How we Bagged a Strange Boat

December 2001 - January 2002

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Neil Frazer

Mark was standing by the window of the cabin looking glum. "Relax," I said. "We're in BC now, not Alaska. We might get beat up, but we won't be shot. Come and finish your soup."

"You think? So far they've unloaded two rifles and a shotgun."

I looked out the window. On the beach was a rapidly growing pile of gear that included three large coolers, the kind that hold lots of fish after a good day of longlining. The coolers clinked audibly when carried. Several piratical-looking guys were busy unloading more gear from a large fiberglass boat. All of them had beers in their hands.

I left the cabin and went down to the beach. Nobody spoke to me, but a guy named Tim appeared to be the leader. On his face was one of those evil looking little beards that take a lot of complicated shaving. "Nice to meet you," I said.

"You say that now," he replied, sans smile, and tossed another twelve-pack to his companions on shore, narrowly missing my head.

Serves me right, I thought. I'd known the risks: Friday night, a well-known cabin, close to town. But Mark loved cabins-all kids do-and I was tired of putting up the tarp by myself. It would soon be dark, and finding another place to camp would not be fun.

None of the pirates on the beach were talking to me, so I went back into the cabin and stoked the fire. "It'll be a long night," I cautioned Mark, "but an interesting one." Truth to tell, the pirates didn't look more dangerous than the habitués of the the old pool hall in Courtenay where I had festered in my youth. I'd kept my teeth in those days by keeping my mouth shut. Keeping my mouth shut might still work, and it was easier than moving camp in the dark.

Pirates Tim and Kelly came into the cabin. Kelly's exposure suit had once been rescue yellow, but its present colour was more like goat vomit, and his hair would have reminded me of a dead rock star-if rock stars carried shotguns. He also stank, a remarkable achievement considering the competition from Mark and me.

"Are you a friend of Stan's?" said Pirate Tim.

"Yes, I am." This was a stretch. I'd come by this cabin once when Stan was home, and he'd given me coffee. Or rather, he'd given Pauline coffee. Stan might have noticed I was with Pauline-he was over sixty and he'd struck me as a pretty observant guy.

"Stan and me work together. We reserved this cabin with Stan for the weekend."

"Would you like us to leave now?"

"Naw, there's plenty of room. But we're going to party."

I'd never have guessed, I thought, keeping my mouth carefully zipped. However, there was reason for optimism. Serious Tim, the clean-cut kayaker, was camped a hundred meters east of the cabin along the channel. He'd wandered in earlier (long before the pirates had arrived in their big Boston Whaler) looking as though he'd escaped from the pages of Gentleman's Quarterly. When I'd invited Serious Tim to join us in the cabin he'd gotten a strange look on his face and said that a larger group would be along soon. Now I knew why he'd chosen to camp by himself.

Serious Tim taught school in Calgary, he'd admitted, though he came from Nova Scotia. No doubt the Calgary Catholic School system still recruits its teachers from Nova Scotia-they grow 'em up straight and tall in Nova Scotia. Serious Tim would be a moderating influence. He was probably a moderating influence everywhere he went.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Through the window I could see that a black bear had appeared on the other side of the channel, and one of the pirates was celebrating its arrival with a shotgun. This did not strike me as odd, perhaps because by then I'd had several beers myself. In fact, I'd entered that strange state of consciousness which in my youth had often led to episodes of pulling stumps with Buicks. Through the cabin window I could see that Pirate Tim was now showing Mark how to operate a rifle. There wasn't much light left, so I went outside in order to ensure I was on the right side of the business end of the rifle.

Pirate Tim had hung a big old plastic netfloat from the branch of a tree overhanging the beach. The float was black, so you couldn't see the bullet holes, but what the hell, this was recreational shooting. After Mark's lesson I took a turn myself. The float moved a little when I fired, but it might just have been the wind from the five shots per second. Another pirate took a turn, aiming not-to-carefully at the sky. I hoped there were no boats headed home in West Narrows.

See-Gay, the pirates' dog, an enthusiastic Lab, was in the middle of the channel attempting to retrieve an anchor buoy. He'd been trying to retrieve it for about an hour. I cheered him on for some time-I'd spent much of my life doing similar things-but it didn't seem to help. There were still no Buicks in sight, so I went to look for another beer.

