Well, it finally happened: last night, someone tried to steal my dinghy from the dock.
I rolled in from dinner and a movie at around 1:30am to find my padlocked steel cable twisted up around the dock cleat. At first I thought someone had just pulled the cable in and tied it tightly to rein in my dinghy closer to the dock; this has happened once before when the dock was really crowded. When I looked closer however it was apparent that someone had pulled the cable in and used a lever of some sort (perhaps one of my oars?) to twist the cable extremely hard in an obvious attempt to snap it.
I’m surprised at the attempt, frankly – the cable, for one, is just a cable I made from vinyl-covered steel clothesline cable, and it would have been easy to cut with a pair of cable cutters. Furthermore, the cable is only held in place with a bolt-based cleat under some shrinkwrap tubing, so someone with a knife and a wrench could have taken the cable apart with little hassle. These two things tell me that the attempted theft was by someone who wasn’t equipped to steal, as a bike thief or a professional would surely have some basic tools. I also noticed a bunch of new graffiti on the dock, which may have been a coincidence, but which makes me think that perhaps it was just a bunch of kids looking to take my dinghy for a joyride. Looking around the dock, I realized that mine was the only dinghy with oars, so that would reinforce my theory somewhat.
I’m not sure what I would have done if the dinghy had been successfully taken. It’s too late in the year to swim for it, and I don’t particularly want to try swimming in False Creek to begin with. It is clearly time to take the locking of my dinghy more seriously.
Another week in Victoria – I can see how this place earned the nickname ‘The Velvet Rut’! There’s just enough fun and interesting stuff happening to keep me hanging on day after day. I know there’s more happening in Vancouver, but overcoming the inertia and just getting up and leaving seems like a huge amount of effort, when it’s so very pleasant here already. Still, Burning Man is coming up fast, and I have a lot of work – both day-job and life – to catch up on before I leave for the desert.
The weekend started off with a bang, at a very sexy house-slash-birthday party hosted by a bunch of the girls from the Cheesecake Burlesque Review – but after that (well, ok, after a lazy afternoon of spinning firestaff in a backyard) I pretty much stayed in and nursed my hangover. Sunday I went and saw ‘District 9’, which was excellent.
Monday and Tuesday were fairly slackful and I got a lot of dayjob work done – Monday night I had a bunch of Victorians out for a sail around the around the Juan de Fuca Straight. It was really nice to have another sailor on board – Sarah is a racer, and it was really cute to watch her constantly watching and adjusting the headsail trim. Such a difference between racing and cruising – I usually just set-and-forget. I dropped the crew off at the docks in Victoria Harbour and made my way back to Gonzales Bay under motor in the dark – note to self: don’t do that. Sailing alone at night is spooky, especially when there’s no moon – you can’t see if you’re about to hit a log or something!
Tuesday night I went to Lehna and Jamie’s for drinks and conversation, then rode my bike back to Gonzales Bay at about midnight. It was after the lovely long bikeride home that things started to get a bit scary. Allow me to set the stage…
By the light of my little LED MagLite, I made my way down the shadowy path towards the pitch-dark beach where my rowboat was padlocked to a railing. I thought I could hear voices from the beach, but they grew quiet as I approached and a cursory scan of the beach did not reveal anyone – it was probably just the wind. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit jumpy, being by myself in a park at midnight with nobody around to help if I were to, say, get jumped by thugs or something. My only comfort was that Victoria doesn’t really seem to have much of a problem with violent crime – but there’s always a first time.
I unlocked my boat, put my bicycle in the bow and pushed the boat out into the bay, jumping in as it left the shore. I rowed out to my waiting sailboat, watching the phosphorescence ripple away from me in twin glowing crescents with every pull of the oars. When I reached Tie Fighter, I could feel a little bit of the stress fall away, but it wasn’t until I got inside the cabin and got the lights on that I really felt relieved.
I had settled in with my laptop and was checking email and chatting with Trent and Vince when I heard some splashing directly outside the boat. Ok, that’s normal – it could be another boat pulling up, but the sounds were also not inconsistent with waves lapping at the hull, especially in this unprotected bay. I told myself it was nothing.
Then I heard my dinghy thump against the side of the boat, and some more minor splashing – ok, still normal, waves knock the dingy against the side of the boat all the time. Nothing to be concerned about, just the wake from a passing ship or something. The boat wasn’t rocking yet, but it will any second…
Then there was more splashing, from both sides of Tie Fighter at once, and the unmistakable sound of someone getting into my dinghy. My heart leapt, my adrenaline spiked, and I grabbed my huge spotlight and ran out to the deck, shouting “WHO’S OUT THERE?!?”. I shone the spotlight at the dinghy, and one of the oars – which had been laying across the benches lengthwise with the dinghy – jumped up to a 45-degree angle in response! A bunch of splashing from the other side of the big boat made me turn to look that way, and I saw…
Sea otters. A bunch of them, swimming around my boat.
