It is now the end of May and after 4 weeks of repairs, spit and polish, it is time to leave Steveston. I guess this is the start of our journey as we are now on the hook and will be for an extended time here, 2 weeks for sure. We find that we are very near the condo we normally stay at in downtown Van. Can almost walk there! Guess what we are doing now??? Another install!!! This time it is a twin system chart plotter!!! With the luxury of a pilot house comes the added expense of having everything twinned! We need a 2nd system for the pilot house, not just the outside helm. With a little help from Gord, we manage to get the system installed in goodly fashion and time. I had already run the wires to both stations before Gords arrival so it was a matter of hooking up and making sure everything worked properly! There is always a bit of a glitch when it comes to doing an install of this nature and this occurred by finding a loose wire in the back of the main panel. Gord thought he found the spot where it came from...nope, I found later that my bilge pumps were not working!!! Remembering which wire Gord found, I looked closely, repositioned the connection and viola!! Back to working pumps. The thing I have not mentioned was that I had thought the pump had fried, went and purchased a new one and done the install! Nothing wrong with another spare pump...
The one thing we became while here was an oddity worthy of being photographed! The water taxi's, and there were many, came within 10 feet of us many times during the day so people could take photos! This would not be the last time we were the subject of paparazzi! Now that we have our systems working we are looking at our shake down cruise...a circumnavigation around Vancouver Island! I know the term circumnavigation should be used for a much larger trip but...this will be a trip of somewhere around 800 miles and will take us about a month to complete. As you can tell, we do not do many things quickly!