We take a short trip from Half Moon Bay to Waupoos, check out the cidery, meet an old friend and learn something important about our transmission.

We started out in Half Moon Bay and spent the morning swimming around the boat. This was our first anchor and I was curious how the anchor worked. So I used my snorkeling gear to go down and check it out. Our anchor didn’t work. The chain was all nicely curled around the anchor and hooked under a rock. It was the rock that kept us from going anywhere, the anchor never moved or had a chance to dig in at all. Next time I will back up a bit more to drag out the chain and set the anchor better!

Short trip

After spending the entire day on the boat the day before we were happy to only have a short 45 minute trip to Waupoos Marina. I gave them a call on channel 68 and they assigned us a slip.

Student meets his teacher

Entrance into Waupoos is interesting, they use a floating tire breakwall that is difficult to see until you are close. There’s an opening to the south side, just be careful because the red and green buoys don’t really mark the end of the tire reef. So give them lots of room.

We headed to the right and started in, trying to find our slip and realized we needed to back up and go to a different spot. As I look up I see a boat I recognize. A CS36 Traditional with the name “Soujourn”. It belongs to our very first sailing instructor, Rob MacLeod. He is an encyclopedia of information and spends most of his time educating people on how to sail. He runs his own website, blog and provides online instructional videos. You can find them at informedboater.com.

And then I see him. Rob is standing on the end of the dock looking at us and pointing. I was drifting toward a buoy marking a spot where one of the dock fingers were removed. I panic. I find it hard enough when I have a stranger watching me trying to maneuver the boat, and now this was my teacher who would be judging my every move. He would want to ensure I was paying attention during our classes together. Fortunately, I pulled it together and spun the boat around and headed toward our correct slip. We pulled in, with plenty of room to let the wind blow us to the dock, I put the engine in neutral and waited as we slowly coasted in and Rob caught the lines and then greeted us. Later, he was kind and gracious enough to say I did a good job. Phew!

Here’s our boat close to Sojourn, this boat is famous! You will see it in Rob’s videos. Also met a nice family in their Hunter, Engineered Escape.

The Waupoos marina is in a great location. The facilities are a bit dated and spread out amongst various buildings scattered throughout the property. They do have an excellent eating area with BBQs and a small stage. I’m guessing there’s some pretty good parties there.

Looks like they also have a decent sailing school, we saw these boats getting ready to go out in the morning.

Stretching the legs

We decided to explore the winery and cidery in the area. We knew it was a 30-40 minute walk but we wanted to stretch the legs, plus it was a beautiful day.

We passed the Cressy Mustard Co. It looked interesting, but we were set on visiting the cidery.

We also walked past the winery, although we did hear the food is declicious.

We continued on for another five minutes and then headed up the final hill to The Country Cider Company.

Definitely a fair weather place, not much seating inside. The outside patio is beautiful.

I’m not a huge cider fan, but it was interesting to try the various types. In the end, we landed on the traditional favourite, Waupoos Premium. We were starving and ordered the huge burgers.

Kids finished theirs in record time. After trying every type of cider, we picked up eight Waupoos Premium bottles and walked home.

Visit with Rob

Rob stopped by the boat that night and we chatted for a while. Again, he’s a walking sailing encyclopedia! As he’s checking out our boat, he’s telling us about the history, identified the major parts and provided advice on how to maintain them, who to contact if it fails, etc. I should have just turned on a voice recorder or pulled out a piece of paper to take notes. I’m sure I only retained about five percent of what he said.

However, later on there is one thing I will never forget. I asked the innocent question about what fluids Rob keeps on his boat and he mentioned the ones I expected. Diesel engine oil, coolant, … and then he mentions transmission fluid. I honestly never thought about it, and apparently very few people do because everyone I tell this to immediately checks their own boat. Which is exactly what I did after our conversation.

Checking the transmission fluid

The transmission is at the back of the motor (Universal M4-30) on the CS34 (not a v-drive) and there’s a bolt burried under a few pipes with just enough room to squeeze a wrench in and be able to do 1/8th of a twist each time. After what felt like 10 minutes I had the bolt out. Attached to the bolt is the dipstick with an indented ring towards bottom. You should see the transmission fluid filling that indented ring.

Mine was completely dry! Rob was gracious enough to give me a container of automatic transmission fluid. Even though Rob is an encyclopedia I was skeptical and double checked the manual.

I shouldn’t have doubted the encyclopedia. Although the manual is confusing, There is ATF Type A fluid, but not sure what they refer to as, Type AFT. “A”.  Guessing it’s a typo. I looked up GM-DEXRON II and it is a GM brand of automatic transmission oil.

Rob also provided me with a really smart device… a refillable ketchup container. This worked beautifully to squeeze into the tight engine compartment and get the fluid right where it should go rather than all over the place, which is my usual trick.

The next day when we started up the engine, it felt smoother. Not sure how much this was psychological, but I’m glad there’s fluid in there now!