Learning from experience
As Stephen Gwyn works to fix engine failure before his Alberg 30 hits a rock, he hears the distinctive sound of a humpback whale approaching
As if engine failure near a rock wasn’t enough, a Canadian sailor fears the approach of killer whales
Iwant to start by pointing out that I’m writing this in the first person, so you can assume with a fair degree of confidence I didn’t die. I didn’t hit the rocks, the boat didn’t sink, and I wasn’t eaten by killer whales.
I mention all this in case you, like me, generally skip over the Learning from Experience articles because you read PBO to relax, and find the thrilling tales of taking on water and rudder failures prevalent in the series less than relaxing.
Rest assured that most of the day I’m writing about was taken up with what turned out to be the second best sail of the summer. There was, however, a bad quarter of an hour before that.
I live in Victoria, on the west coast of Canada. Years ago, as a young lad of 22, I hitchhiked on a 72-foot wooden gaff ketch north up to the islands of Haida Gwaii (known back in the old days as the Queen Charlotte Islands, and known back in the older days as Haida Gwaii). I have always wanted to repeat the trip. When I turned 50, I figured it was now or never.
Then and now
Technology has evolved since the trip in the gaff ketch. Then, we had an automobile tape cassette player for music. This time I had a SirusXM satellite radio and a tablet full of movies. Then we had paper charts, some of which showed bays with only one line of soundings going in and one line of soundings coming out. This time, I had a GPS chartplotter with 1m accuracy and updated-to-the-minute corrections, plus the tablet, plus a phone, plus a handheld GPS. And before anybody sends me an admonishing letter, I also had a full set of charts. They made the port settee very lumpy. Then we had radar. This time, regrettably, I didn’t have radar, although the AIS app on my phone worked very well when there was cell phone signal.
It was good summer. I didn’t quite make it across Hecate Strait to Haida Gwaii, but I did make it to the northern tip of Vancouver Island and spent a lot of time between it and the mainland in the small, fiddly islands of the Broughton Archipelago. The scenery was eminently acceptable if you are the sort of person who likes snow-capped mountains, wild
dark forests and majestic fjords with jade green water. I do. The anchorages also fit the bill, if you like them well sheltered with good holding and few other boats. That’s the way I like them.
I’m also partial to friendly, family-run marinas where everybody meets promptly at 5 o’clock for a convivial cocktail and some well-mixed conversation. The Broughtons archipelago has plenty of them, but not so many as to make the place feel crowded.
A few of the marinas start these evening affairs with a little something for their guests to nibble on. Like maybe a small bowl of potato crisps. Or maybe a larger bowl of cooked fresh-caught shrimp, with sauce on the side. Or, on one spectacular evening, a whole roast pig on a spit.
The weather was very consistent. I would wake up in the morning to fog. Around about the second cup of coffee or the third chapter of my book it would start to burn off, leaving a clear blue sky. I would raise anchor or cast off and motor for a bit until the wind picked up, which it always did by late morning, always out of the north-west, coming in from the Pacific, driven by the heating of the mainland. By 4 o’clock the wind was often a bit too strong for my taste, especially if I was if I was going upwind.
4 o’clock is when one should be thinking about where to drop anchor or tie up lest one be late for 5 o’clock cocktail hour.
Whale sightings
There were also whales. Lots of whales. I’ve sailed the British Columbia coast for 25 years; I’ve seen a few whales, mostly orcas, plus one or two grey whales, and maybe one minke. But sightings were rare; I could go a whole year or two without seeing a whale. Each sighting was special, worthy of a special mention in the log. That summer, I saw more whales than I’ve seen in the previous quarter century. There were whales every other day, sometimes multiple times a day. At the beginning of the summer, a whale sighting resulted in a long paragraph in the log. Now seeing a whale or two got, maybe one word, towards the end: ‘Delicious salmon with a tomato, red pepper and olive sauce for supper tonight, accompanied with an insouciant rosé. Saw whales. And so to bed.’ If I was sailing, I could usually hear them before I saw them. It got so that I could distinguish them by the sound of their spouts. A pod of killer whales has a series of relatively short snuffs, whereas a humpback whale (very common that summer) was usually solitary with a much longer, raspy breath.
