A short stint in the RCN.

After High School I worked at a cannery for a while, and when that came to an end, I joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1965, where I served as a sonar operator aboard a WW II era frigate named the Beacon Hill, and later a River Class destroyer named the Yukon. The stint in the navy gave me some blue water experience, and a look at the West Coast of North America from San Diego to Ketchikan, Alaska, including a cruise through the Inside Passage from Prince Rupert to Victoria via the Johnston Straits and Seymour Narrows. The “Leakin’ Beacon” as the crew called her, was powered by two triple expansion reciprocating steam engines, and was at the end of her service life. In fact, I was on her last voyage. I remember an incident where one of the sailors was removing some rusty old paint in the bilge with a chipping hammer and went “chip, chip, chip, splash!” Oops! “Don’t pull that hammer out!” Here is the Beacon Hill, below.

The Yukon, on the other hand, was a sleek new all welded steam turbine powered destroyer which looked quite futuristic in the mid ’60’s. The rounded over decks were intended to facilitate washing radioactive fallout off the ship in the event of nuclear war. Fortunately, we never had occasion to test that.

All things considered, I found the old “Leakin’ Beacon” to be the more interesting ship to serve on, perhaps because of it’s history and the more relaxed atmosphere on board, and the fact that when I was steering the Beacon Hill I was on the bridge, while when steering the Yukon you were at a protected station deep in the bowels of the ship, and might as well have been in the basement of a department store somewhere! One of the little perks of being in one of the ‘weapons’ trades was that since you didn’t have too much to do when you weren’t at war, you got to spend part of your time steering the ship to keep you occupied.

Getting the hang of steering a ship in a seaway.

When a ship moves through the water in a seaway, she yaws from side to side a bit, particularly if a following sea on the quarter is pushing the stern around as each wave passes, first pushing the stern in the direction the wave is going, and then reversing as the wave passes forward along the hull of the ship and the stern falls back into the trough. When I was first learning to steer the ship I would be wildly over compensating in an effort to stay on course. As a wave would push the stern to one side, I would apply counter rudder. However, by the time that took effect, the ship would already be yawing back on it’s own, and my counter rudder would be added to that natural yaw, kind of like a new driver bunny hopping down the road as they learn to use the clutch, resulting in the ship zig-zagging along instead of going more or less straight on average. I was amazed as I watched the experienced helmsmen seemingly pay no attention as the ship yawed 8 or 10 degrees off course, and then came back by itself. Occasionally, for no visible reason, they would give the wheel a couple of turns, hold for a few seconds, and then spin it back, without the ship seeming to take any notice. As time went by I gradually ‘got the feel of the sea’ also, and learned to judge when a particular yaw was not going to come back on it’s own, and if you didn’t compensate for it, the next wave would push you 15 or 20 degrees off course.

Steam railway crane.

After my stint in the RCN, I apprenticed as a Shipwright and later a Finishing Carpenter, among other jobs. I wasn’t quite done with the Age of Steam, though, and worked for a while on a what was probably the last steam powered railway crane in Canada at Western Canada Steel. It looked similar to this, and had the advantage of being relatively warm on cold winter mornings, once you got the boiler lit. It took the boiler about half an hour to raise steam, and in the meantime the crane operator read the paper while I scrambled around greasing the various axels and joints before we chuffed off down the track at a leisurely 5 miles per hour or so to unload and sort scrap steel from railway cars into huge mountains of scrap paralleling the tracks, or load other cars destined for the steel mill’s furnace. We used a big grappling claw to pick up the scrap, kind of like an oversized version of one of those crane and claw games at country fair amusement arcades.

Building the Periwinkle Catamaran

In 1968 while I was working for a fiberglass boat builder in Steveston, a commercial fishing village at the mouth of the Fraser River, I decided to build a daysailing catamaran designed around 4’x8′ sheets of 1/4″ plywood for the sake of economy. When people start boat building projects, they usually begin by nickel and diming their way along, often using inferior materials that they later regret as they toss thousands of dollars at secondary items like electronics, all the while thinking “Damn! Why didn’t I spend the extra $50 on bronze wood screws instead of those galvanized ones?”

Anyway, I was no different, and the boat was designed to be 16 feet long and 8 feet wide because I could build that with just a few 4’x8′ sheets of plywood and some glue and fiberglass. Having finished the hulls, I decided to convert the boat from a daysailer to one I could cruise around the Gulf Islands in, which meant building a cabin on the top. I considered various options that would look relatively sleek, but they all ended up with about as much elbow room as a couple of coffins. In the end I decided to go for some usable space and build a cracker box on top of the daysailer hulls. The result was a pocket cruiser that looked like two logs supporting a squatter’s hut. Sort of a Canadian Kon Tiki. Despite it’s odd looks, the little catamaran turned out to be reasonably seaworthy, and I sailed it all over the Gulf of Georgia, or Salish Sea, for the next 30 years.

Sailing around in the Salish Sea.

Below is a general map of the lower Gulf Islands and Boundary Bay, courtesy of Apple® Maps on my iPad®, where the Periwinkle did a lot of it’s cruises, although when time permitted we would point north toward Desolation Sound and beyond, or occasionally south into Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands.

The boat was christened the Periwinkle, after the marine snail that carries it’s home around on it’s back, and somewhat resembled one with the cabin being the shell and the hulls being the foot. Here my companion in the early 1980’s, Glenda Berry, is standing in the sliding hatch on the cabin top. Glenda was an excellent sailor and navigator, and as long as she was at the tiller I knew we would be right on course, even at midnight in a thunderstorm.

The Periwinkle had a 4’x7′ double bunk across the front of the cabin, a head aft in the port side hull, and a galley aft in the starboard hull with a two burner alcohol stove, sink, and 20 gallon water tank under the galley seat. In the centre aft were a hanging locker and the main entry door from a small cockpit. Mostly we steered either sitting on the roof for better visibility, or from the after deck, a sheet of plywood lashed onto the netting between the hulls. Here my father, Dale, has the tiller as we drift across the Salish Sea in a light breeze on our way back from a trip to the Gulf Islands. I got some exercise rowing around in the dinghy while we waited for the breeze to pick up a bit.

The crew of the Periwinkle changed a bit over the decades as I changed partners, but fortunately they all proved to be good sailors; not prone to motion sickness, and good at holding a course. Here my companion for the last 25 years, Marlise, is steering en route from Crescent Beach to Nanaimo with a light south-easterly breeze pushing us gently along with the sails poled out wing & wing. With the big boxy cabin, the Periwinkle went downwind just fine with no sail at all.

The Periwinkle under power off Saturna Island with the dinghy lashed alongside on a short hop between anchorages. The quiet and fuel efficient 10 HP 4 stroke Honda motor proved to be a huge improvement over the original noisy, smokey British Seagull outboard, and doubled the speed under power, making it possible to run most of the passes between the islands against the current if need be. Some of the Gulf Islands passes get up to around 12 knots on a large tide, but most of them run at about 5 or 6 knots most of the time.

The nice photo above was taken by my cousin Brian Williams, who cruises the BC coast in the Evvy-Dale, a a 36 foot former Log Salvage boat based in Sidney on Vancouver Island. Here the Periwinkle is tied alongside the Evvy-Dale in Port Browning between North and South Pender Islands. The rather faded photo has been on my kitchen cupboard for about 20 years.

Here I am rowing back to the Periwinkle in my trademark overalls with the beautiful white shell beach on the north side of Montague Harbour Marine Park on Galiano Island in the background.

Here is a view of the after deck of the Periwinkle showing the steering system, the hatches into the hulls, and the Honda outboard tilted well clear of the water. The boat could be steered either with a tiller or a rope and pulley system.

Wards Marina and the Nicomekl River.

The Periwinkle sailed out of Wards Marina in Elgin Heritage Park on the Nicomekl river a few miles upstream from Crescent Beach for 40 years, which is shown here courtesy of Apple® Maps. To get out to Boundary Bay you need to navigate a narrow, shallow channel past a swing railway bridge at the mouth. Fortunately, it is all mud, so running aground is unlikely to do any serious damage except to your pride.

The BNR Railway Bridge.

Here is the old swing bridge railway trestle across the mouth of the Nicomekl River in the open position. I have fond memories of my father taking me out to fish off the centre span protective pier, which we would get to by walking out along the trestle and clambering down through the steel framework. The bridge has apparently been there for over a century as my father, who was born in 1919, fished from it as a young boy in the 1920’s.

When I first moored the Periwinkle at Wards Marina there were very few sailboats moored in the Nicomekl as you had to give the Burlington Northern Railway 48 hours notice when you wanted the bridge opened, and a 10 man crew would come out from Vancouver on a speeder to open it. Two men would station themselves with lanterns at either end of the trestle, and two more would walk about half a mile up the track in either direction to warn any approaching trains that the bridge was open, while the remaining half dozen would walk around a manual capstan, like an oversize clockwork toy key in the centre of the bridge swing span, to turn the gears that opened the bridge.