Scared the crap out of me! I turned back to look at the rowboat and saw one of the otters jump out of it – he must have hit the oar when he jumped in, causing it to lever up against the bench. I watched the otters play for the next few minutes, my adrenaline rush slowly being replaced by delight. They didn’t seem to care at all about the spotlight, and stuck around checking out Tie Fighter for a few minutes, though they would dive at the slightest sound – one of them came right up and looked directly at me (or at the spotlight, anyway) with big, blinking, liquid -brown eyes, but dove instantly when I laughed.
a "mud worm" (nereids vexallosa), native to BC - you don't want to meet one of these in the dark.
I counted eight otters in total – as they moved on from playing around my boat, from a distance their eyes reflected the light like cats eyes. Also in the night waters, I saw a large (ie about 18″ across) red jellyfish, dozens of fast moving little water worms, and one of theseterrifyingcreatures, a centipede-like thing about a foot or so long, swimming near the surface – it swam up to my rudder and then disappeared under the boat. I shudder to think of what it would be like meeting one while swimming! A call to a marine biologist friend this morning helped to identify the thing and to verify that I was not, in fact, seeing monsters where there were none.
I’ve only had two interactions with sea otters before last night, one in person and one… well, let’s say I saw the aftermath. While I was anchored in False Creek, something – at the time, I suspected a harbour seal, as there’s one that hangs around the dinghy dock at Monk’s – defecated off the dinghy dock onto (and into) my dinghy. Yep, you heard right – an otter took a crap in my rowboat. They may be cute, but man, the steady diet of raw crabs, mussels and oysters makes for a particularly pungent leaving, and it wasn’t pleasant to clean up. A few weeks later I was stumbling home at 3am to the dinghy dock by the Cambie Bridge; as I came down the ramp I heard a noise, and at the bottom of the ramp stood an otter, sizing me up nervously. I stopped and tried to say something calming (I don’t speak otter), but he bolted, right over the top of my dinghy, into the water and gone.
I’m not sure what it is about my rowboat that seems to attract otters, nor what I’ve done exactly to deserve these crazy, wonderful interactions with them, but I’m really glad I’ve gotten to experience them. Now if only my replacement battery charger for my digital camera would just hurry up and arrive…!
Anyway. The wind forecast for the rest of the week shows the wind turning to southeast late tonight, staying southeast all day tomorrow, then switching to northwest tomorrow evening – that’s just the sign I’ve been waiting for. I think if I can get an early start, I can ride that southeast wind all the way up to Porlier Pass or maybe even Gabriola, anchor for the night in a bay there, and then ride the northwest wind across the Georgia Straight to arrive back in Vancouver sometime Friday evening. Victoria has been wonderful to me, but my Vancouver contingent has gone from friendly requests for my return to mildly belligerent demands, and now on to thinly-veiled threats – I guess I should probably go home for a while. It does raise the question of exactly what “home” means, when your apartment and dayjob are both mobile… but that’s a subject for another blog post someday soon.
It’s day two in Gonzales Bay, just east of Victoria Harbour.
It’s lovely here! Nicer even than Fleming Beach, from which I was evicted on Tuesday – and even nicer now that it’s not pouring rain anymore. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon to grey skies, and it rained all Thursday, so the sun is welcome – I had the sails up this morning for an hour or so to let them dry out. Mildew isn’t something I’m really interested in dealing with.
One nice thing that happened: about an hour after I anchored, an older woman with long white hair rowed out to say hello, and to offer me a shower, a dinner and the use of a bicycle, should I need one. What a far cry from the surly stares of the Esquimalt fishermen, or the studied disinterest of the older sailors at the naval base! She offered her back yard as a place to tie my dinghy, instead of the public beach, and told me to feel free to come and go though her property. I took her up on the latter, and rowed my bicycle to shore in the pouring rain last night to go have birthday drinks with Oakley and Amanda. Making my way home much later on was a bit of a trial to say the least, especially in the pitch dark with a head full of Jack Daniels – when I finally found the place, the tide had gone waaaaay out, and my dinghy was stranded about twenty feet up on the steep, slippery rocks. I managed to get the dinghy, my bicycle and myself down to the waterline without falling – at least, as far as I remember. Good thing I remembered my flashlight!
The bay is shallow – only ten or fifteen feet or so where I’m anchored – and I can see the bottom. It’s really nice being able to see the bottom, especially after so much time in the murky brownish waters of False Creek. There are large shoals in the bay, and tonnes of seabirds – the only downside is that there’s not really any shelter from the open ocean. I get to rock around on the wake of every whale-watching tourboat that goes past – but between the gentle, constant rocking, the sounds of the seabirds and the waves lapping at the rocky shores nearby, it feels very much like the east coast here. I can’t see any crabs down there, but I might try dropping the trap later on just to see if I can snag some dinner.
If the sun sticks around, perhaps this weekend I’ll get out the flippers and snorkel and give Tie Fighter’s bottom a good scrub – she’s starting to look pretty scummy down there.
Tonight, a house party. Tomorrow, shopping for Burning Man supplies. Sunday, who knows?
I’m currently skipping the open mic night at the Bent Mast to sit around and babysit the boat. Since the police visit this afternoon, I’ve mostly just done dayjob stuff, but in the past few hours the wind has blown up to what I guess to be around 35kn – ie, a little too much wind for my liking.
a "delta" anchor
I’ve let out another twenty feet or so of anchor “rode”, which is what you call rope or chain attached to an anchor. My anchor is a 35-pound “Delta” at the end of forty feet of heavy steel chain, with another three hundred feet of thick, strong rope attached to that. The way the anchor is designed it has the most holding power if the pull is parallel to the ocean floor. I almost always use all the chain, but I rarely deploy more than thirty feet or so of the rope. The chain is heavy, and so the more rope I put out, the more the weight of the chain can pull the rode parallel to the bottom, and the more holding power I get. Hopefully I won’t pull the anchor tonight, as I’m only about a hundred feet from shore and those rocks look nasty. I’ll definitely be setting the anchor drift alarm on my GPS.
In preparation for an early morning departure – or possibly a late-night emergency, if this wind continues – I’ve just come in from pulling the dinghy out of the water and lashing it down to the port wing, and rewiring the generator to charge the engine starter battery. With the wind howling, the unseasonably cold air coming from the open ocean, the heavy lifting, the pitch dark with the full moon yet to rise, the growl from the generator and the Perseids meteor shower overhead (I saw seven or eight in the ten minutes I was out there), this quiet, picturesque little bay has gone from welcoming to hostile in a matter of hours. I half expected to hear a wolf howl from the top of the cliffs, or see an angry mob of farmers weilding pitchforks and torches coming through the parking lot!
One more big post to get out of the way, and hopefully after that I can just update frequently instead of having to play massive catch-up games!
Monday night I arrived in Victoria and stayed in the harbour in front of the Empress, meeting Amanda and company for drinks. The moorage was an awesome location, in super rockstar style. I spent Tuesday morning working, but mostly cleaning the boat and enjoying the parking spot. Tuesday afternoon I went sailing with the lovely Laurel, and scoped out Esquimalt Harbour for a place to anchor. She had to be back at work, so we turned around and I dropped her off at the docks at Fleming Beach and headed back out to find an anchorage. After a few false starts, I stopped at the Canadian Armed Forces Yacht Club to ask advice – nobody had anything constructive to say, with the only exception being the bartender. She took me out to the parking lot, down a rugged, windy little path through burdocks and blackberry bushes to a tiny little beach, half covered by a large arbutus tree.
“You see the bar from here?” she asked. I nodded.
“This beach is probably on the Songhee reserve, but most folks think it belongs to the base. Most of the base thinks it’s on the reserve. The property line is around here somewhere, but nobody is certain where, so it’s kind of a no-man’s land. If you pull up your dingy here and hide it under the tree, you should be ok…”
So that’s what I did for the night. Anchoring in Thetis Cove in the Esquimalt Harbour, then rowing a half-mile through harbour swells – not quite as large as the open ocean, but not what you’d consider “sheltered” either – only to sneak onto a disputed beach, hide and lock my dinghy, sneak onto and off of a naval base, and finally ride my bicycle 10km or so into town to go visit with friends. Some days the mind just boggles. After riding 10km “home” again at 2:30am, only to have to row another half-mile through the waves with a bicycle in the dinghy, I started to understand that this trip would be a pretty damned good series of workouts!
When I woke up in the morning, I realized that I had accidentally left my laptop power supply at Amanda’s house – d’oh! This meant I couldn’t actually start work until I did the row-bike-bike-row sequence again. I kicked myself thoroughly and was starting to make breakfast when I heard voices outside. Out a window (one of the only two in the boat that is actually translucent enough to see through), I saw a small powerboat with two men in it idling nearby. I poked my head out to see what they wanted, and they seemed startled to see me and quickly sped away. Uh oh.
