Winter Carnage

A shot of the Dec. 24th snow storm from the Granville Street Bridge.  Heather Civic Marina is completely obscured.

Winter this year was preceded with near record snow falls in Vancouver.  I got a taste of things to come a few weeks back when I was sailing back from the Sunshine Coast when we encountered the begining of these winter storms.  In typical Vancouver fashion everything ground to a halt.  The city is not prepared for this type, or any, snowfall.  

Being quite paranoid I braved the elements and bad winter drivers and went down to the boat everyday to clear snow off the boat and my dock finger.  I had the heater roasting away down below keeping the interior dry and protecting the water lines from freezing up.  I don't have much of a winterizing program because I am sailing my boat every week.  I just slap a tarp on and turn up the heater.  

Cheryl always thinks me a "touch" obsessive about the boat (the understatement of the year).  So when I was anxious about leaving the boat unattended over Christmas (Dec. 24-27th) she ribbed me mercilessly.  When we returned from Chilliwack on the night of the 27th I talked her into a detour to the boat.  We wanted to get home and she said I could just take a look from the dock.  When I saw the WEASEL, she was covered in thick snow and the tarp was weighed down with a pool of heavy snow.  I figured it could wait until the morning and went home.

A power boat with a collapsed bimini due to accumulations of heavy snow.  Leaving a boat unattended over the winter can cost you.

When I got down to the boat the next afternoon.  I cleared the dock and the deck of the boat with great difficulty.  The snow was laden with rain that had fallen the previous days turning it into heavy slush.  When I was done I opened up the hatch to take some measurements of the ceiling as I planned to do a reheadline-ing and insulation project.  

My heart hit the floor when I looked in and saw the bilge overflowing and three inches of water above that on the cabin floor.  The heater was off and was wet.  I checked the main AC breaker before jumping in.  It was still on so I shut it off and jumped in.  Before doing anything I turned on the DC system and turned on the electric bilge pump.  The electric bilge pump is located in a small bilge under the engine the main bilge is managed by a hand pump.  I quickly knelt down and scooped up some of the water and swished it in my mouth.  To my relief it was fresh water.  That meant one of two things.  It was either snow melt or my freshwater system had leaked.

 

Another shot of this boat just 2 slips away from mine.  The canvas people are going to have a busy spring.

I thought it unlikely that the freshwater system had froze and leaked if the heater was on.  I used the hand pump faucet in the galley and it was sucking water; then tried the electric pump and found everything was normal.  If the system had a leak it should not suck water out of the tank or push it with the pump.  I checked the fresh water line as best I could and found no obvious leaks or pools of water.  The tank was 1/3 full.  

I jumped into the cockpit and busted out the handle for the hand pump.  The water began flowing out.  It was slow going and I decided to switch to a low tech technique and bail by hand.  In case you wanted to know how much water it takes to overfill a CS 27 bilge; the answer is just over 80 litres.  This also answered my question as to where the water came from.  The boat had about half a tank of fresh water onboard (approx. 20 litres) meaning that the water had been show melt.  After about 40 minutes I had the bilge dry and the heater on again.  The fact that there was freshwater under the engine lead me to believe that the water had come from one of the lazerrette hatches in the cockpit where a lot of snow had accumulated.  

Sure enough I found a  trail of wet gear leading from the stern into the rear.  I also found a propane plastic lid cover jamming up the channel that would lead water into the cockpit.  Couple this with the fact that just before leaving I decided to open the engine cover to allow more heat to keep the engine warm (meaning hot air now passed into the lazerrettes meant that the snow cover over the hatches was being warmed from below resulted in this minor disaster.   I am always surprised how problems on boats seem to spring from the smallest most insignificant things.  In the end the WEASEL was no worse for it and learned a few things.

"I thought it was just supposed to rain in Vancouver"