After three long years its time to bring back the Raccoon Mask. You may be wondering, "what has Erik been up to all this time ?", or rather, "has anybody been keeping an eye on what Eriks been up to all this time ?", well funny you should ask, because to my knowledge, the only people monitoring my activities these days seem to be the good folks from the Vancouver Police Department Marine Division. Were on a first name basis. Without getting myself worked up about the details, suffice it to say that they frown upon people leaving their sailboats anchored indefinitely in false creek. Well, quite unintentionally, we tried the novel approach of storing our sailboat UNDER false creek (above photo, our boat is the wooden mast in the front/ that's our friend Drew's trimaran behind it) . In the nautical world we call that sinking, and more specifically, a ship can founder, break apart, be scuttled, or as was our case silently slip beneath the waves of an incoming tide after drifting aground on the rocks. Needless to say, the police found our mooring approach neither innovative nor practical, and they requested us to please get our boat out of there. I think they may have been even more surprised than me to see the boat back at the surface, but impressed I think they weren't, because they promptly impounded her. Now the term "unseaworthy" is subjective in my opinion, and always seems to carry a scathing bite when delivered by those in a position of authority, but seeing as how I was able to promptly intercept the pirates, er police, at the dock in vanier park, (thanks for the tip off drew), I guess they decided she was seaworthy enough, and agreed to relinquish the vessel to me on the condition that I move her immediately, and store her at the surface of the sea from thence forth.
In the log book it reads, "what happened next is just too sad to tell".
These are the last photos we have of her out at Jericho Beach. As described above, she sank on January 17, 2010, in False Creek. Naomi and I worked around the clock, bridled her up, and winched her out using a come-along chained to the sea wall. Our friend Simon helped me lasso the mast, we heeled her over and patched her up using bondo. The police took her into custody, and when I got her back George towed her out to Jericho. During the windstorm on Easter she was blown up against the breakwater of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, and smashed into a million colorful little pieces. She was a Thunderbird Sloop, hull number 301, which made her 49 years old at the time of her demise. We found out her original name was "Teqila", to us she was the "Ghetto Fabulous". Rest in peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment