Disco Winches By MichaelPORT ANGELES, WA

Here are most of the innards from the big
48s--missing the drum and largest bearings.
After this I did our two Barient secondaries
and two Lewmar 30s on the mast.

The 1970s have long been maligned for their negative contributions to humanity, things like the Vietnam war, 20% mortgage interest rates, and disco. But what most historians fail to include in this list is our 1978 Lewmar 48 self-tailing winches.

Del Viento’s got two of them, one on each side of her cockpit. They’re big, they’re black, and they’re stout. Several times, fellow boaters have complimented them. I always acknowledged the compliment with a simple thank you, but I’ve always thought to myself: Oh yes, they are damn nice.

Indeed, without them Del Viento wouldn’t look half as serious as she does. Her coamings swell where the Lewmars are attached, to accommodate their big footprint. As a prospective buyer, these winches spoke to me: Just look at us! Nobody would put us on a 40-foot boat that wasn’t strong and ready for big loads.

I recently serviced them for the first time.

It was easy enough to start: nine Allen screws, three sets of three. They loosened easily and in turn released the top cap and both halves of the self-tailing cleat. I then lifted off the cast-aluminum drum to expose a solid bronze base housing the main drive shaft and two sets of gears fitted neatly at the bottom.

Now I’ve rebuilt winches before, different sizes and makes. To get those two sets of gears off (and to expose the pawls and springs between them), I had only to remove the vertical axles that held them captive. But for the life of me, I couldn’t see any way to remove these axles. Only after a long, difficult search online, having tried a bunch of key words and having waded through about a dozen online forum discussions on winches, and having returned to the cockpit several times to confirm what I was seeing, did I turn up a PDF of a tattered manual for our vintage Lewmar 48. There in that ancient record, in clear monospace, were instructions that validated the worse-case scenario I’d stumbled on in my online search: these gear axles are pressed in from the bottom and it takes a punch and a hammer to knock them back out, through the bottom. By design, the winch must be completely removed from the boat for servicing.

Isn’t that absurd? What were the 1970s Lewmar engineers and designers thinking? Have they never owned a boat? Has anyone else come across a design like this?

In the end, I recruited Windy’s small arms and hands to reach into the underside of our coaming and hold each nut while I loosened it from above. After completely cleaning, oiling, and greasing each winch, I re-bedded them and we reinstalled them.

Once I finished the first winch, I did notice the word England forged into the top. So maybe it’s not simply a 1970s thing, but a 1970s British thing…

After all, in America S&S designed Del Viento in the 1970s—and there was even Star Wars, Farrah Fawcet, and bean bags. But apparently, overseas it was the decade of IRA violence, the infamous 1979 Fastnet Race, and the Lewmar 48 winch that must be completely removed from a boat to be serviced.

--MR

The girls at Beacon Hill park near Del Viento. They love it there
and usually spend several hours exploring after their Monday
morning shift at the petting zoo is over.

North To The Light By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

After trying seven tattoo parlors, some more
than once, we stumbled on Pair O' Dice where
Olivia was there and ready to make holes in
Eleanor's ears. No gun, she simply held a
cork behind the ear and pushed a needle
through the front. Eleanor grimaced, but
no tears. She was all smiles afterward and
is pleased with the results, go figure.
My friend EW suggested we take
Eleanor to the mall for this procedure.
But would a distracted, gum-chewing
16-year-old working at a mall kiosk
do a better job than Olivia, an artist,
a professional with about a dozen
piercings of her own, that I could see?
And would the girl in the mall
wear black latex gloves?

“All hope lies in one’s openness to experience and ability to change.”

That was Alvah Simon’s takeaway from his year in the Arctic ice aboard Roger Henry, his harrowing, “sojourn into the darkness.” I re-read Simon’s North to the Night recently—for like the fourth or fifth time—and I finally no longer feel inadequate, like my own cruising experiences are diminutive in comparison. After all, where did Simon freeze himself and the Roger Henry in over the winter? Yep, Canada. The exact same Canada where we and our good ship Del Viento just survived a long, cold winter.

Yes, I can hear the skeptics now: “But Alvah was alone.”

Of course he was, that’s why he had it much easier. Did Alvah have to constantly remind two kids not to leave the hatch wide open? Did he have three other bodies exhaling warm, moist air that would condense on the cabin walls? No, he had a cat.

