the marina. Nice folks! First Steve offered to pick up some beer for us, then Sean offered to lend us his power washer. What a glorious piece of technology that thing is...

Now we're talkin'!

Before long, the Ripple was shining in the sun, and I was grinning from ear to ear.

Clean boat beers!

Overall, I'm super happy with how the day went. It was awesome to have some friends come out and get stoked on the boat. It was also very cool to meet some of my neighbors. I was a bit nervous about being "the new guy" in the marina, but so far everyone I've met has been very welcoming and helpful. So far so good!

Introduction

My name is Garrett, and I'm starting this blog in order to document my adventures on my new sailboat, which I've called the Ripple.

This is the Ripple, my 1981 Aloha 27 (8.2)

The Ripple is my 1981 Aloha 27 (or 8.2 for those metric fans in the crowd). I just bought her on March 30th, 2016, after YEARS of talking about buying a sailboat. Needless to say, I'm quite excited.

The idea of this blog will be to keep a fun record of my adventures both on the boat, and just owning the boat. Having never done this before, I'm sure there will lots of interesting stories... (hopefully not TOO interesting!)