Jasper & Karen's Blog (11)

Spring 2020 and we're still working on fibreglass...what a terrible correspondent I've been!  Here's what's happened since last I updated you all.

We replaced all the fibreglass on the cabin, deckhouse and most of the decks--some of it was still intact, at least!  In the process, we had to replace a few sections of the deck, a bit of Cleopatra's couch and some of the gunwales that had just rotted right out.  Elsewhere, liberal use was made of products like Rot-Fix, ScuptWood and…

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Hello, all--

We're long overdue for an update here.  We hauled Viajador in October, 2014 to deal with some extensive cracking of the fibreglass on the decks and cabin top, as well as some rusty fasteners that were bleeding through the hull.  Thirteen months later, we splashed back into Howe Sound (BC, CA) with a very sound hull, a brand new cabin top and not much else done!  We're currently hunkering under an inelegant but reasonably effective tarp tent, which the 70 kph winds last…

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We're kitting up right now to take off on a 4-6 week venture, end of this month.  Our first destination is the north end of Vancouver Island:  a lovely large cove named "Sea Otter" which has the bad luck to be on the receiving end of all the debris being washed up the outer coast of Vancouver Island.  There, we'll spend a couple of weeks with a team of volunteers collecting and sorting the debris, much of it from the Japanese tsunami, for recycling or landfill.  Toward the end of that time,…

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For those of you who haven't ventured into northern British Columbia waters as yet...come soon, while the whales are still visiting!  There is no experience that quite compares with sailing through the spectacular archiplelagos of our inside passage and finding massive marine mammals rising beside your boat for a breath of air!

The downside of the inside passage is that there are two wind directions and they're always against you.  You've got to be prepared for a lot of motoring if…

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It's been some time since we've posted here and I have to admit that we shamelessly abandoned our Newporter to go live like landlubbers for the better part of a year, looking after a pretty nice house for some friends.  Of course, we intended to use the time to do all of the really dirty work that needed doing on Viajador, but somehow, the weather was never quite right when we had the time, etc., etc.

Just to bring you all up to date on our boat woes, the last trip we made ended up…

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Well, the boats didn't meet, but we did. Bob Mitchell, whom we have to thank for this site, and partner Deb traveled half a continent on their vacation this year, stopping in to see Jasper and me at Bowen Island. This is us enjoying an after-dinner drink aboard Viajador, while reading the latest from Clyde on Bob's email!

After communicating all this time on the website, it was a little like… Continue

We were given these photos by a friend who has twice crossed paths with this Newporter. Check out the pics--there are some interesting modifications. Love the cockpit!

...is that vital parts of your equipment are in seriously bad shape. Removing our main boom to the shop for the winter, we planned to refinish it and repair a small tear in the glass. My first clue that all was not well should have been the globbed-on Sikkaflex applied by a former owner in the general vicinity of all of the fittings at the boom end. But in fact, the first clue was the screw in the sail track that I drew straight out with my fingertips.



To make a sorry story… Continue

Jasper's theory about all things coming to he who waits proved true again: our nearly 3-year search for a mizzen mast came to a successful end last week, when a friend of a friend of a friend who was asked by his boss to finally chop up the old trimaran that had been sitting in the shop yard for 8 years with a hole in her side called his friend to say, "I know nothing about boats but there's some good metal stuff on there that somebody should use" and the friend (who is himself a sailor) said,… Continue

for anyone here who's also been to my site, I'm going to close it down because this is SO much more functional--I especially like the discussion forum that lets everyone post their experiences to categories. I can't do that on mine and it's really helpful. If I'd only figured that out before littering your photo album with our bowsprit pictures...I will fix that!

Kudos, Bob, on setting up such a great site. Looking forward to reading and learning more.

What a surprise, and nice to see all these pictures! I will try to send you whatever I post to my own site as well--or maybe scrap mine, because this looks more functional!
Karen