Slip E 21 – Bay Port Yachting Centre
Midland, Ontario – 44°52’03.5″N 79°46’48.9″WSurprise! (again!)

As of August 7, we’re still in Midland at Bay Port Marina. Here’s a summary of what’s been happening over the past couple of weeks:

July 28 – After dropping off Catherine at the GO train station in Barrie, I returned to the boat in Midland and dove right into my project list. I installed a new pre-filter and a fresh water filtration system. Previously, there were no pre-filters on the system except for a small screen on the pump that frequently plugged up with sediment. The new, larger capacity sediment filter is followed by a 30-micron filter (with activated carbon) that supplies all the water taps aboard. In addition, we now have an ultra-filter with its own tap at the galley sink. This ultra-filter cleans the water to less than 1 micron, making it much safer for drinking, washing raw fruits and vegetables, and cooking. The setup below is temporary – just to get us cruising. I will relocate the entire setup to a more permanent location this fall or next spring before we launch.

Photo above – Freshwater sediment and filter system.

Photo below – Ultrafilter to under 1 micron – for drinking

July 29 – I started removing the old aft head toilet and waste piping to give the tech crew a head start on installing the new head (no pun intended—but it fits 🙂 ). It was a disgusting mess due to a few past overflow incidents where the previous owners didn’t do a great cleanup job behind the toilet and vanity cupboard. Thankfully, the cleanup was pretty straightforward and quickly completed.

Michael was back on site and completed his service work on the Onan generator. It’ll be interesting to use an onboard generator—until now with Santosha and Ananda, we only had a Honda generator aboard with limited power capacity. The Onan can essentially give us the equivalent of shore power no matter where we are.

 

July 30 – I finished prepping the aft head by removing the old waste pipe running from the aft head to the forward holding tank. An absolutely stinking 2-inch diameter “black snake” that’s about 25 feet long – yuuucck! Sooooo glad that’s done—and I hope I never have to do anything like that ever again.

Photo above – gutted aft head

July 31 – I modified the cedar plank BBQ box to make it easier to access the propane tank when setting up the BBQ. I cut the lid into two pieces and added a piano hinge to each so they open and shut independently. Interesting note: when I tried to buy a long hinge for this project, no one knew what a piano hinge was! They called it a “continuous hinge.”

August 1 – For some reason, the seawater/washdown pump at the windlass began running intermittently around dinner time the day before. At first, I thought it was the freshwater pump reacting to a slow leak somewhere in the piping. But upon closer inspection, I found it was the washdown pump. It’s located in the engine compartment, drawing “sea-water” from a thru-hull connection and piped to a hose at the windlass—handy for rinsing mud off the anchor and anchor chain. Turns out the service tech had reconnected a loose wire in the electrical panel while working on the wiring for the new toilet in the forward head. That’s when the pump started running again. It ran intermittently because the hose connection at the windlass was leaking—just a few drops a minute, but enough to trigger the pump. Once identified, the fix took less than a minute. If only all boat problems were resolved that easy!

Meanwhile, back in London, Catherine also remains fully engaged in our boat renovation projects. Belisama only has Sunbrella fabric coverings for a few of the windows and those coverings are in pretty bad shape. We have been looking in fabric stores in Barrie, Ottawa and London to find the right combination of colour, quality and price and it turned out that the Len’s Mill Store in London had everything we wanted at a competitive price. She came home with 15 meters of blue Sunbrella for the windows and sliding doors, plus 3 meters of vinyl for the forward and aft cabin hatches and 2 meters of fabric for folding chairs and accent pillows.

Sunbrella on a roll	Updated folding deck chair

Catherine will bring the fabric and her sewing machine back to the boat with her. Then she can take accurate measurements for each window and door on the boat. That will make a huge difference in protecting the exterior woodwork and weatherproofing the boat. It also turns out that our long time friends, the “might-as-wells” showed up and suggested that while Catherine is working on the window covers she might-as-well make new covers for the forward and aft cabin hatches and then there’s the two aluminum folding deck chairs with the awful coloured fabric seats and backs that need to be done. I don’t know a thing about sewing so those projects definitely fit into the pink job category!

August 2 – Today I stained the galley pantry doors. Catherine and I had taken a sample of stained wood to Home Depot to find a good colour match. Unfortunately, the match is nowhere near the original—but it’ll have to do for now. I think I’ll just tell visitors that my colour choice was deliberate to highlight my cabinetry skills. Oh well, time to move on to the next project.

August 3 – There’s a small cupboard just inside the main cabin by the portside door. It was originally a hanging closet—why, I have no idea, since there’s almost no food storage space in the main cabin. The previous owners converted it into a storage closet at one end and installed a propane space heater at the other. The heater is now obsolete, and I wouldn’t dare use it even if it were updated. So, it’s headed for the garbage bin, and the closet will become another pantry space for us.

