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Leak Test

Thanksgiving Monday Jenny & Jayar (my daughter & son-in-law) came over to help me move Molly Kool, Puddle Duck #904, home so Sarah could have her space back for her own use. They have a trailer big enough to hold her: I hadn't yet found the rough sawn 2x8 I need to raise my tiny trailer's platform above the wheels. Also, they were lending it to me to haul mushroom compost for my garden. It was a glorious fall day with wine-clear air and water warm enough to wade in. If there wasn't such a chilling wind, I might have had a quick swim.... (Even I have some sense!)

On the way over the causeway between Annapolis Royal and Granville Ferry we stopped to launch her for leak testing. Jayar brought a can of ginger ale, Canada Dry, of course; "The champagne of ginger ales" and christened her Molly Kool (with the Dutch pronunciation (like Kohl or Cole) because Molly Kool's father came from Holland to NB. She was the first woman to earn her captain's papers in North American, requiring a change in pronouns in the Canadian regulations long before gender-neutral language was instituted. Her boat, a coastwise sailing freighter, was a rectangular barge with the mast stepped in one corner. In order to have space enough to lie down and sleep under the shelter of my cuddy, I also shall step my mast in the corner. I'll also want it more open to sit in its shade and sketch on my Grand Cruise.

Good thing: found slight seepage along a bit of the outer starboard side, about a foot forward of the stern transome. It helped to have Jayar weighting down the stern so the whole bottom went under water, as well as our crowding forward to get the whole bow transome edge under water. Easy to deal with before putting on her decks and cuddy roof! Here I am looking down into the air boxes while Jayar is keeping us off shore. There was a very brisk wind and the tether wasn't enough to hold her out there. I'm thinking I'll make a handkerchief of a storm sail as well as one for light winds as the wind barrels up this river much of the time. This is the same place I shall launch her from when she is finished in the spring and in the summer embark on my Grand Cruise up the Annapolis River to Paradise - because, as someone I was chatting with at the Tourism Visitors Centre said, "I really think you should change your destination; 'Sailing to Paradise' sounds ever so much better than 'sailing to Bridgetown'", the town I'd originally set as my destination. So I shall make a Dutch-style mast that pivots down like a flagpole so I can row under the two bridges in Bridgetown and sail up to the bridge across the river in Paradise, even under that one, if I feel like it.

The 4 or 5 rectangular white dots starting above and between our heads and continuing to the left just below the white streak in the water are the warning buoys to keep outside of them lest one get sucked down through the sluice of hydro power plant. The white strip is the above-water-level stream of foam roiling up through the causeway dam to power the electric generators, which it does coming and going, 90 feet below the surface of the road over the causeway. It comes in with such force that it stands about a foot above water level, gradually slowing down and collapsing to the level. Needless to say, I planned this test on a rising tide, as I will all departures from here. A friend's boat went through it, without him, and some time after that NS Power decided they'd better mark the danger area with something more than that white rectangle near the right end of the white stripe where it disappears behind the bank of the sluice entrance.

So that's the current news of Moly Kool's construction.

Warmly,
Helen