There was no way I’d leave the boat now, so I pulled anchor and headed back towards Fleming Beach. I had noticed a lot of “NO MOORAGE” signs, but since I’d be anchoring those wouldn’t apply, and since the only “allowed” moorage around was surrounded by reserves I was willing to push the rules a bit. The “beach” in Fleming Beach is almost nonexistent – but the bay itself is very well sheltered by a large man-made breakwater. The bay is surrounded by beautiful, million-dollar homes on one side, a large cliff infested with rock climbers on another, and a lovely park on the third. I anchored, rode in, and got my power supply from Amanda’s house, sneaking a shower in the process. Now that I was clean, powered and mobile I headed to Habit for coffee.
As I walked into Habit, a beautiful blonde woman was walking out. Our eyes met and stuck, until she reached the door, and left. I shrugged and ordered coffee, then sat down and began my workday. Not five minutes later, the woman appeared in front of me again.
“Excuse me,” she said with a thick accent, “I think… we are… supposed to talk.”
Her name was Hanne, and she was visiting Victoria from Denmark, enroute to Seattle, then Iceland and finally home. We talked for several hours, and then she invited me to an open mic night at the Bent Mast. I had to be at a Burning Man planning meeting first, so I went to that – meeting many of my soon-to-be campmates for the first time – and then headed down to join them. After a few beers, I ended up playing guitar and singing a few songs and having an excellent jam with two locals. Adam, a bassist with a huge stand-up bass complete with preamp duct-taped to the side, and Vincent, who played fiery leads on a classical guitar with a small amp with the distortion circuit turned up. Hanne was due to leave for Seattle in the morning, so we talked long into then night, then parted ways.
the lovely Fleming Beach
I got a text the next morning from Hanne, saying she’d stayed in town another day. We made plans to meet that night for drinks, and I went back to my day job for the day. Later on we went to a wine bar, and then wandered around Victoria with a bottle of rum until late, having deep discussions on the nature of memory and consciousness – fascinating stuff.
Friday night was a house party at the home of one of the organizers of the Victoria contingent of our Burning Man camp this year – it was Marion’s birthday, and so a large group of folks gathered for drinks, dancing and fire play. I forgot to eat dinner, and wondered why the rum had such a negative effect on me, until I supplemented the rum with pizza and all became balanced again.
Saturday afternoon, I wandered into downtown Victoria with my mandolin and a busker’s license borrowed from Laurel. I set up on a side street full of vendors, and played and sang for about an hour, making a few bucks, until the vendors packed up and suddenly the street emptied. I put my mandolin away and wandered down to Bastion Square, where a guy was playing guitar with a mic and a little guitar amp. After hearing a few of his songs I figured I could follow his style, so I asked him if I could sit in and he said sure.
We played for about an hour together, with his income going up significantly now that he was a “band” instead of just a guy with a guitar, and eventually the next act showed up to take over – Bastion Square apparently is a very popular busking location, and requires acts to sign up weeks in advance. The new guy listened for a while, while unloading a tonne of gear, and finally came up to speak with me.
“Listen,” he said. “My backup guitarist is out of town, and my bassist has run off with a cute French brunette, so I think it’s just me today. Do you want to sit in with me?”
I said sure, and he continued to set up his rig – a full PA system with monitors, mic stands, preamps, a mixer, etc. Then, out of the blue, his bassist showed up – and to my surprise, it was Adam, the bass player from the Bent Mast a few nights previous! We did a quick soundcheck, and then they launched into a rowdy set of energetic bluegrass and country, straight out of an east-coast kitchen party. My roots were tickled! We played and sang and danced for an hour and a half to a crowd of probably 60-80 people, making decent money along the way. I did alright I think, especially considering that I’d never heard most of the songs before, and definitely had never played any of them before! It was a lot of fun, and they asked me to come back to play again the next day – but their set would be early in the day, and I had no intention of being awake that early.
Saturday night I went to the nightclub ‘Hush’, where “Boy 8-Bit” was playing. I wasn’t impressed with his music, but the opening act “Neon Steve” had me dancing from start to finish. I ended up drinking and carousing with a great crew of Victorians until well past dawn, before starting the bikeride back to Fleming Beach and Tie Fighter. When I arrived, I found a little note written in sharpie and taped to one of my oars.
“REMOVE YOUR BOAT FROM THE BASIN IMMEDIATELY! NO MOORAGE AT ANY TIME! YOUR NUMBER HAS BEEN REPORTED TO HARBOUR AUTHORITY!”, it said.