But all good things must come to end. I sailed down my last majestic fjord, ate my last fresh cooked shrimp and anchored in my last isolated anchorage. To head back south I would have go through Johnstone Strait. Johnstone Strait is not to be taken lightly. The mid-afternoon onshore wind, which is strong in the Broughtons, is ferocious in the Strait. Although it is tidal, because of all the mainland rivers which feed it, the ebb runs stronger and longer than the flood. When the incoming north-westerly blows over the outgoing ebb, the seas can get nasty, with short, steep waves. Even with the flood it can get quite exciting in a small boat by the middle of the afternoon. It also has relatively few safe harbours, and none of them have a cocktail hour. You mustn’t think, by the by, I did nothing but drink cocktails that summer. I often had wine.
Given all that, my plan was to get up relatively early in the morning, motor through the fog using the GPS (to avoid stationary things) and the AIS app on my phone (to avoid moving things). That way, I could catch the beginning of the flood. When the wind rose, I could have a lovely downwind sail with the flood for another four hours or so until the tide turned.
By that time, I had better be somewhere safe. I would have to repeat the procedure the next day, but the second day I probably
wouldn’t have any fog.
I carefully picked out an optimistic safe haven halfway down the Strait and a few fallback safe havens in case things didn’t go according to plan. I checked the weather and the tides obsessively and then
‘I listened closely, but did not take my eyes off the easy-to-lose screw in my hand. There was a long spout, and only one. It was a humpback whale then, and not orcas’
set my alarm for 6 o’clock the next morning.
At 6am sharp I woke up. At 6:01 I hit the snooze button and went back to sleep for an hour. The wasn’t just laziness. The fog was much thicker than usual. By 7:30 when I was breakfasted and coffeed, it was still pretty thick, but at least I could dimly make out the shore, less than half a cable away. I raised anchor and set off.
I sail an Alberg 30, built in Canada, but designed by the Swede Carl Alberg back in 1964. Typical of the era, it has a full keel and a swooping sheer, with a slender, wave-cutting bow and an elegant overhanging stern. It sails like a witch, far faster than you would guess based on its age and waterline. When not sailing, it’s powered by a four-cylinder petrol engine known as the Atomic 4, first built in 1947. Back then, it would seem, the marketing phrase ‘Atomic’ denoted ‘modern’ and ‘powerful’, rather than ‘likely to cause cancer’. Today, it would probably be marketed as a SmartEngine or eMotor. The engine, like the boat, was built more than 45 years ago. I treat my A4 nicely: it gets all the normal preventive maintenance plus a few aftermarket upgrades. I kneel before it, I offer it burnt offerings (when I’m not careful about the exhaust manifold) and blood sacrifices (those jubilee clips are pretty sharp).
In return, it has given me, if not perfectly reliable service, then at least completely predictable service. In the last 15 years, there have been a few days, not many, when it didn’t start first thing in the morning without a lot of coaxing or swearing or (better still) fixing. But once started and warmed up, it has always run for the rest of the day. It might sputter a bit at idle due to a gummed up carburettor or have the odd high-speed miss or otherwise run rough, but it always runs. I repeat, once it starts, it always runs.
I think we all know where this is going.
All goes quiet
I had lost all sight of land at this point, and was using the chartplotter and tillerpilot. Suddenly, with no warning, no hesitating cough, the engine stopped dead. I was drifting in perfect silence through the fog on the glassy sea. Nothing to see but black water below and white fog above.
I looked at the chartplotter. Although I wasn’t moving through the water any more, the water was moving. Not fast, less than a knot, but definitely moving to the south east towards a rock. I estimated I had 40 minutes until I hit. A bit of time, not a lot.
I dived below and removed the companionway steps to get to the engine. What was the problem? The Atomic 4 is a simple engine. If it has compression, petrol and spark, it will run, because it doesn’t know what else to do. I went through the three possibilities:
Compression: I had tools for a compression test on board, but it didn’t sound like compression. If an Atomic 4 loses compression on one or two cylinders it will continue to run albeit roughly. And anyway, I couldn’t fix a compression problem.
