We thought we had the True Love totally ready to go. All systems go. Our original plan was to leave in early June, but we were delayed by weather and helping my sister Rachel move to Wenatchee for a new job in her field of Addiction Counseling. Rachel has been earning a college degree in the subject over the past several years and now is working in her new career even before she graduates! We are so proud of her! It also gave us the opportunity for lots of Grandchild sports time.

On June 10th we left the dock. The weather forecast and tides looked good for a long cruise all the way to Canada. Normally, we cruise north slowly on literally our “bread run”, stopping for fresh bread at the bakery in Port Townsend, then clearing customs in Montague Harbour, followed by a stop at the Farmers Market at Salt Spring Island, where we get produce, goat cheese and of course more amazing fresh bread for the days ahead.

But this year we wanted to get to all the way to Comox (five hours north of Nanaimo) as soon as possible to pick up a replacement for our damaged tender. Our original 20 year old, 12-foot-long tender with a 40hp outboard engine was having issues last year, but we decided then to wait until 2025 to replace it. But that was before we punctured one of its four inflatable compartments on our first overnight “shakedown” cruise of 2024. We were using the hydraulic lift on the aft swim platform to bring the tender back onto its cradle and the first mate was trying a new procedure that would help shift the weight to port to make that task easier. Unfortunately, the innovation didn’t work, and instead the result was a 4″ gash in one of the inflatable compartments. So we patched it as best as we could with duct tape and layers of “Flex Seal” paint. The patch slowed the leak, but the crucial aft floatation chamber still completely deflated in only 10 minutes, putting the tender at risk of capsizing.

This was only the latest failure of one of our inflatable products in 2024. Earlier this year, we lost two paddle boards to overinflation explosions caused by the hot sun at our condo in Hawaii (another long story). And 2 other older paddle boards on the True Love failed after being stored outside over the winter. The good news is that the new Costco paddle board we bought just before leaving Seattle came with an electric pump that used an electric cigarette lighter plug.

Although the old tender didn’t have a working cigarette lighter plug, we had a jump-start battery that did, so we were able to use that to power the electric pump to put air into our leaking inflatable section faster than it was leaking out! Using that technique, we were able to safely drive the old tender to the boat launch for small boats in Comox, where a small boat trailer was waiting to pull it out of the water and take it to Parker Marine, the local boat dealer. Parker took our old boat and almost new 40hp outboard in trade on a new lighter tender with a smaller and lighter 25hp engine that solved the original problem we had with our underpowered tender lift! Stoic challenge #1 solved!

But back to our journey north. On our first day cruising we made it all the way to Montague in a relatively calm 10 hour cruise. The four hour crossing of the Strait of Juan de Fuca was calm at first but then crazy 2-3 foot confused seas developed. The stabilizer worked for the rolling, but we were dealing with some intense up and down, with some slamming, which caused a problem you will read about soon. It lasted about an hour and then the seas calmed again

Anchored at Montague, we tried to turn on the generator to make dinner but unfortunately, it didn’t work. Oh no!!!! Generator problems again! Stoic challenge #2 had arisen and we hadn’t yet fixed Stoic challenge #1. For those of you who followed us last year, you know this was a big issue for us. First we took a deep breath and used the grill to cook some duck thighs we had bought at Trader Joes (which were delicious!) The grilled duck over salad worked perfectly, but exhausted from our long first day, we went to sleep so that we could face this new stoic challenge tomorrow.

Our second day was an easy four hour cruise north to Nanaimo where we planned to stay two nights, go grocery shopping and eat at our favorite Greek restaurant. We were connected to shore power, but we knew we had to fix the generator or we would be stuck at docks all summer.

The Captain and I went down to the engine room to sleuth-out the generator problem and found that one of the electric leads to the generator’s fuel pump had fallen off and we couldn’t fix it without removing the pump. The good news is that I had videos from our repair with our favorite mechanic Mike “MacGyver” Martin, so I knew how to remove the fuel pump. We removed the necessary bolts, gently pulled it out and put the lead back on. It worked! Unfortunately, it wouldn’t stay on. But, we had Duct Tape! So we taped it on with narrow strips of Duct Tape. That worked beautifully! We’ve since had Mike look at it just in case, he thought we should do something else and Mike blessed our Duct Tape repair and said it should easily last all summer! So stoic challenge #2 was fixed even before stoic challenge #1!

After reading this some of you might be concerned that we don’t have enough duct tape, but no worries, we have two big rolls.

We now have folding electric bikes on board to make getting around easier when we are at a dock. Going up the steep hill above the Nanaimo Marina to eat at our favorite Greek Restaurant is now a breeze. We love them. Our second night in Nanaimo we used our e-bikes to go to an excellent Italian Restaurant near the Greek Restaurant. I’m using a “Lumen” device to gauge my daily metabolism and help me lose some weight by burning carbs more efficiently. It’s working really well for me. I feel better and stronger and have learned that on big exercise days I need to eat more carbs. It helps me exercise harder without aches and pains. Our second day in Nanaimo was a high carb day for me. So I was ready for some pasta and bread. We ordered their garlic cheese bread, which was more like a garlicky, cheesy, pizza with crust that was as thin and light as a croissant. In short, it was heavenly. The rest of the meal was yummy too. This restaurant is now another “must visit” when in Nanaimo.

