Chronicles of a Sailor - Steve Weeres and Rebekah Becky Donszelmann

Chronicles of a Sailor

This is a true story of bravery, compassion and panache.  This story is dedicated to the crew of the eventful voyage from Salt Spring Island to Mexico.

My name is Steve Weeres and I bought a plastic rowboat when I lived in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island.  My intent was to row around the inlet to Brentwood Bay from my home each day for a coffee, so I could whip my poor, misused body into shape.  I made it there on a beautiful sunny day, with no wind and promptly abandoned the boat.  It was more challenge than I expected.

My wife had a bit loftier plans than me though, and bought a 35 ton, 52' motorsailer, when she sold her hotel on Vancouver Island.  I was more or less elected Captain of the vessel, a responsibility I later found out I didn't want.  Nonetheless, as Captain I assumed the duties of boat maintenance, staffing, operations and piloting.  Now I don't know where she got the idea that I would want something bigger, but here it was.

Now I will admit that this thing scared me.  Someone told me once that sailing was 90% boredom and 10% sheer terror.  This vessel was the opposite, 90% sheer terror and 10% boredom.  In fact, in all the sailing we did, I don't remember a time when my heart rate didn't triple.

But the boat purchase made sense.  Our business dealings, with the exception of two locations, were all on the ocean.  We were spending considerable amounts of money on hotel, meals, travel, and on top of that we were forever packing and unpacking.  Our new strategy included docking at the location and spending ten days and then moving onto the next location.  It would give us the time to build the relationships, develop the systems and then move to the next location.  In addition, it eliminated the need to have a home, as the vessel had three staterooms, two heads, (bathrooms for you landlubbers), and a large salon and galley, (landlubbers read kitchen).

And I will also admit I have my own style.  The first thing I wanted to know was the ship's systems worked.  I had no clue about the plumbing, electrical, heating, navigation, and other equipment worked.  The only place I felt comfortable was in the engine room, as I have an Interprovincial Journeyman's Mechanic Certificate.  It took me only a few hours to catch on to that part.

I was unhappy with the vessel's navigation equipment and immediately replaced all of the components.  And well I was at it, I added an autopilot.  I could actually control the entire ship from the deck on a lounge chair.  Sweet!

The next thing I felt needed to be done was to "polish" the tanks.  That's a fancy term for get the dead bugs out of the fuel system.  That's right, bugs live in diesel fuel.  The fuel tanks held sixteen hundred gallons of fuel so it was a formidable task.  Although I had the people doing the work do it twice, we found out later that they did not do it properly.  We paid a pretty big price for that right around the Isle De Guadalupe in Mexico, but I am getting ahead of myself.

We docked the boat in the inner harbor in Victoria, B.C. Where we had the most fantastic view of the Empress Hotel, (I would like to own that hotel some day I think) and the parliament buildings.  We spent Christmas and New Years there and met some wonderful people.  I still hand't taken the boat out, and didn't even know at that point how to tie it to a dock.

So we hired a real Captain and he proceeded to give us lessons.  Our first day out, our first terror.  The Captain had known there was a nasty weather front coming in, but thought we had time for an hour of lessons, so off we went.  We cleared the inner harbor when trouble began.  The waves began to swell to what I thought at the time were the biggest waves I would ever experience.  Fifteen feet high!  So we plowed straight into the waves and suddenly the starboard engine quit.  While I was still trying to solve that mystery, the port engine quit and we were like a duck in the water.

Our instructor meanwhile had decided on his own course of action, he wanted to get the mizzen, (landlubbers - front) sail up.  Rebekah Donszelmann, my wife was at the helm, (steering) and I was trying to help the instructor get that sail up.  I might as well have been eating beans, because I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  When my poor instructor realized that, he yelled to me to get the engines going.  I turned to the port side and saw that we were getting dangerously close to the rocks.  Great.  A $400,000 boat and we were going to sink her on our maiden voyage.

I wasn't very comfortable not staying on top to help, (or jump off?) but I headed to the crawl space that I would one day realize I would spend a lot of hours in.  The engine room had steel grate on the floor so my knees quickly turned to hamburger as I tried to bleed the fuel tanks of the air that I suspected had been left in by the fuel tank polishing.  After a few minutes I yelled up to Rebekah to try to start the engines and they both started!  Success!  The crisis was diverted!

Sigh, I should have stayed in the engine room.  When I got back on deck I could see there were more problems to face.  The instructor had lost control of the sail, and there was an RCMP boat yelling at me if we needed assistance and the instructor yelling at me to winch in the line that was attached to the sail.  The seas were too rough to stand, and I did not have a lifeline attached, my knees were bleeding so I was forced to sit.  There was a barstool continuously sliding across the deck and whacking me in the face.

I told the RCMP that we were ok.  It turns out that someone had put in a call for help, and it wasn't us.  I was glad they were able to leave us quickly and help the other distressed boat.

The barstool kept hitting me in the face, so I threw it overboard.  We reeled in the sail and headed back to the dock.  I thought I had seen the worst, all I can do is laugh at that assumption now.

NEXT:  Voyages in the Gulf Islands with Steve Weeres and Rebekah Donszelmann