by Pat Ardley
Good thing there were two tables between us while we had our tea, and I was very glad that I had left the door open for the fresh air and my protective dog. This person was not who I thought he was and there was more trouble to come later when I would not be able to convince George that I didn’t want to be alone with Jack on his fishboat and especially without my trusty Zak!
Boom Winch and Other Floats
When George had enough logs for the float, he started assembling them side by side in a tight row shaped like a rectangle in front of our house. Using rope and staples, he tied the logs together to keep them from moving while he used the come-along on the boom-winch float and hauled a smaller log up and crosswise at each end of the narrow sides of the rectangle. This top log would be the “lash log” that would permanently hold the float together once we tightened the cable around it and each log. He coiled one-inch cable around each log and over the lash log then under the next log and up and over the lash log again. This is a tedious job because one-inch cable is very hard to work with and doesn’t bend easily. Next he would string the cable over the Gilchrist jack then lightly attach the cable with a five-inch steel staple. This is where I come in.
George straddled the log while hitting the cable with a heavy sledgehammer, and I jumped up and down on the handle of the jack to pull the cable even tighter. After many hammer smashes and hops, the jack could be clicked one more notch. This would drag the cable tighter and tighter with each click until he could pound the staple deep into the wood, and that would hold the cable solidly at that point. Then we would start over at the next loop over the next log. The new float had ten huge logs in it so this process was painstakingly slow and required an incredible amount of energy. The float took two weeks of utterly exhausting effort. Jack and fellow commercial fisherman Ken Moore stopped by at the same time one day, and while we chatted in front of the house, they both walked over and kicked at the cable lashings to check whether they were tight enough.
I was constantly afraid of slipping off the Gilchrist jack and splashing overboard. We usually did everything we could to not fall overboard, since the water is so cold, and it’s just not nice to land unannounced in the water fully clothed. I ended up over the years wrenching my back, pulling hamstrings and damaging ribs in various efforts to not fall in, when often, just letting go and landing in the water would probably have been much easier to deal with.
George had enough logs left to build a float that would be capable of carrying a large amount of boat gas. He did the calculations over and over and checked with others to make sure that he would have enough flotation to carry the three thousand gallons that the tank could hold. The tank hadn’t arrived on the freight boat yet, but he needed to have the float ready to receive it when it did arrive.
It was near the end of February and time for George to do a little business in town and start getting supplies lined up for the Fisheries contract. Before he left, he checked the water tanks and the water line, made sure the batteries were all topped up with water and the generator diesel tank was full. He also filled two day-tanks with gas for my speedboat and made sure the connections on the boat battery were all functioning. He didn’t want me to be stranded somewhere when he wasn’t in the inlet. I would have contact with our neighbours on the VHF radio, and there was VHF on the boat, but it was nice to have all motors and equipment in tip-top shape before he left me alone in the middle of nowhere.
He worked right up until we heard the plane fly over the house, then he ran in to shower and change. I grabbed his already-packed bag and threw it in the back of the boat. A few minutes later, I could see the plane, a Beaver, taxiing up to our airplane float. I started the motor and untied both ropes but held onto the stern line. Moments later, George jogged out of the house, jumped into the boat and I jumped in after him with the rope. We zipped out of the bay and then slowly approached the airport so we wouldn’t rock the airplane with the boat wash. We tied up the boat just as the pilot climbed out of his plane and tied it up with the one rope that he used in the middle of the pontoon.
I put on my brave face as George folded me in his arms and I finally had to let go knowing that I was soon going to be so alone. The pilot took George’s bag from him and tossed it into the back of the plane then stepped aside for George to climb the two steps up and in. There was no one else in the plane, so George eagerly worked his way up into the front co-pilot seat. The pilot untied his rope and climbed in, then I pushed on the wing to move the plane away from our float. When they were a few feet away, the pilot started the engine and off they went, with a thunderous roar, taxiing out of the bay and lifting off the water, then disappearing around the corner of the island and behind the trees. I stood on the dock watching until I couldn’t see or hear them any longer, and the quiet closed in and draped over me.
I carefully climbed back into the boat, mindful that I was by myself now and started the engine. It sputtered to life with no problem and I leaned over and untied the stern line. I felt much better when I pulled up to the float and Zak was there to greet me. He was very good company, but it felt strange to suddenly be the only human for miles around. George was going to be away for a whole week. I would have to get used to the quiet, which actually felt very heavy and made me feel tired even though it was only 1:30 PM, and he’d only been gone five minutes.
I would have to get busy or I would go crazy here all by myself. But for now, I just wanted to sit down and read. I had a pile of books that I would finally have time to work through, and after making myself a nice cup of tea I sat down and started on the first one, Shōgun by James Clavell. Once I got involved in the story I knew I was going to have trouble doing anything else until I finished the book. I had the most amazing feeling of freedom: no one was there to tell me I was reading too much or for too long or wasting time. I read through the afternoon and until it was too dark to see the words on the page, and finally I lit a lamp so I could continue reading. I eventually went to bed when my eyes couldn’t take it any longer.
