Windy weather app showed calm conditions in Johnstone, BC Marine Weather had a Gale Force Warning in effect. Our experience is that early morning is best to transit Johnstone before the wind has a chance to build and funnel down the channel.
6am departure, the wind had already built and it was the same conditions as when we tucked into Granite Bay at 5pm the night before. We were riding a big ebb tide until late morning, which would push us through Johnstone Strait. The con was that this big ebb tide was fighting the strong NW winds.
This is where experience comes into play, as we knew where to find the “smoothest rough water”. We made great time clocking 15kts, weaving our way through Johnstone and also betting on it flattening out after Port Neville – which it also did. We were thankful to have use of our stabilizers, and turned them to “center” – on but not active – after Port Neville while transiting the calm waters, thinking we were doing them a favor.
12:30pm we arrived Port McNeill and topped up on fuel contactless. We called Canadian border control before we docked to check to see if we needed to check in before fueling. Since it was in our float plan that we gave to the customs agents in Van Isle Sidney BC, we did not and were good to go.
Once finished fueling we anchored out, Tessa got to work washing the boat down, but was curious about how much oil the stabilizers lost. So she paused her boat wash to crawl around the front of the hot port engine to find we only had ten percent oil left in the reservoir. When she reported this to Tom, he said, now we need to find the leak. She went right to work starting at the forward bilge, and tracing lines back to the oil reservoir. As she knew stabilizers were critical for a “smooth” crossing tomorrow morning around Cape Caution.
She made it back to the motor and shaft, both dry. Then a blue “cap” caught her eye. She brushed her fingers along the backside and her pinky finger came back wet with oil. She had found our leak.
She took photos with her iPhone, to report back to Tom, who then reported back to Philbrooks. It was 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. We needed to get this solved quickly, or we’d be sitting here until early next week with the weekend imminent. Tessa had said the o-ring looked off-center. And sure enough, it was not correctly placed. Tessa again paused washing the boat down to go outboard of the port engine to try to twist the blue cap off, investigate whether the o-ring is intact, if so correct its placement and tighten the blue cap as tight as she can get it.
Tessa was able to deduce that the o-ring was still intact, distorted from being off-center, ease it back into its actual home, and screw the blue cap on as tight as her small muscles would let her to ensure no more oil leaks.
She was nervous she didn’t have the o-ring set correctly, that the blue cap wasn’t tight enough, as it was still leaking some residual oil. Tom started the port engine which the stabilizers receive power from while Tessa watched for drips. She didn’t see any. We didn’t need a larger crescent wrench from North Island Marina (we made another tool work), and fingers crossed that Tessa was able to solve the issue.
6:00pm we were finally able to call it a day, after a 6am start.
