First Full Assessment: The Good, The Bad, and the Bilge | Captain’s Log #2

Sunday, 4 January 2026 — Port Whitby Marina, Whitby, Ontario
Wind: W 8 knots. Air temp: −11 °C. Windchill: −18 °C. Lake Ontario: calm inside the basin, ice forming on inner dock fingers.

Happy New Year. We spent it on a boat in −11 °C weather taking things apart.

Port Whitby Marina in January is a different world from the summer version. The fairways are nearly empty — a few hardy live-aboards, a handful of boats like ours on winter dock. Persistence was right where we left her. Which, given that she’s a boat, is perhaps not a surprise, but there’s still something satisfying about arriving at the marina and seeing her sitting quietly in her slip, fenders out, lines holding, not obviously sinking.

Max’s Report

The impeller was gone. The raw water pump seal is on order from a Yanmar dealer in Scarborough. The throttle cable situation turned out to be less creative than feared — someone had replaced the original Morse cable with an automotive equivalent and improvised the termination, which Max says is “wrong but not dangerous.” The fuel injector thing? Previous owner had attempted to advance the timing themselves. Max’s assessment: “We’re going to retime it. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I worried about it. Max retimed it. It is now fine.

The Cabin

The main saloon upholstery is a sort of dusty burgundy that belongs aesthetically in 1987. The galley has a two-burner Force 10 stove with a broken oven latch. The head compartment — I’ll say this once and move on — is functional but has not received loving attention for some time.

The teak table in the saloon is beautiful. Genuinely, properly beautiful — original, oiled, not a single crack or split. I sat at it for a moment and felt better.

What −11 °C Feels Like on a Boat

A boat in a marina in January in Ontario is colder than a normal room, and the cold is wetter, and it comes up from the floor. Max had a portable propane heater running and it raised the temperature to approximately “endurable.” At 2 PM the sun came out briefly — grey to white rather than grey to blue — and the marina looked genuinely beautiful. A merlin was hunting along the breakwater. The whole thing had that quality of extreme cold: the air very clear and very still.

Persistence looked good in it. She looked like she belonged there.

— Captain Sam | SBM Offshore Adventures