It was often my habit on a work day to go fishing at daybreak off the waters of Lotus City. I would start at 5 am and finish before 8 am, change on the boat and go to work. I fished alone at that time of day and there was nothing more pleasant than to troll along side the Discovery Islands at Strongtide Bay on ebb-tide. with the wire lines humming and the trolling bells rhythmically ringing with the gentle tug and swell. Because it was early morning, nature usually called sometime shortly after the setup, and in the cabin on the throne I would rest a bit, watching and listening to the bells through the open cabin door, in repose, with an air of contemplation and expectation.
      The joy I felt on the briny deep in pursuit of the salmon was enhanced by the embrace of Mother Nature who was mine alone at that time of the morning. The world was still asleep! My lines were fishing deep, the depth maintained by planers, that when tripped by a strike prompted the rod's bells to ring urgently. The planers rose to the surface quickly with the fish on, resulting in line slack. The fisherman needed to react with alacrity to get to the rod and tighten the slack so the fish wouldn't throw the hook. In the midst of my meditation on the throne, suddenly the bell on the rod on the starboard side rang stridently. With great speed I hopped off the throne, pants dangling at the ankles; I bounded to retrieve the rod from the rod-holder and began to reel in the line slack to play the fish. I suddenly heard great cheering and looked up to see high fives from a quartet of tourists on the guide boat fishing long side me, starboard. My boat had low freeboard so I wasn't sure if they were cheering my catch or crotch. Thank goodness it was a time before cellphones with cameras or youtube.
         You can't hold your rod and wind up your knuckleduster reel and pull up your pants all at the same time unless you have three hands. Something had to be let go and it wasn't the fish.

e  Our family owned what was one of the more ugly boats on the wet coast. It was a wood planked, 26 and one half foot semi-planing  displacement hull with a smoky diesel engine. It traveled by a propulsion with a single screw and reached a maximum of 7 and a half knots. I bought it for 2 and one half thousand dollars in 1968 and we had it for over 20 years. It was the kind of boat you could hammer a nail in anywhere, to hang any thing you wished to reach, mainly fishing gear. The pianist made curtains and nice mattress covers for the bunk beds and made it homey as best she could, but much of it remained "dressed up ugly". We were very fond of our boat as a family of five and used it constantly so it never let us down. A boat in constant use remains a faithful companion. " If you don't use, it you lose it."
    Every time I went down to the Oak Bay Marina where it lived, to paint it I went fishing instead.  When it needed caulking, I was a fast caulker so he cabin continued to leak, but we had more fishing time. Often I would just go and sit with it and make boat coffee and meditate. In those early days the marina was a particularly heterogenous mixture of the sublime and UBS (ugly but satisfactory) so no one worried over a pecking order.
      We went for a  summer cruise in the Salish sea for a week and the weather became squally. We were caught at sea in the squall and our clothing became wet partly due to our cabin leak. The pianist jury-rigged a clothesline and we hung our clothes out to dry when the sun came out and put into Bedwell, the nearest harbour. Bedwell is aptly named as it is a secluded refuge for over nighters. As we pulled into the harbour we could see nothing but a flotilla of large, white sleek, beautiful boats, with a clutch of glistening people in whites, deck shoes, and big hair, cooking steaks on their Hibachis at wharfside. My 14 year old son said, " Shit, we should get out of here." I;m sure he spoke for all of us but by then we were already committed.
        As I eased our smoking, ugly stinkpot into the moorage the disdain from the boaters seemed palpable. Certainly the pianist's clothesline added to the picture, flags of Salish hillbillies. I did think however we may have been one of the few that owned our own boat and knew how to manage tight corners with a single screw.