In fact, Simon had it easy as he chose to winter-over in a part of Canada where mold doesn’t grow on the inside of your boat. Do you know how many trips Simon had to make in the cold drizzle to buy yet another gallon of vinegar so he could wage his battle against the nasty stuff? Zero.

Because Simon has long been a hero of mine, I’m going to stop with the comparison. Even though we’re now more or less equals, he was first and that’s worth something.

But we’re now facing a challenge Simon could not have imagined.

Where to Alvah the coming of spring meant a speck of moss spotted on a tundra stone, to us it is the roar of bow thrusters echoing through our hull as an 85-foot Nordhaven sidles in next to us, blocking our access to the spring sun.

Here on our docks in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, we grew accustomed to the long, lonely winter, the isolation, the quiet. We made our own rules, with plenty of space between us and our few hearty neighbors. We became a community, bound not by familiarity, but by shared adversity. Through the long, dark winter, we’d nod as we passed each other, heads down, along the 300-yard trail to the showers or laundry, too much cold and drizzle to stop and chat.

It was a month ago now, on
a freezing cold morning that
I rented dive gear for the day
so I could check our zincs
and scrub the bottom. That's
a 7mm suit doubled up over
my thighs and torso--the
water's cold. 

Things have changed with the season. It’s warm enough to stop and chat, but our community is pulling out, one by one, headed out to explore as we plan to do. They leave us behind, at ground zero of a tourist mecca. Our new neighbors are transients, in for only a day, just long enough to browse the shops, walk the crowded causeway, and take their picture in front of the Empress. The gates that were locked for the winter are now open and tourists stream by our little sliver of dock, through our front yard. Security guards now patrol, picking up detritus left around by the kids and returning it to us with an admonition.

And the irony is painful, how now that I finally have the weather to do a little sanding and touch-up the varnish on my toe rail, I can’t. The couple entertaining friends on their stern deck is barely five yards away and downwind of where I need to work.

But our winter in Victoria was much more than adversity and our spring is much more than the crowds that have descended. We’ve made many friends, some of whom we’ll leave behind and some of whom are cruisers we’ll likely cross paths with in Mexico. And we are going to miss Victoria. We bonded with this pretty, resource-rich city, everything we want and more just a short walk away.

The end of the month is advancing fast. When it arrives, it’s hard to believe we’ll be gone.

But do have hope, Alvah. As we prepare to leave Victoria, to go north to the light, we’re open to the experience and I know we have the ability to change.

--MR

The same day Eleanor got pricked, the whole family stumbled on
this blood donor center. In solidarity with our daughter, Windy
and I donated blood. I used to do this every 56 days like
clockwork back in our conventional lives. We now have a
new cruising goal to donate blood--at least once--in
every country we visit. Of course, the more countries
we visit, the more likely we are to get ourselves excluded.

In Which I Fix Something By MichaelVICTORIA, BC

This is an unhappy girl on a mission.
Over the past two weeks, we've visited
half-a-dozen tattoo parlors with
Eleanor. She is fired up to get her
ears pierced and every place we
go, the resident body piercing
person is gone or off. It's become
hilarious--to most of us.

“Can you please fix the medicine cabinet catch?” Windy asked me the other day.

"What’s wrong with the medicine cabinet catch?”

“You’ll see, it’s been broken for months.”

There is no shortage of beer-in-hand/body-in-hammock stories that depict cruising as a carefree existence, free of the work and hassle that characterizes land-based life. And to be fair, neither is there a shortage of flashlight-in-mouth/body-upside-down-in-bilge stories that depict the cruising life for what it is: a lot of work and hassles landlubbers never know—in cool places.

This is one for the latter category.

Indeed, I hadn’t noticed that the medicine cabinet catch was loose, barely keeping the little door closed. And now that someone else knew that I knew, feigning ignorance was not an option. I set about solving this minor problem.

Now, good reader, how long should it take me, an average cruiser, to fix a loose door catch? The answer is two days. But I didn’t know this then. And that’s why this story is as much a cruising yarn as our recent trip to the San Juan Islands. This story is an important reminder that solving any problem aboard a cruising boat nearly always takes longer than anyone ought to imagine. Always, even after I’m reminded of this! (In fact, my inability to imagine the actual time—and cost—that any boat project will consume is what allows me to keep going. My ignorance is the magic that keeps me sane, that allows me to start another project, and another, each time armed with a fresh dose of misplaced confidence.)

