A trip to Canada

As I briefly mentioned at the end of January’s post, we had to make an unplanned trip back to Canada for three weeks to visit A’s mother who was ill in hospital. We made it just in time to say a very quick farewell as she passed away within twenty-four hours of our arrival, on January 31, 2011. The death was not unexpected as she was eighty-four and had been ill for many years. In a way, we felt relief that it was finally over for her as the last year had seen her lose her independence and mobility, a very difficult burden to live with for a fiercely independent person. We were also grateful that it happened at a time when we were not out sailing and were therefore able to quickly pick up and travel.

My mother left England in 1957 and lived for over fifty years in Canada where two of my brothers were born. Her ‘Englishness’, however, remained intact through all those years and England is where she chose to be for her final resting place. On the way back to Norway, we had a two day layover in England. This enabled us to take her ashes to Mortlake Cemetery, in London. The cemetery is adjacent to the Chiswick Bridge and fronts right onto the River Thames. It was a typically, grey, dank, cold English day, but, the crocus and daffodils were almost ready to bloom and it was green with the promise of spring. We met other family members there and put Mum to rest in the Rose Garden. She has now come full circle back to England.

 

Gates to Mortlake cemetery.

After the family meeting at the cemetery, we had lunch at an adjacent pub, the Ship Inn. Even though the weather was cold, there were rowers out on the river in front of the pub.

On the first of our two-day layover in England, waiting for our connecting flight from Gatwick to Tromsø, we went up to London in search of a chandlery. We were hoping to pick up some cruising guides to help in planning our 2011 sailing season. We were fighting to stay awake having been up all night, but, forced ourselves to walk around Westminster for three hours looking at old haunts. It had been many, many years since we’d been by Buckingham Palace and Big Ben etc. Although we didn’t get the guides we wanted, the walking tour was a lot of fun. Here are a few photos from our quick tour:

 

Big Ben, of course. Nice to see it all freshly restored and without scaffolding.

The Household Cavalry barracks adjacent to the Palace.

 

Westminster Cathedral]

 

 

Westminster Abbey

Although the primary purpose of our trip was sad, there was also a side benefit in that we found ourselves with some time, after the first week, for other pursuits.

Muskoka, in February, can be very pleasant when it’s cold, sunny and with those brittle, blue skies against white snow that you only see in the North. We found the brilliant sunshine blinding at first as we two moles hadn’t seen any direct sun for two months, but, soon got used to it and enjoyed the sun’s warmth. We were hoping to be able to get out cross-country skiing, but, ran out of time. We were able to get out for a skate on Lake Muskoka though and although out of practice and wobbly it was fun.

A skating on Lake Muskoka, I do have skates on my feet here although they’ve been chopped out of the picture.

G skating on Lake Muskoka

Gravenhurst, on Lake Muskoka, is home to a couple of steamships. One, the RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Segwun (frozen into the ice in the foreground in the picture below), is a true wooden antique and is coal-fired. It is truly amazing to see it in operation, with the coal fires being stoked below (a very hot job in the summer), black smoke belching out of the chimney above and all the brass workings of the ship polished to perfection and in operation.

 

The antique Segwun (foreground) and the replica Wenonah (background).

Historic plaque about steamboating in Muskoka.

We also really enjoyed being warm and able to have a hot shower every day in our apartment. We were able to visit friends and also get through all the usual personal maintenance items, like dental visits, haircuts, visits to accountants/lawyers and property managers etc. G was able to renew his driver’s license which had been a bit of a worry.