When I woke up the next morning, I decided that I needed to accomplish something before I would allow myself to read like that again. I wandered around outside and noticed that the boom-winch float was tied up in front of the guesthouse. There was no boom winch on it at this moment. It had been used to pull our guest boats out of the water for the winter and then when we built the new guesthouse float, but George had since put the winch away in the workshop. The empty float was about ten by twelve feet and looked like it needed something on it. I had wanted a greenhouse for a while now and thought it would be such a good idea to build one while I had the chance and the time.
We didn’t have a lot of extra wood around so I took an axe over to my garden and chopped down some small saplings. Each one was about six feet high and only about two inches at the thickest part. I would need at least two poles for each upright and a few extra to lash the two sides together to form a U-shape that I could cover with plastic. I tromped around on the island for hours picking out just the right sized trees and chopped them down.
Then I limbed them and hauled them down to the work skiff, all the while keeping a close eye on the boat so it didn’t get hung up on the shore as the tide went out. I didn’t want to get stuck for hours on the island while it got dark, waiting for the tide to come back in to lift the boat off the rocks. I was ultra careful about the boat and extra careful when I used the axe. I placed my steps cautiously on the uneven ground—I didn’t want to sprain my ankle. I couldn’t rely on getting help for myself, so I had to rely on not making any mistakes. At least I felt safe enough on my island since the only wild animal we had seen on it was a deer. No bears or cougars or wolves yet! I would not have felt safe climbing around on the big island behind the lodge because there were always wild-animal prints and sounds of them howling or crashing through the bush.
I nailed the bottom of the poles to the float logs along both sides, with enough room to walk on either side
of the float. Then I lashed the poles together with rope to form the uprights and also lashed branches along the middle to keep the structure rigid. We had a good-sized roll of plastic that was left over from covering The Page. I found the plastic and rolled it out and cut enough to cover the structure. I had already been working on my greenhouse construction for a couple of days and I didn’t want to start covering it until I had a whole day in front of me, so I left the plastic in the shop and made a quick supper so I could sit with my book again.
The next morning, I loaded the heavy-duty stapler and tied a string to it with a loop to go over my wrist in case I dropped it. I then covered the poles. For an entrance, I knotted the end flap so that I could lift it and walk in. Now I just had to put some plants into it. Again I went over to the island and, this time, I dug up several ferns and some wildflowers and planted them in large cans and a couple of wooden boxes from the workshop. Then I stood back and admired my work. I have to say, it was a thing of beauty.
I knew that the mail plane had been to Dawsons so while I still had lots of daylight left, I headed up to the store in The Page to pick up supplies and mail. Partway up Darby Channel, where there is an open area about two hundred yards across, I could see two humpback whales leaping out of the water. I zipped along quite close to shore until I was in line with where they had last leaped and crashed back into the water. I shut the engine off, drifted and watched a spectacular display. It was almost like they knew I was there and were putting on a show for me. Then I saw the flukes of both whales and knew they were diving deep. I floated along for a couple more minutes, then feeling a little trepidation that they could quite easily come up under or over my boat, I started the engine and took off toward the store.
Seconds later, the cabin of my boat filled with a roar that boomed and deafened me and I thought I was being swallowed by one of the giant whales. My breath caught and my heart raced as I sped away hoping to outrun the monster that I couldn’t see. Suddenly, a shadow passed over the front of my boat and, as my vision cleared, I could see a fishing-resort owner’s airplane zoom in front of me, not more than ten feet above my boat. I continued on my way and there was the plane, tied to the dock in front of the store. I pulled in, tied up my boat and stormed into the store. I could see the fellow was still laughing with Lucky but I was so full of the fear-fuelled adrenaline rush that I marched up to him and roared, “You asshole!” right in his face. He was gobsmacked and lost his stupid grin. They didn’t call me “Don’t-Mess-With-Me Ardley” for nothing.
I had one day left before George would be back and I spent the time reading and relaxing. I was quite pleased with my work on the greenhouse and looked forward to showing it off. I had not actually had much time to think about how quiet it was or how much I missed having George there with me. Once I was safely tucked away in bed, I didn’t worry that something bad might happen, and as long as I didn’t have to go out in the dark to turn the generator off, I was perfectly happy to use an Aladdin lamp to read by. I didn’t need power for anything else.
George arrived home in a new-to-us, but used-by-others speedboat. It had a deep V-shaped hull so it would be more comfortable than our flat-bottomed speedboat in choppy water. We cleverly named this boat Sportspage. George immediately noticed the new structure. He was most concerned that he might need the boom-winch float to actually use the boom winch. I told him that he would have to build me a greenhouse then, because I was very happy to be able to potter about with plants and looked forward to getting vegetable seeds started in the spring. I told him, “Don’t leave me alone if you don’t like what I do while you’re gone.”
Brass Balls
The new guesthouse float was finished and plans were starting to take shape for the Fisheries building in Dawsons Landing, but we needed money and more supplies for our new guesthouse as well as the A-frame. We hired a new caretaker and we left the inlet hoping things would still be all right when we got back. We had one week to spend in Vancouver and we had to make every minute count. We would visit friends and family, shop for supplies and work with our travel agent and friend, Nigel, to put together a marketing plan. We had given up on the travel agent from Vancouver Island as someone who was too far from the epicenter of fishing traffic. We went to our bank to ask for money to build the new guest cabin. We had been with CIBC for a few years now and thought our proposal was quite good. We could show them that we already had the contract with Fisheries. That should count for something! The loans officer told us that we would not be getting any money from them, we weren’t solid enough—and we were floating for God’s sake! George was so mad that he reached over the desk and plucked our bank file from the fellow’s hand and—while the man was still blubbering, “You can’t take that!”—we walked out of his office.
Then we tried the Bank of BC. We met with a nice fellow who listened politely and took our information and told us to come back in a few days. We went back to George’s sister’s house where we were staying, feeling uncertain about the outcome of that meeting. We returned two days later and the nice bank fellow told us, “Sorry, but we can’t see your lodge and therefore we don’t feel that we can lend you the money.” We were ushered out of his office but before we left, I used the washroom down the hall. When I came out, George and I found ourselves waiting for the elevator with the same nice bank fellow. As we rode silently down to the main floor, I turned to him and said, “You call yourselves the Bank of BC but you should be called the Bank of Georgia and Granville Streets. I have heard that to be a successful business you need two things: a strong capital base and brass balls. Well, we have half of the requirements and I think you should trust us enough to lend us the money!”
Thanks to my quick wit and the brass fireplace decoration sitting on our bedroom shelf, the next day we received a phone call telling us that we were approved for the loan.
Building the A-Frame
It was now the end of February and we were running out of time. We had to get back up to the inlet. We ran in all directions at once and picked up and delivered as many supplies as we could collect. We had to come up with a serious timeline to do the work on the Fisheries A-frame building by March 31 so we could build our guesthouse and finish the rest of the lodge work before the summer fishing season.
There were building supplies that George could order over the VHF phone but the phone system was not 100 percent reliable and sometimes didn’t work for days at a time. I had fun shopping for groceries that would last through several months, new rain gear to replace the not quite adequate gear that we had been using for months and a few bits of cloth to make myself some warm work shirts. Meanwhile, George ordered the rest of the equipment and supplies that we would need to add on to the Fisheries cabin and everything would be shipped from Vancouver to Dawsons Landing on the freight boat.
We flew back into the inlet on a beautiful sunny day. Flying over the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound but close to shore most of the way, we could see great kelp beds and incredible swirling turquoise water as it broke over rocky islets and crashed onto the long sandy stretch of beach in Blunden Bay just north of Cape Caution. The beach is mostly inaccessible except for the odd helicopter, intrepid kayaker and the commercial Cessna that once foolishly landed there.
We flew over our buildings to signal to the caretaker that we were back. The Beaver landed in Darby Channel, taxied into the main bay and was tied to our airplane float. We had time to unload all the supplies before a sheepish-looking caretaker finally pulled up slowly to the dock in our work skiff. He wasn’t supposed to use Sportspage, our new speedboat, because there was something wrong with the starter and it sometimes wouldn’t start, which could potentially leave him stranded somewhere if he used it. While he was slowly driving out to pick us up, he must have been trying to come up with a good excuse for why Sportspage was on the other side of the inlet. Next we heard that Zak had knocked him overboard three times as he bent to tie up boats. After we heard that, we w
ere actually feeling pretty good that we had a place to come back to. What else might he have done if we had been away longer? We sent him on his way and wandered around touching everything and enjoying being home on our own again.
George drove our work skiff over to a fellow’s handlogging camp in Draney Inlet where Sportspage had been abandoned and towed it home. He had the parts to fix the starter, but he wanted to work on it at home where he could use his own tools.
We needed the covered speedboat to use when we drove to Dawsons to work on the A-frame. It would be too cold to have to make the twenty-minute run in the open skiff every morning and then back home at the end of a tiring day. He worked on it all afternoon and finally, I heard the engine start and purr along nicely. Hooray, I wouldn’t freeze on the way to work!
We headed up to Dawsons to start work on the ground around the cabin. The freight would be arriving in five or six days and we needed to clear a place to pile everything. There was thick slush on the water all the way up Darby Channel, which really slowed us down, but we could easily make out any logs or floating debris as there was a fresh coating of white snow on them in sharp contrast to the grey slushy water. Everything at Dawsons was coated with snow and ice so there wasn’t much we could do at the cabin except check on the tarps and move a few supplies around.
We headed back home to get our cold-weather chores done: chopping wood and kindling and filling both wood boxes, trimming the wicks and filling kerosene lamps for later, and shovelling as much snow off the floats as possible. The weight of the snow made our floats sink lower into the water and lower still if it started raining and the snow soaked it up. So much time was spent on chores just to keep comfortable in the winter.