Petrol: It could be a clogged fuel line, a bit of dirt in the carburettor, or water in the fuel. But Atomic 4s can choke through a surprising amount of water in the fuel and I have a fairly good filter/water separator in the fuel line. Just to be sure, I took off the flame arrestor, and put my finger in the throat of the carb. I was damp with petrol, but no more. Probably OK. Anyway, fixing a fuel problem means taking apart the carburettor, cleaning it and putting it back together (at least an hour, maybe two), or doing the same with the fuel pump.
Spark: I’ve had problems with lack of spark before, but in the past it would show up as the occasional high-speed miss, not a sudden stop. But it was worth a try.
I got out my hotwire kit. It’s a short wire with a switch in the middle and alligator clips on each end. I clipped one end to the positive bus, and the other end to the starter. Then I jumped up to the cockpit to turn on the ignition. Then I unplugged the distributor cable from the distributor but left it attached to the coil. I thumbed the switch on the hotwire kit and held the loose end of the distributor cable next to the engine block.
On a healthy engine, if you do that, you get a bright blue spark leaping from the end of the cable to the block. On my engine there was nothing. No spark. Hooray! I punched the air in triumph.
Why was I so happy? Because no spark is the easiest thing to fix and I had all the parts on board. Besides the parts, the only tool you need is a screwdriver. And replacing the parts of the distributor is part of the annual preventive maintenance, so I’d done it maybe 20 times at least. In fifteen minutes I could fix this.
I pulled a new cap, rotor, points and condenser out of the spares box. Probably only the points were bad, but was just as easy to replace everything, and I didn’t want to do it twice. I pulled the spark plug wires off the distributor, removed the two screws that hold on the cap and pulled the rotor of the shaft. The next step was a little trickier. The points are held on a with a tiny screw which I have never yet lost into the bilge. Yet. I paused for second.
Testing times
That’s when I heard the whales. They were close, closer than they had been all summer. While many people view whales as benevolent giants, intelligent, friendly and Disney-esque, I’ve always viewed them with a bit of suspicion.
Orcas in particular are apex predators. While they’ve never been conclusively implicated in killing a human, maybe that’s because they’re intelligent enough to cover their tracks. And even when they are friendly, they can cause damage. A few years back there was a friendly orca in a west coast harbour who would greet incoming sailboats like a cheerful puppy, sometimes rubbing up against them in affectionate manner, possibly knocking off the rudder.
Friendly or fierce, I like to keep my distance from whales. I had a vision of killer whales waiting for the boat to be wrecked and then finishing me off. Obviously that would never, ever happen. But then I thought the engine would never stop once it started.
I listened closely, but did not take my eyes off the easy-to-lose screw in my hand. There was a long spout, and only one. It was a humpback whale then, and not orcas. Baleen, and therefore not interested in prey larger than a herring. At least I was safe in that respect. Back to the engine. I carefully put the screw in its spot and did not drop it into the bilge. The points were in. Next came the condenser (I didn’t drop that screw either). The rotor (just a friction fit) and finally the cap (two screws, but they’re captive). I hooked up all the spark plug wires and the cable to the coil.
Now was the moment of truth. I went back up to the cockpit. The whale was gone. I whispered a prayer into the silence and turned the key. The silence was shattered by the roar of the engine coming to back to life. I had done it! I motored off into the fog.
The rest of the day went almost exactly as planned. I motored for another hour. The fog lifted. The wind rose. I raised sail. With the north-westerly wind in my sails and the flood tide under my keel, I flew between the steep slopes on either side of Johnstone Strait,the green forests on the lower reaches turning to white snow at the summits, even in August.
I easily got to the farthest safe haven on my plan, where I made myself a well deserved cocktail. It was the second best sail of the summer.
The next day, there was no fog, a bit more wind, and the flood tide was stronger. A fair fraction of the time I was going over nine knots, sometimes ten knots. It was the best sail of the summer.