No one said it'd be easy!

Dear Katie,

Here's one for the website,

Waiting for weather.

We are now returning to Victoria after having 3 days out and about around the islands here. The sailing has been pretty awful, never enough wind, but we have done many essential jobs in preparation for departure. Last night was a 2 o'clocker. We still had a bad leak from the stem whenever we were underway, we had changed a couple of bolts in the area, which had clearly been broken for a little no time, so it was a good job done, but it did not cure the leak. So last night we s t into the problem in a more major way, removing the bobstay fitting revealed a very gappy stem scarf which bore the marks of plenty of old work. First I was chipping out massive chunks of epoxy...pretty worrying, then I exposed the remains of a stopwater hole which was filled with epoxy, then I got down to a vast amount of caulking which was above another stopwater, very old and not doing its job any more. The gap between the two parts of stem was about 10-15mm, so with the limited resources and time available I fashioned a wedge out of timber we had on the boat, fitted it with sika and tingled over the whole affair before replacing the bobstay fitting. Not ideal, as we were working so close to the water,, but it does seem to have done the trick, reducing the leak to a minor weep. The crew really does work well together, everyone has skills and gets along with a good sense of humour. A nice mix of ages and nationalities, experience and humour. Oz is thoroughly sick of Canada now and wants to be out ASAP. He has done a long stint and has never been keen on northern winters. If you want a comedic ascetic reaction you just have to comment on spending the winter here... Regis is a bundle of good humour, very dry, and is probably the most pushed for time with this whole trip, having originally only been signed on till panama. The wait is annoying all of us, but Regis is probably most affected by it, yet remains totally mellow, joking away. A very affable and pleasant crew member. James is strong and dependable, always keen to help and delighted by his success with getting the engine panel to spark into life yesterday. Very little actually worked on this boat. Electrically she is a nightmare due to the various eras of people adding wires and losing sight of an overall system. Luckily, the fact that none of it worked due to the water ingress ove r the years, leaving nearly every connection a dud, makes it pretty easy to rip out the old and replace it with new. The engine panel is a beautifully made thing, but thus far has been lifeless, so to get a temperature reading is a great boon. Guillaume is a rock in the galley. Being a bonafide chef he has a great knowledge of food and provisioning, and has done great work on that front. He has also taken to ropework and splicing like a duck to water, and is very capable all round. He will return back to Quebec City for Christmas, and is planning to go to Patagonia later in the year, as he is taking a year out of work to travel. Iain is great. An early riser he tends to be the first to rise and reads a lot, making a chat with him a pleasant diversion from the everyday business of running the boat and the jobs to be done. Yesterday he made a washboard for the tiger cage, and is handy at all sorts of practical jobs and ropework. A thirst for adventure, he and Guillaume took the terribly leaking clinker dinghy out for a row the other day and ended up getting pretty close to a pair of sea lions, an experience I am not sure either will be looking to repeat in a hurry!

So the boat is about as ready to go as I ever expected her to be. Still got some drips from the deck, got a constant leak rate through the hull, got a rig, engine and steering which works, and a good crew who are chomping at the bit. The weather looks pretty stuck in the south, although I am hoping we can make some use of the shifts from south east to south west, but either way it will not be a fair breeze we have to go with. Hey ho, no one ever said it would be easy!

Love you,

Xxxxxx