The extra time also allowed us to get started on the purchase of some of the boat maintenance items we need before starting our 2011 sailing season. A lot of the items we needed are only available in the U.S. At Christmas, we’d tried importing a couple of replacement manual galley foot pumps into Norway from the U.K. This proved to be so difficult and expensive that we just didn’t know how we were going to be able to obtain the other items. Being in Canada enabled us to quickly get onto West Marine and our other suppliers and order the following  items:

1)      AIS transceiver – I mentioned in a previous post how useful our AIS receiver had been and how we wished we had a transceiver (a unit that both transmits and receives boat info like course/speed, boat name, MMSI number and even calculates the CPA (closest point of approach) and TCPA (time to closest point of approach)).  With this new transceiver, our boat information should now show up on the big ships’ AIS screens. This, of course, assumes that someone is looking at the screen, it is turned on etc., but, we feel that anything that lessens the risk of getting run down is worth it. This year we will again be in areas with very heavy shipping. The transceivers had been quite expensive which is why we didn’t get one before, but, West Marine now has a unit available for only USD$500 which made it affordable. Unfortunately, you have to lay out another USD$200 for a VHF AIS Antenna Splitter so you can share the same coax cable that the VHF radio uses, but, even with the cost of both units, the price is still less than the name brand transceivers by themselves.

2)      Iridium external antenna – Our satellite phone has proved useful at times and is another essential safety item. However, we were very disappointed with its performance. Calls seemed to get continually dropped, even while at sea. Also, it can only be used outside with a clear view of the horizon. So, when it’s dark, the weather is freezing and the wind is howling through the rigging, it isn’t very conducive to going out on deck to make a phone call. In order to make calls from inside the boat we needed an external antenna. We also want to start using the phone to download data (weather grib files etc.), so, we needed an external antenna to do this as well. As usual, the price was out of sight, $600 for a piece of cone-shaped plastic and a bunch of cables. Added to the cost of the phone and the minutes it almost makes me wish we’d gotten an SSB instead, but, the convenience of the phone in an emergency still wins out in my view.

3)      Battery Monitor – we went with the Xantrex LinkLITE monitor this time, hopefully it’s more robust than the last monitor we had.

4)      Boat bits – replacement cabin fans, bilge pump float switches, watermaker filters, replacement Alpenglow light bulbs from Montana, Spurs zincs and bearings from Florida, sail repair items from SailRite in Indiana, diesel solenoid switch from Cape Cod, MA and many other bits and pieces. It’s amazing what’s required to try and keep this boat in good nick.

The only drawback with all this shopping was that we had to lug it all back with us. We just squeaked through on our luggage allowance. We now have just about everything on our list to start our maintenance and upgrade jobs when the weather turns a little nicer here. We’re still working on obtaining a new mainsail to replace our shredded one and also some kind of backup regulator in case our single regulator that controls both alternators (one on the engine and another on the generator) gives out. A new toilet to replace the one that’s been leaking since we left is also on the agenda. Not sure if we’ll have time this year, but, we’d like to replace the corroded bus bars in the panel and redo the throttle cables as well.

We arrived back at the boat on February 23, around 2:30 a.m. The boat was cold, but, fairly dry and warmed up quickly. We learned that there had been a lot of snow while we were gone and a few very cold nights. Our water system was frozen, but, has now thawed out with the warmer weather we are currently experiencing and there weren’t any leaks  (fingers crossed). We see we have some hull paint damage where ice had formed on the fenders and then scraped against the hull.

Daylight is back and it’s now light between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., marvellous! We missed the National Reindeer Championship races on the main street of Tromsø while we were gone, something I was really looking forward to. Hopefully we’ll see reindeer elsewhere before we leave Norway. You’ll have noticed that leaving is now on our minds. We have started to plan our departure and 2011 sailing. So far, it looks like this:

a)      April/May – boat maintenance

b)      June - in the general Tromsø area enjoying the ‘white nights’ and ‘midnight sun’. We plan to visit the Lyngen Alps area and a few other fjords and anchorages.

c)      around July 1 depart for Svalbard. Svalbard is an Arctic island archipelago about 600 miles further north and only about 600 miles from the North Pole. This destination will be totally dependent on the weather and ice in the area and we may not be able to do it given the limitations of a fibreglass boat.

d)     Around the end of July make a long run offshore to the far south of Norway and through the Goteborg canal into Sweden and the Baltic.

e)      Tour the Baltic for August/September and then we’re not sure yet. We’d really like to end up somewhere warm for next winter, but, we may run out of time and weather, so, we’ll see….