The only “downside” is that the hole where the heater was needs to be covered with plywood and stained to match the rest of the woodwork. That’s another problem for future Wally to figure out!

Photo above – the gutted cupboard

August 4 – I finished renovating the galley cupboard and installed three pantry shelves. It turned out much better than I’d hoped. I covered the corner space where the propane heater used to be with a nice piece of plywood paneling. That space is hard to access from the cupboard door, so I’m thinking next year it’ll get its own door and become our liquor cabinet! So many ideas—so little time to make them happen.

August 5 – Michael returned early in the morning to begin installing the new toilet in the aft head. I stayed out of his way and focused on cleaning and organizing the flybridge storage lockers. A lot of the stuff in there was of no interest to us—about two-thirds went into the garbage bin, and the rest to our storage locker in Midland. What happens to that stuff is for future Wally to figure out!

Photo above – taking a break during the flybridge locker cleanout

Michael made quick progress on the aft head. He didn’t have to deal with the old fixtures and waste piping since I’d already removed them, and he knew the plumbing and wiring setup from the forward head. Once he wrapped up for the day, I started emptying out the aft cabin, which had become a workshop and storage room. Tomorrow, it becomes our second bedroom.

August 6 – D-day is almost here. Yikes! Less than 24 hours to turn this boat from a renovation zone into a guest-ready cruiser. Michael arrived early and finished the aft head installation in under two hours—hooray! Now the rest was up to me. I cleaned the main cabin, forward cabin, and aft cabin. The biggest challenge was finding places to store all the tools and renovation supplies we’d accumulated since arriving in Midland on June 24 to take possession of the boat. Once the “stuff” was out of the aft cabin, I washed all the walls with a Borax solution to clean the wood paneling and eliminate any signs of mould and mildew. This solution works really well and it did a lot to brighten up the look and freshen the air in the cabin. I finished close to midnight. Needless to say, I slept very well that night.

August 7 – Catherine, Valerie, and David arrive this afternoon. Time to kick into overdrive. I finished organizing the boat lockers and closets and set up the aft cabin as our sleeping space. We wanted Valerie and David to have the master cabin for the best experience—after all, we want them to come back and visit whenever they can. Final task: laundry. Thankfully, the marina has a small laundromat. While tending the laundry Catherine and I exchanged texts—her updating me on their drive from London, me reporting boat status. I finished the laundry just as they arrived. As I drove our car back to the slip, I saw David and Valerie’s car following me to the dock. Wow, that was close!

After greetings and hugs, we got our guests settled into their cabin and gave them a five-minute tour of Belisama. Catherine and Valerie put together a provisions list and headed to the grocery store. David stayed behind and helped me with some last-minute organizing.
Everyone was pretty tired from the journey, so we had rotisserie BBQ chicken from the local Loblaws, fortified with salads and multiple glasses of wine.

Photo above – Wally, Cath and David gearing up for dinner (Valerie is photographer)

It’s so great to have finally arrived at this point in our new boating adventure. Tomorrow, we cast off for a journey on the Trent-Severn Waterway with a much-improved boat and two very dear friends —an adventure over a year in the planning.

Cheers!

Slip E 21 – Bay Port Yachting Center
Midland, Ontario – 44°52’03.5″N 79°46’48.9″W

Surprise! As of July 31 we are still in Midland at the Bay Port Marina.

Here is a summary of what’s been happening over the past two weeks:

Work on the boat by the marina’s tech staff has been sporadic. They have serviced the engines and the generator. Complete oil and filter changes for both engines and the generator and all fuel filters have been changed. Oil in both engine transmissions has also also changed. That’s a load off my mind as the boat has little to no maintenance records to rely upon so I thought it best to start with a fresh slate.

Photo Above – Michael and Max get into the depth of servicing the diesel engines and generator. They are young, thin and flexible and can easily get in and out of spaces that I can only get in to – but fear that I may not be able to get out of.

The tech staff have also said they would soon begin working on installation of the new electric flush toilets in the forward and aft heads. That will be a welcome upgrade to the boat at the existing heads are old, smelly and inefficient.

After the fun of celebrating Catherine’s birthday at Rawley Lodge on July 15 we were back to our “normal” routine of cleaning the interior of the boat, taking inventory of all of the items on board, deciding what we would like to keep and what we will dispose of. The heat wave continues and that has really sapped our energy levels. We try to do a bit of work in the mornings and then seek shade and rest in the afternoons when the heat is peaking. By the time supper hour comes around we are pretty much done in and can only think about having a light supper and then off to bed. We are happy that summer is here but wish the temperatures were several degrees lower. Oh well, I keep reminding myself that it won’t be that long before February will be here and we will all be wishing for spring to come .