Now, those three sentences raised my hackles a little bit, for three reasons:
“moorage” means tying to something, ie private property, which can be owned. I’m anchored in a navigable channel, ie public property, which is protected by the Canadian Navigable Waters Act and has been for hundreds of years,
“Harbour Authority”, regardless of whether they meant Esquimalt Harbour or Victoria Harbour, has no jurisdiction here – I checked, the only folks that do are the police, the coast guard, Transport Canada and the military, and lastly,
if you don’t have the balls to sign your snippy little note, I can’t muster the respect required to listen to you.
I looked around, hoping that the author was nearby so that I could discuss this with them, but they were nowhere to be found – probably a good thing, as I had been awake for twenty-odd hours and wasn’t even close to sober. I rowed out and went to bed.
I didn’t leave the boat on Monday at all, staying in and working. Tuesday was almost the same, though I met Bunny, Amanda, Lori, Mike and Will for beers and pizza, scammed a shower from Bunny, and hit the hay early again.
That brings me up to today. Today, the police showed up, along with a nice man named Bob in a red sweatervest, who served me with a yellow slip of paper essentially telling me to GTFO, citing Municipal Zoning Bylaw 63(2)(c).
Zoning Citation (click for larger)
As it turns out that the Township of Esquimalt has actually put a zoning bylaw on the books somehow prohibiting anchoring in this “water lot”. I’m aaaaalmost certain I could challenge that law and win, as it goes against federal laws protecting my rights to anchor. We actually discussed it briefly, with me mentioning the federal Act, and the municipal governer admitting that yes, in a storm, anyone could anchor in the bay, but that the bylaw prevents permanent anchorage. According to other live-aboards in False Creek (I don’t know exactly how reliable a source they are, but regardless), the Act doesn’t specify how long “safe harbour” lasts, and nobody has ever managed to challenge that in court and win.
So being the gentleman that I am, I recognize when I am not welcome and agreed to leave, saying that perhaps it wouldn’t be today, but at the latest I would get out of here by tomorrow morning. The police took my identification and phone number, ran the usual background check (clean I assume), and left without hasle.
However, being the inquisitive soul that I am, of course I had a few more questions – for one, how exactly are they kicking me out? The Township of Esquimalt fortunately puts all of their bylaws online, and so I downloaded the zoning laws and had a look. I’ll save you opening the .PDF:
63. MARINE SMALL DOCK [M-5]
The intent of this Zone is to accommodate small private docks on Water Lots adjacent to
residential properties.
(1) Permitted Uses
The following Uses and no others are permitted:
(a) Boat Moorage Facility for small pleasure boats.
(2) Prohibited Uses
(a) Commercial or industrial activity
(b) Floating Homes and Floating Boat Shelters
(c) Liveaboards
(d) The mooring of more than two small boats
(e) Accessory Buildings
(3) Siting Requirements
(a) All Boat Moorage must be located within the boundaries of the Water Lot.
(4) Maximum Size
(a) No section of a Boat Moorage ramp shall exceed a width of 1.5 metres.
(b) The combined length of a Boat Moorage Facility [wharf, ramp, landing and
dock], measured from the shoreline, shall not be more than 21 metres.
(c) The area of a dock or float shall not be greater than 18.5 square metres in
area.
Wow. Damn. They do have me there.
Still, I’m betting that if I had the time or interest to challenge this bylaw in court, I’d actually have a case – as I understand it, the feds frown on bylaws that go against federal laws.
My second question was, of course, the subject of fines – Bob let it slip that if I refused, they would fine me $100. I noticed that aside from the yellow slip of paper in the photo above, he was also holding a ticket book, open to a new page, and I think he was a little disappointed that I was both polite and accommodating. I wondered afterwards just what the frequency of fines would be. Staying the night in Victoria Harbour cost me $58-something – if staying a week in this sheltered bay would only cost me $100, I count that as a deal! So I checked, and:
8. PENALTY
(1) Every person who violates any of the provisions of this Bylaw or who suffers or
permits any act or thing to be done in contravention of this Bylaw, is punishable in
accordance with the “Offence Act”, and shall be liable to the penalties hereby
imposed.
(2) Any person who violates any of the provisions of this Bylaw shall upon summary
conviction thereof be liable to a penalty of not more than ten thousand dollars.
(3) Each day that violation of this Bylaw is caused to continue, constitutes a separate
offence.
Yep, looks like I pretty much have to move.
So anyway, back to work for me. I will likely head back to the Bent Mast tonight for the open mic night again, which was fun last time, and likely will head over to Oak Bay or somewhere around there tomorrow morning. Or maybe later today? Who knows. At least this brings me finally up to date, and now I can start updating the blog in a more timely fashion.