Around midnight the party was in full swing. One of the pirates shouted: "Shotgun time!" and distributed more beers. A serious ceremony seemed imminent. Would it involve guns? (I was still hoping for a '57 Roadmaster-there were some great stumps behind the cabin.)

With solemn dignity Pirate Tim slit the side of a beer with his knife, then held the opening to his mouth and popped the top. The whole can emptied instantly down his throat. At this, Serious Tim looked even more serious and left to go to bed. Several shotguns later, Serious Tim was back. "What's the matter," asked a pirate, to general laughter, "Is your tent full of holes?" Serious Tim-I want to give him full credit here-never cracked a smile. "No, but my kayak is," he replied. Several pirates fell off their chairs.

When the hooting stopped I learned that the kayak did not actually belong to Serious Tim. Serious Tim had borrowed the kayak from his friend Doug. Doug, it transpired, was a room-mate of Pirate Tim, and Doug had just left on a long vacation leaving Pirate Tim to clean up their shared abode. Doug was decidedly unpopular at the moment, and the fact that his kayak was now full of holes seemed very appropriate -if you left Serious Tim out of the equation. There was general agreement on this logic, and a call for more shotguns.

Eventually, to celebrate the demise of Doug's kayak, one of the pirates opened a bottle of something I'd never tasted before. The bottle was purple and its contents smelled like flowers. This reminded me of Pauline; in fact everything reminded me of Pauline. What's the use of marrying women if they're never around when you want them, I thought, as I fell to the floor by the wall. I make it a point to always fall asleep with important questions like this.

In the morning Serious Tim was back, looking like he'd lain awake all night. The pirates were eating huge plates of eggs and bacon, but they readily agreed to fix his kayak right after breakfast.

"Red Green, Red Green" we muttered (after the TV fix-it guy whose only tool is duct tape), trouping down the beach to look at Doug's dead kayak. The bullets had made clean entry holes in the polyethylene hull, but the exit holes were long and jagged. Was this the kind of polyethylene that could be welded? I couldn't remember. Although I'd owned two kayaks just like Tim's, my kayaks had never been shot.

Boat Camping Haida Gwaii Harbour Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1-55017-256-5, softcover, B&W images, 174pp. $29.95 Cdn

After appropriately solemn deliberation -this was a safefy issue, after all-Pirate Tim swabbed the bullet holes with alcohol and Kelly cut pieces of foam from an old fishing float and stuffed them into the holes. I sliced pieces of duct tape from the roll I carry everywhere, and Pirate Tim applied them to Doug's kayak with surprising skill. Pirate Tim, it emerged, was a registered nurse when sober-a handy thing.

Though the bullet holes were big, we were confident. Our confidence may have had a lot to do with the fact that Doug's dead kayak was the colour of duct tape, so the size of the holes was no longer obvious. Furthermore, we'd all seen Red Green lash city buses together.

"Don't worry," we assured Serious Tim. "You'll get back to town just fine." Serious Tim didn't look assured-I guess he'd missed that episode with the buses-but in the end he allowed himself to be persuaded to continue his voyage to Chaatl Village and the totem pole that he'd come all the way from Calgary to see. This was pretty brave, I thought, for Serious Tim was clearly not an expert kayaker, and Buck Channel has a distinctly outsidey feel to it. St. Gregory's School would have cheered to see him paddle away.

Soon after all this, the pirates roared off in their boat to set longlines. I swept the cabin and stoked the fire to dry clothes. Sometime after noon, Mark and I made our early start, and late that afternoon we passed Serious Tim in his Red Green and gray kayak. Serious Tim was very close to shore and just a few klicks from his goal. When we waved wildly to say hello he didn't return the greeting, but he might have been too far away to see us. His kayak was floating high in the water, I noted with some relief. Tupperware is hard to kill.




© Neil Frazer grew up in Courtenay, BC and now teaches geography in Hawaii. Neil Frazer's book Boat Camping Haida Gwaii is an excellent guide to camping along the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, homeland of the Haida people. The book is written for kayakers and other small vessel operators. Frazer offers fascinating information and detailed maps of the most interesting areas, based on four summers of research. Included are anecdotes about the people, history and wildlife of the islands. It comes with a handy coil binding and useful appendices. Highly recommended.