SV Kiviuq

A journal of the sailing vessel Kiviuq and her owners Marilou Kosseim and Alan Teale

Vessel Name: Kiviuq
Vessel Make/Model: Van de Stadt Madeira 46
Hailing Port: Inverness
Crew: Marilou Kosseim and Alan Teale
About: Marilou is a Canadian national, retired physician and Consultant Obstetrician/Gynaecologist. Alan is a British national, retired veterinary surgeon and animal molecular geneticist. Both are currently UK-based and members of the Ocean Cruising Club.
Extra:
Kiviuq is a van de Stadt Madeira 46 in alloy, with round bilge and deeper draft options. The 46 is the scoop stern variant of the van de Stadt Madeira 44, the scoop being developed by the builder, Alexander Beisterveld of Beisterveld Jachtbouw in Steenwijk, Netherlands. Kiviuq is rigged as a [...]
13 September 2019 | Shining Waters Marine, Tantallon, Nova Scotia
05 September 2019 | St Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia
22 August 2019 | Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia
13 August 2019 | LaHave Islands, Nova Scotia
04 August 2019 | Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
28 July 2019 | Head Harbour, Campobello, New Brunswick
11 July 2019 | Belfast, Maine
07 July 2019 | Belfast, Maine
06 July 2019 | Belfast, Maine
13 June 2019 | Belfast, Maine
01 June 2019 | Burnside Lodge
15 September 2018 | Belfast, Maine, Nova Scotia
30 August 2018 | St Peters, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
18 August 2018 | Bay La Hune, Newfoundland
10 August 2018 | Isle aux Morts, Newfoundland
04 August 2018 | Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
30 July 2018 | St Peters, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
26 July 2018 | Spanish Ship Bay, Eastern Shore, Nova Scotia
14 July 2018 | Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia
06 July 2018 | Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
Recent Blog Posts
13 September 2019 | Shining Waters Marine, Tantallon, Nova Scotia

Dorian and the aftermath

We rode out Hurricane Dorian at anchor in Schooner Cove together with four other foreign boats that came in for the same purpose. All the boats rode safely to their best bower anchors, I suspect on long chain scopes of 10:1 or more. We certainly did. It seems that the latest consensus among the cruising [...]

05 September 2019 | St Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia

Waiting for Dorian

It was going to happen sooner or later. A hurricane is heading our way. After devastating the Abacos and Bahamas and brushing Florida, Dorian is now close E of the coast of the Carolinas, and the current forecast is that it will go right over Nova Scotia on Saturday/Sunday moving quickly in a NNE'ly [...]

22 August 2019 | Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia

Downward and upward

I realise there is quite a lot of catching up to do since my last post, which left us in Grand Manan, so apologies if this becomes something of a travelogue.

13 August 2019 | LaHave Islands, Nova Scotia

Boarded!

After St Andrews it was time to begin making our way across the Bay of Fundy towards Nova Scotia. This we decided to do in two stages. The first involved retracing our wake across Passamaquoddy Bay and around the southern end of Deer Island, then up Head Harbour Passage to the northern tip of Campobello [...]

04 August 2019 | Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

Things that go bump in the night.

From Campobello we sailed southabout Deer Island, an area renowned for its cetacean populations (and thus also populated with whale-watching boats), into Passamaquody Bay and up to St Andrews. Here we picked up a mooring just 150m or so off Market Wharf, the large and well-appointed town wharf.

28 July 2019 | Head Harbour, Campobello, New Brunswick

Going Downeast

We left Belfast just over a week ago on Saturday 20th July to sail down Penobscot Bay with the intention of spending a night at anchor in Seal Bay, Vinalhaven. Seal Bay is beautiful, well protected and not that far from the popular yachting centres of Camden and Rockland. Perhaps for this reason it was [...]

In the pink

27 October 2017 | Yankee Clipper, Belfast, Maine
Alan
So that's it. Kiviuq is winterised. We left her a few hours ago on the hard-standing at the Front Street Shipyard and in the care of JB Turner and his workforce. The last we saw of her was in the soft autumn sunshine as we looked back over Belfast from the footbridge over the Passagassawakeag River. This was the culmination of many days of quite demanding work, and we felt we were justified in taking satisfaction from a job well done.

Boats winter here in one of four ways; inside heated sheds, inside non-heated sheds, outside on 'the hard', and a few boats winter in the water if the location permits. To winter inside the mast must be removed from a sailing vessel, which is something we try to avoid. To winter on the water, which is possible in Belfast, the boat ideally needs to have almost constant attention in the expected conditions, and if possible someone living on board. So for us the hard-standing was the best option. And for boats wintering like this there is the further option to be shrink-wrapped. Kiviuq will be shrink- wrapped in the near future. Wrapping is not essential, especially for an alloy vessel, but it should help to keep the boat clean and it will certainly improve life for the running rigging.

But what is involved in winterising for outdoor storage here? The first thing to realise is that much of it is driven by the need to protect from low temperatures, and to some extent from strong winds and heavy snowfall. So the first thing is to find anything on board that could freeze and burst its container, and get it off the boat. Fortunately Black Label and Bombay Sapphire are not a problem. Expensive paints, waxes and polishes are also best off the boat. In our case some good friends from North Carolina, who were our neighbours on the dock during the summer, kindly offered to store a box of such items on their boat which is wintering in a heated shed.

Then, before the boat is lifted out of the water, the fresh water tanks are emptied as much as possible and liberal quantities of a non-toxic propylene glycol mixture are poured into the deck fills. This mixture comes in a rather fetching shade of pink. The freshwater system is then de-pressurised, the calorifier (water heater) is by-passed and drained, the water pump is turned on and the taps and shower head opened until 'the pink' is flowing out of everything.

The next task is to drain everywhere that water can lie or collect as much as possible and replace lying water with pink anti-freeze. Such places in Kiviuq are the bilge, the shower sump and the bottom of the chain locker. Then finally, with plenty of pink now in the grey water tank from the tap runs, it is pumped out and more pink added for good measure.

This whole process is more complicated on many other boats that have water-makers, air-conditioners, flushing toilets and generators, none of which grace Kiviuq; for which, and for once, we are truly grateful.

Lastly, as far as anti-freezing is concerned, the pink is run through the engine raw water system after hauling out.

By way of an aside, there is an alternative to the pink propylene glycol mixture for anti-freezing; namely cheap vodka. And indeed we heard that several cases of vodka arrived at the yard for another boat while we were working on Kiviuq. Proponents of this method allege that it tastes better than 'the pink' in the early days after recommissioning following the winter. I imagine if one likes vodka it probably does.

But anti-freezing isn't everything of course. The sails are removed and sent for washing and valeting, our liferaft was taken off for servicing, the outboard engine was taken off for servicing and winter storage inside, and the engine start batteries were removed for observation and occasional charging over the winter. The large domestic batteries are different beasts, with very low self-discharge rates, that are expected to do well over the winter with input from the wind turbine.

And finally, arrangements were made for some repair and maintenance work to be done in our absence. This includes a repair to the jib furler foil, fitting of a new radome mount and a new mast boot.

All in all we leave Belfast tomorrow feeling that we have done our best for Kiviuq. She has been our home for much of the past sixteen months and has shared our sailing adventures as the three of us have made our way from Kip on the Clyde Estuary in Scotland to Belfast, Maine in the USA via Ireland, the Madeiras, the Canaries, the eastern Caribbean and Bermuda. We look forward to joining her again in May next year.
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Kiviuq's Photos - Main
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About & Links

IMPORTANT NOTE: In Map &Tracking above you can see where Kiviuq was located when we last reported a position to the blog. But please be aware that position reporting sometimes goes down. This can be due to a technical problem on board, to a problem with the satellite system or to a problem with the blog site. Therefore...... PLEASE NOTE THAT IN THE EVENT THERE IS NO POSITION REPORTING THIS SHOULD NOT ON ITS OWN BE TAKEN AS AN INDICATION THAT KIVIUQ AND/OR HER CREW ARE IN DIFFICULTIES. Technical/electrical problems are by no means rare at sea in relatively small vessels.