After a couple of years of that I decided to see if I could get the bridge modernized with a full time operator and electric motor by making a real nuisance of myself to the railway. One summer I simply took the boat out for a couple of hours every day after work, meaning that the crew had to come out from Vancouver every day and then hang around for several hours waiting for me to return. After one season of that, the next winter the railway automated the bridge so a single man could operate it, and put an operator on it all summer, clearing the way for sailboats to moor at Crescent Beach Marina and Wards Marina knowing they could come and go at any time from dawn to dusk without needing to give advance notice, which had always been a problem when returning from a trip in the pre-cell phone era (yes, kiddies, there was a time before cell phones).

Wards Marina.

Most of it’s life the Periwinkle catamaran was moored at Wards Marina, a small marina founded and operated by the Ward family on what had been an old 30 acre farm on the Nicomekl river. The marina was home to many do-it-yourself boat building projects, and at one time had about 15 boats under construction in various shops. In 1984 the marina, and the Canadian Museum of Flight and Transportation next door, were expropriated by the City of Surrey for a park. Initially Surrey just wanted the boats and floats gone, and gave the boat builders and boaters on the float a 30 day eviction notice. After a multi-year struggle involving picketing city hall, forming the Mud Bay Yacht Club and Wards Marina Heritage Preservation Society to represent the boaters, and generally fighting to get the city to recognize the value of having a civic marina in the park, the Mud Bay Yacht Club eventually came to an agreement with Surrey to replace the various boatbuilding shops with a new building and maintenance yard to be constructed in partnership with the Surrey Parks department and leased to the Mud Bay Yacht Club to operate, while Surrey Parks would maintain and operate the float. Here is the new building and maintenance yard as they look today. One of the nice features is the mast tower, which makes removing masts for maintenance and reinstalling them much easier.

Being set in a park makes Wards Public Marina one of the nicest locations in Greater Vancouver to moor a boat, and the picnic tables come in handy when it’s time for the Mud Bay Yacht Club Spring picnic. The mast tower makes a good flagpole for the occasion.

At high tide the Nicomekl, which I’m told means Muddy Water in the native Salish language, looks like a medium size river.

Low tide reveals a different river altogether; more of a shallow muddy ditch lined with oysters beds.

And on a really low tide . . . not going anywhere this afternoon . . .

Here is the view to the west from the floats at sunset on a winter afternoon.

The Dandelion.

And I’ll round out this section for the moment with a photo of my father, Dale, seated in the Dandelion, a Sabot class sailing dinghy I built as a tender for the Periwinkle, as we prepared to push off from Cabbage Island Marine Park and row back to the Periwinkle for lunch.

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Return to top of Home Page: Cruising Under Sail.com | Messing about in boats in British Columbia, Canada.

Currently Marlise and  I are working on rebuilding our 26 foot sloop, the Periwinkle II: The Periwinkle II | Cruising Under Sail.com

Details of the rebuilding project:  Rebuilding the Periwinkle II | Cruising Under Sail.com

Completing the Main Cabin. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Galley. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Replacing the Diesel engine. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Forward Cabin. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Steering System. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Installing the name and registration. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Head. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Lazarette. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Mast Support. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Rebuilding the Quarterberths and storage compartments. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Refitting the Mast, Rigging and Sails. | Cruising Under Sail.com

Replacing the Forward Hatch. | Cruising Under Sail.com

The Other Details. | Cruising Under Sail.com

You can read about my early days in and around Crescent Beach and the Gulf Islands here: Beginning at the beginning . . . | Cruising Under Sail.com

And the Periwinkle Catamaran here: The Periwinkle | Cruising Under Sail.com

I also have a 26 foot Cape Cod Catboat under construction in the boatshop in my back yard which you can read about here: The Catboat | Cruising Under Sail.com

You can read about some of our cruises here as I get time to post them: Cruises | Cruising Under Sail.com

Our first cruise in the Periwinkle II | Cruising Under Sail.com

It was a Dark and Stormy Night | Cruising Under Sail.com

You can read all about Wards Public Marina and the facilities it offers on this page: Wards Marina | Cruising Under Sail.com

And finally a bit about the author: About | Cruising Under Sail.com