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.
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.
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