So I grabbed my screwdriver from the drawer beneath the nav station and made my way forward to the head. Before even trying to tighten the screws that attached the catch, I notice it’s pointless. There is a crack, a split in the wood running through both of the tiny screw holes. I removed the catch to study the problem further.

The frame was split, but not badly, just enough to keep those screws loose. I thought about gluing and clamping the split. I’ve had success in the past with Gorilla glue, but it would be impossible to prep the surfaces (let alone squeeze any glue into the crack). I figured Crazy Glue might wick in there, but I feared it wouldn’t be up to the task, that the repair would fail as soon as I replaced the screws. I decided on a mechanical solution; I would use two additional screws to pull the two sides of the split frame together tightly. I would have to insert them from the back so the heads wouldn’t show and they wouldn’t get in the way of the door closing.

Such a little thing...

Only five minutes had elapsed, and I already had a plan.

In the aft cabin, I moved Eleanor’s stuffed animals aside to access my drill stored under her bunk. From my yellow tool chest under the v-berth, I retrieved my drill index. From a cubby underneath the dinette, I dug out my box of stainless screws. From behind the starboard settee, I found my #2 Phillips stubby.

Frances was now using the head, but no matter, I picked out the right screws, installed the bit I wanted for pilot holes, and waited.

I now have an arsenal of tools out and I’m on the job. I realize I can’t drill from inside the cabinet because the drill’s too big, but in a stroke of genius, I decide to drill through the outside, two tiny holes that I can cover up later. Yet when I go to start the first screw from inside the cabinet, I realize my Phillips-head stubby is way too long. I need a right-angle screwdriver and I’m pretty sure I have one, someplace.

Someplace. After thirty-five minutes of tearing the boat apart looking everywhere for the right-angle screwdriver I thought I had, I grab some long needle-nose pliers with a bend in the end. It’s difficult to start the first screw by hand, but once I do, I gingerly try and reach around and grab the screw head with the pliers, squeeze, and try and rotate the screw. It is very slow going, just a few degrees at a time, and only when the pliers don’t slip off the tiny screw head or I don’t twist it sideways.

“I thought we had a small black Sharpie in here.” I want a way to mark the head or shaft of the screw, just to assure myself it is indeed turning; increased resistance now causes the pliers to slip off more frequently.

And turning it is, though only every third try with the pliers is successful. Ever so slowly my little black mark rotates out of sight.

But I’ve stopped again, back in the salon looking for the tiny 1” c-clamp that was aboard the boat when we bought her. I realize it’s critical that the wood frame is held together tightly as I affix my screws.

I find the c-clamp and note I’ve been at this now for more than an hour.

I go back to trying to turn the first screw, still only a few degrees at a time. The further it goes, the more difficult it is. After about 20 minutes, I finally stop; there doesn’t seem to be a gap between the frame and the head of the screw.

I realize right off the bat the second screw is going to be more difficult; I drilled that pilot hole just a bit closer to the inside of the cabinet. After a while, I give up, the second screw only half in. I push on the crack a bit and realize they both need to be tighter to be effective, much tighter.

“I’m leaving this door for tonight,” I call to Windy, “I need to go out tomorrow and buy a right-angle screwdriver to finish.”

The next day, after a 15-minute walk, I’m at Capitol Iron, the nearest hardware store. The old-timer in the hardware department sucks air in through clenched teeth, his lips drawn, “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, but we don’t carry those—but we should, they’d be right here. Sorry.”

But my spirts aren't dampened. Even before he spoke, I came up with another plan.

Back on the boat, I gathered a couple tool bags from different lockers. With a short #2 Phillips bit fitted into a ¼” socket attached to a ¼” driver, I’ve got an improvised right-angle screwdriver. It’s a bit difficult to use, given that the broad head on the wrench buts up against the inside of the cabinet and doesn’t allow me to get a solid fit on the screw head, but it works. Within minutes, both screws are tight and when I remove the c-clamp, the crack is gone, the frame solid.

But then I notice that both sharp screws are poking an eighth of an inch out of the front of the cabinet face, right out the pilot holes I made. I go and get my Dremel.

With a metal-cutting wheel in the chuck, I grind down each of the sharp heads. Sparks fly and both little screw tips turn cherry red before falling off into the sink. The wood frame is scarred, but smooth. I attach the catch, successfully test the door, and begin the clean-up.

“What in the world was that sound? Are you grinding metal?”

“Nothing a little paint won’t cover. The medicine cabinet door is fixed.”

