Lyn's Log, 12th July 2008
Stuck in Vancouver, part 1.
Vancouver
N49º16', W123º08'
18,050 miles.
July proved to be the month when summer arrived in earnest but we had to mark time mostly at Fisherman’s Wharf in Vancouver where we returned on the 3rd, with occasional sorties out to the nearby islands which were brought short by frustrating equipment failures.
The beginning of the month saw the arrival of Andrew’s sister Helen and bro-in-law Des to Vancouver, the first stage of their holiday visit to the quilting bazaars of the West Coast. Quilting is remarkably popular here, and Helen was in her element. Not perhaps so Des, a former ship captain, for whom a visit to Vancouver’s neat little maritime museum seemed to come as a welcome relief. It specialises in model ships, and when Des discovered one of the model builders working on a ship he had once piloted, the rest of us just left them to get on with it. Together with cousin Penny, her daughter Louise and son-in-law Larry, it was quite a family reunion. They arrived on board on the 7th, Andrew’s birthday, and after surprise gifts and birthday cake, Penny took us to Stanley Park, a forest parkland on a peninsular fronting Vancouver.
We had scheduled an extended cruise around the Gulf and San Juan Islands for the next two weeks, to make up for the aborted Alaskan cruise in June. On the first day we sailed across the Georgia Strait to the northern tip of the Gulf Islands and anchored with a great number of other boats in a bay facing downtown Nanaimo. As we set off the following morning, it took three attempts to engage forward gear. Yes, the old problem with the transmission had returned to haunt us, despite having had a brand new transmission unit fitted in April.
While waiting for a local repair guy to call, we took the little ferry to nearby Newcastle Island for the afternoon, where we walked a few miles along the trails in the wood and parkland, spotting a couple of deer. The island was a popular day trip destination from Vancouver a hundred years ago, when as many as 1,500 people would arrive daily by ferry. It is still popular now with campers and day-trippers from Nanaimo, but peaceful and less crowded.
The local repair guy said that our problem was common with new ZF transmission units, and he wouldn’t touch it as ZF ought to fix it under warranty, but that we would find them sticky to deal with. And so it proved. We contacted the company in the United States who supplied the new unit. It seemed the only realistic way to get ours seen to in a reasonable space of time was to return to Vancouver, pull the transmission out ourselves, rent a car and take it to them in Everett, Washington to check over.
We had a beautiful sail back to Vancouver, using the spinnaker much of the way. We watched the snow cone of Mount Baker hovering over a band of mist at the south eastern end of the Straits of Georgia until it anchored itself to land behind the hills as we approached Vancouver. Fortunately we persuaded the gear to engage as we came back into Fisherman’s Wharf where after delivering the transmission we were now stuck waiting.
A week later we returned to collect it. They had replaced some clutch rings, though the old ones hardly looked worn, and then blamed - as we’d been warned they might - everything else about the engine. We reluctantly agreed to replace the drive plate as they did not like the brand new one we had specially fitted for us in Anacortes. We were told the local ZF rep had agreed to call to inspect the problem, but had failed to show, and anyway ZF were unlikely to admit to fault which meant the company were having to swallow the cost. So everyone was pretty fed up with the time and money spent, and we still had the job of rebuilding the engine back in Vancouver with no guarantee that it would not fail again.
A saving grace of this trip to Everett was the opportunity to remeet Betsy and Ken of Dragon’s Tale at their home on nearby Whidbey Island. It was a drive over the spectacular Deception Pass bridge, then out into the countryside on the island. Their hillside home commands the most beautiful views over the bay and we spent a pleasant evening reminiscing about Princess Louisa Inlet, while they prepared for a cycling and boating holiday in Holland the following week.