Kimler Adventure Pages (http://randsco.com)

Sweltering

North Cedar, B.C. - Summertime is here! Today, temperatures hovered above 34°C (93°F), for the first time all year. If it weren't for ocean breezes, we'd be doggone hot.

"It's a pretty high humidity heat too," said Rachel, fanning herself, "and when you're in a house without air conditioning, you feel it!"

Randsco Rag staff are counting their lucky stars that the facility is situated in the the tall pines, as the shade keeps thing a few degrees cooler than if it were in the bright sunshine.

"It's going to be a hot practice tonight," said Scott, referring to his Tuesday night firefighting practices at the North Cedar Fire Department. "We'll all be sweltering in our turnouts!"

Coincidentally, yesterday marked the first day that the fire danger class rating moved from "Moderate" to "High", for the Cedar region. (Fire danger ratings are set by the B.C. Forest Service and can be seen here).

Preliminary WCT Journal

Yellow Point - Scott and Rachel's West Coast Trail journal is currently being worked on.

"There's just so much to do," said Rachel, "That we haven't had time to get it all finished yet."

If you're eager to read about their trip, some of the raw journal logs will be (temporarily) available in raw text format.

Below are links to the days that have been transcribed and spell-checked:

• Day 1 - Map
• Day 2 - Map
• Day 3 - Map
• Day 4 - Map
• Day 5 - Map
• Day 6 - Map

Randsco editor-in chief, Scott Kimler, said, "Hopefully, we'll get the last couple of days hammered out soon. We'll post the links to the raw text, as it's available. Ultimately, we'll add photos, do some fact-checking, a bit of word-smithing and we'll have a complete online journal."

Pugwis Loses Weight

Hutton House, Yellow Point - Randsco staff, while re-wiring the boat trailer that hauls the shrimping skiff "Pugwis", made a shocking discovery. The welded aluminum, double-hulled boat is filled with fresh water!

Having water in a boat may seem ordinary, but this is water where water shouldn't be - inside the sealed baffles that are supposed to be filled with air.

The discovery was accidentally made when Scott bumped up against the boat and a "sloshing" sound was heard.

"I don't know a ton about boats," he said, "but I knew something wasn't right."

After consulting with local boating authorities (our neighbor, Charlie, used to be a commercial fisherman), we realized that we had to find a way to drain the water.

"Fortunately, we found two existing, stainless steel plugs on the decking of the boat," reported Scott, "Obviously, the previous owners had experienced a similar problem."

After drilling out the plugs (efforts to unscrew them were unsuccessful and only managed to strip the hex-holes), they stuck a thin plastic hose into the holes and siphoned water into 5 gallon buckets.

"We drained somewhere between 8 and 9 5-gallon pails of water, from inside the hull!" exclaimed Scott.

At eight pounds to the gallon, that translates to roughly 336 pounds of water!!

"That's like hauling two other people around!" Scott said.

The water, though brackish, was fresh and not salty, which indicates that the leak is topside and not under the boat.

"Whew!" said Alex, eager to help with the boat repairs.

Now that the water is out and the boat much lighter, it no longer sloshes. The holes still need to be reamed out, re-tapped and fitted with slightly larger stainless plugs.

"This time, we'll condition the threads with a product like thread-eze, which will ensure that IF we need to siphon the hull again, we'll be able to back out the bolts," said Scott.