--MR

This is the bench between the girls' berths in the aft
stateroom. The green blanket is shore, the white
paper slips in a marina. We clearly need to spend
more time at anchor.

We Slipped The Lines By MichaelFRIDAY HARBOR, WA

Most of the time, Windy sets the anchor
and snubber on Del Viento while I'm at
the helm. Here in Roche Harbor, late
afternoon, I noticed the girls up front,
watching her like two lion cubs watching
their momma take down prey. 

For the first time in months, we left Victoria aboard Del Viento. Motoring out of the picturesque harbor, the girls assumed their familiar sailing positions under the dodger: Frances cozied up on the port side of the companionway, Eleanor to starboard. Clear of Ogden Point, the wind blew 15- to 20-knots on our beam and we charged full sail into a 2-knot opposing current at nearly 7 knots. Windy and I sat in the cockpit, smiling at the thrill it was to be underway again. All of us wore warm layers and warm hats to defend against the 50-degree air.

After two hours, we turned left at San Juan Island and ran up the Haro Strait in rolling swells, now nearly dead downwind. Hours later, just at the entrance of the winding channel leading to Roche Harbor, we furled the jib, started the motor, and rounded up and dropped the main. It doesn’t get any better than this (unless it’s warmer).

Roche Harbor is a former company town that’s been turned into a weekend getaway spot for sailors and a home for wealthy retirees. It’s like the Pacific Northwest’s version of Southern California’s Avalon on Catalina Island, only 1/100^th the size. Apparently, this place is bustling in the summer, but we dropped the hook in 30 feet with only two other boats to share the large anchorage and then nestled down below for a warm dinner and peaceful night aboard.

Only this column on the mausoleum
was constructed to appear broken,
to represent man's unfinished
work over a lifetime.

Ashore the next day, we walked into the forest to find the Afterglow Mausoleum.

John McMillin bought all of Roche harbor back in 1886. He turned the place into the largest lime producing operation west of the Mississippi. Late in his life, the turn-of-the-century tycoon commissioned construction of a mausoleum in the adjacent forest, a grand structure built of limestone to serve as the permanent home for his remains and those of his wife and the four McMillin children. It looks like some kind of Greek or Roman ruins, but apparently the guy put a lot of thought into exactly what it is. It’s so gaudy and out-of-place in the quiet forest, that it’s actually pretty cool. Today it’s a National Historic Place and mecca for the Sigma Chi brotherhood.

After we spent our second full day at Roche Harbor aboard, at anchor—reading, cooking, and playing games while we listened to the light rain tap on the deck above—we woke the next morning to sun and motored five miles over to Stuart Island and tucked into Reid Harbor, a beautiful, isolated narrow inlet with excellent holding. Emboldened by the sunny sky, Windy and the girls hiked up and over the island. Along with a bunch of animal skeletons Eleanor collected, they found a one-room schoolhouse that serves the island’s school-age children (both of them, in 1911 there were fourteen). There are no commercial establishments on Stuart and only about 700 permanent residents—all of them living off the grid, like cruisers. U.S. Postal Service mail comes three days a week via boat.

Looking at a chart, it’s clear this five-day trip away from our winter home scarcely covers a tiny piece of the puzzle of islands (thousands of them) that stretch up the inside passage to Alaska. We saw very little of what there is to see in even this small geographic area; it’s clear June, July, August, September, and October will only allow us to scratch the surface of this landscape.

Tonight we are in Friday Harbor, preparing to sail (hopefully) back to Victoria tomorrow, in time for the girls’ drama and gymnastics classes on Tuesday. I’ll spend the next few days completing some small boat projects in preparation for heading out again, soon. I think the next five weeks we’ll be in and out, wrapping up the lives we’ve made in Victoria, getting ready to leave that city and several good friends behind.

--MR

The flowers are blooming at Roche Harbor, but walking around
the deserted tourist trap was like walking around Disneyland in
the hours before they open.

This is it. The remains of each family member are entombed
beneath each chair. Each chair back is engraved with the
name of a deceased and the titles they attained during
their lifetime. John's includes, "32-degree Mason, Knight Templar,
Noble of Mystic Shrine, Sigma Chi, Methodist, Republican"
His wife's single accomplishment? "Wife of John McMillin" 

The girls reading in the empty library of the Stuart Island schoolhouse.

Overlooking Reid Harbor, our bright yellow Pudgy at the public
dock and Del Viento just visible at anchor in the upper left.

The girls on a bluff on Stuart Island.