Although it had been very windy, the weather improved during our 5 hour cruise from Nanaimo to Comox where we swapped our damaged “Caribe” tender for our new lighter “Highfield” tender. Everything happened smoothly thanks to Dan from Parker Marine. Jim and I walked around Comox and enjoyed a yummy pub meal. Our favorite bakery there was sold out of bread when we visited the day we arrived, but the morning we left to head to our summer moorage in Pender Harbour, I got up early to go for a run and procured some lovely, fresh baked multi grain bread which we are still enjoying.

Unfortunately, Stoic Challenge #3 arose while we were on our easy 5 hour cruise from Comox to Pender Harbour (our primary summer moorage) when the generator stopped working again! We just couldn’t believe it! This time the generator turned on (the duct tape repair was still working), but the water pump wasn’t pumping sea water to cool the engine, which meant that the generator would overheat in just a few minutes and turn itself off. This happens sometimes when the seawater thru-hull valve or strainer gets plugged with debris, but that usually happens when we are at anchor, not when we are cruising miles from shore where there is little surface debris. Regardless of the cause, however, we couldn’t do anything about it until we arrived at our moorage at John Henry’s Marina

And so Big Stoic Challenge #3 began. This was our opportunity to spend our time learning everything about our generator and its cooling system. Mike couldn’t come help us for a few days but he was available by text for questions and moral support.

We began by checking to see if the seawater intake or filter was clogged. Nope. That wasn’t it. Plenty of seawater was available to the generator, it just wasn’t circulating.

Next we removed and disassembled the water pump to see if the impeller was damaged – ding, ding, ding!

The impeller was broken into several pieces. After removing the sea pump, procuring and installing a new impeller (thank you Youtube) we with great fanfare turned it on and incredibly, it still didn’t work! No seawater was being expelled with the generator’s exhaust. We took a video to show Mike and he suggested we remove the pump and bring it over to Rick at the Madeira Park Marina. Rick is in high demand, doesn’t really talk to many people, but agreed to help us and check out our pump because we said Mike suggested it. He even came out and talked to Jim, which is highly unusual.

That night we sent a video to Dani’s husband Scotty, who is a real car guy, to ask if he had any suggestions. Of course, he first asked if we installed the impeller the correct way. We did, but we checked it the next day. It isn’t unusual to install it backwards. We asked if we could use fresh water from the dock faucet to test where the blockage was inside the generator. He said yes. And we really appreciated Scotty’s moral support and expert knowledge.

Exhausted, we went to sleep so we would be ready to tackle this new task the next day.

I have all the important manuals for the True Love well organized, but there wasn’t one for the generator. However, thanks to the internet, I was able to download it.

Mike suggested we get a shop vac before pushing fresh water into the generator to see if we could suck out any blockage, rather than trying to push it all the way through the generator and out through the exhaust vent. We borrowed a car from the marina manager, drove about 10 miles to a hardware store and got a cute little shop vac, some better tools and new water hose.

Then we began our investigation of the generator’s cooling system, removing the flexible pipes one by one and looking for the blockage. When we got to the “cooler” (heat exchanger) we used the shop vac but nothing came out. We then ran fresh water through the cooler and the water flowed unimpeded, so the problem, whatever it was, had to be “downstream” from there.

At the end of our second day of generator repairs we were very tired and still stumped. The next pipes we would check included a weird, “upside down V” joint which we later learned was a back-flow preventer to keep seawater from running back into the generator from the exhaust port in heavy seas. I didn’t feel comfortable dealing with that ourselves and Mike said he could come by and help us with it the next morning so, exhausted again, we went to sleep.

Mike arrived about 10am the next morning. He reviewed what we had done so far and gave us a thumbs up. He showed us how to remove the “end cap” from the cooler and clean out the coils inside, but that wasn’t the problem. I then showed him the back flow preventer. He showed us how to take it apart, cleaned it out and we found this . . . a tiny piece of zinc used in the cooler to stop salt water corrosion that had broken off and completely blocked the cooling seawater exhaust at that point . Unbelievable! I’ve saved it and it is on display. Sometimes it’s literally the smallest things that keep something from working properly.

Mike quickly helped us put everything back together properly. He found a few other little things to fix like a bolt that had fallen out of the bottom of the generator’s oil pan that was allowing a small amount of oil to leak. This is when Mike also checked our fuel pump duct tape fix and said it would likely last the summer or longer. So only an hour after Mike arrived all critical boat systems were finally working and we were ready to cruise to our favorite destination in the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia: Princess Louisa Inlet.

Despite all of stoic challenges, we arrived at PLI only one day later than we originally planned!

Our hope was to get into PLI before the July-August “busy” season and we succeeded. The waterfalls are abundantly flowing. Snow fields and glaciers cover the high mountains and during the occasional sunny days, we’ve enjoyed the spectacular scenery, kayaked, floated, gone paddle boarding, done yoga and read.

Our Starlink works here pretty well, so we can stay in touch with family and friends, keep up on some work projects, relax and finally publish the True Love Adventures blog. Ahhhhhhhh. It’s only warm here in the summer but during the summer PLI is our favorite place to be.

Thanks for reading!

The Captain and The First Mate of the True Love