On July 16 the tech staff began work on the forward head. Hooray! The old toilet and waste pipe were removed and the base for the new toilet was measured up and installed. Work continued for a few hours the next day and finally on July 18 the installation was complete! Very spiffy indeed!

This is a big picture because we are flushed with pride for our new electric flush toilet.

On July 19 we worked on removing and rebedding the forward cabin windows which were in a bad state. It was hot work but went well. Several of our dock mates stopped to commiserate on the task of fixing leaky windows on a boat.

On July 20 we removed the dingy davits from the boat’s transom. They are a heavy duty set and we really have no use for them. We are not dingy fans. As nomads on the Trent-Severn and Rideau Waterways we will always have mooring spaces at the locks or we will spend a night or two in a marina. Anytime we anchor overnight we will have no need to go ashore. Perhaps in the future we might want a dingy, paddleboard  or a kayak but for now we will just enjoy access to an empty swim platform. I will put the davits up for sale on Kijiji. I expect that they will be of interest to someone.

July 22 and 23 I worked on finishing the new galley pantry drawers – fabricating and installing drawer fronts. They turned out pretty good considering they were made with the cheapest lumber I could find at Home Depot and put them together with a basic skill saw on a picnic table!  My plan is to take the drawers home this winter and rebuild them to a higher standard. We’ll see if I stick to my plan or simply get used to what we have and continue to say that’s good enough for now!

On July 24 we left Midland to spend the weekend in Ottawa. The daughter of our close friends Bruce and Barb was getting married and we were privileged to be invited to the party for out of town guests on the 25th and to the wedding on the 26th!

We drove the backcountry roads from Midland to Ottawa. We had not taken this route for many years. It was interesting to pass through towns and villages that we knew the names of but didn’t remember when we had last been there. We also had a side trip to try to find Camp Gay Venture near Minden where Cath worked as a kitchen helper in 1972. The girl’s camp had been set up in 1945 back in the day when “gay” meant “happy”. The camp ran for 45 years until 1990 but is no longer there, only part of a street name now leading to a private cottage development on Kashagawigamog Lake. (say that name 10 times in a row if you can 🙂 )

It was close to noon when we passed through Bancroft. We were getting hungry so we stopped for ice cream – and wow, did we get ice cream!. This was at a Kawartha Dairy outlet along the highway. There was a lineup of about 20-30 people waiting to be served. As we progressed through the line we quickly understood why everyone was there. The cones they were serving were massive! Three sizes were available – baby, small and huge – and huge was indeed huge! It was all we could do to polish off our “small” cones before they melted away. Gotta stop there again on the way back to Midland!

We stopped in Kanata to visit overnight with my nephew Wayne, his wife Cindy and their (now adult) children Jaden and Shea. That was a relaxing visit and great to catch up with everyone. The next morning we were headed to downtown Ottawa for a 2-night stay at the Lord Elgin Hotel.

The bride and groom had arranged for a special rate for guests attending the wedding. This was a very welcome bit of luxury compared to how we have been living for the past several weeks, which Cath likes to call “camping in a construction zone.”

On the 26th we walked around the downtown area close to the canal.

Photo Above – Catherine sitting beside a life size statue of Oscar Peterson, one of Canada’s most celebrated musicians – ranking up there with jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. The statue is beside the National Arts Center where Oscar performed many times, He passed away at age 82 in 2007. He was born in Montreal and his father was a railway porter. He would have been 100 years old in 2025.

We toured the “temporary” home of Canada’s Parliament while the original House of Commons is being renovated. This temporary home will be where Parliament meets until renovations to the House of Commons are completed in 2035! This new area actually used to be a courtyard in the Parliament Buildings area. A glass roof was installed over the courtyard and the commons seating area has been built to state-of-the-art standards while still respecting the history and architecture of the rest of the Parliament Buildings complex. It was a really interesting tour and free to all. The tour guide was an enthusiastic young Asian woman who made us think about Emily in Paris! If you are visiting Ottawa this is a great place to spend a few hours.

Photo above – the temporary House of Commons.

The wedding was at 5:00 pm at a restaurant in Byward Market – a relaxed and very fun event.

We drove back to Midland on the 27th. The next morning I drove Catherine to Barrie to catch the GO train to Toronto. From there she caught the Via train back to London. She will be there for 10 days to check up on the house, tend the gardens and visit with family and friends. She will return to Midland on August 7th with our friends David and Valerie who will join us for a few days on Belisama’s inaugural voyage on the Trent-Severn Waterway.

Meanwhile, I have to hustle to get a lot of odds and ends completed before they arrive. Tops on my list of “to do” jobs include: finish installation of aft cabin head, set up BBQ box on aft deck, convert small clothes closed in main cabin into another pantry, and fix some leaky fresh water plumbing in the engine compartment. I think that work will be enough to keep me busy and out of trouble while Catherine is gone!

Cheers!