By Greg Middleton

Special to the Driftwood

The other day I was down at the Ganges Coast Guard dock, mostly looking out over the harbour to make sure my boat was where I had left her out at anchor earlier in the day, when I heard someone ask why they let those old tugs anchor up out there.

There has been a little controversy about them, especially since the tug Seahorse turned up earlier this year and dropped mooring buoys off Grace Point. That so angered at least some Grace Point residents they paid $1,800 apiece to drop four mooring buoys of their own to make sure no one else could put down a mooring buoy in front of them and “spoil their view.”

First of all, it is perfectly legal for someone to drop a mooring buoy, usually big concrete blocks, as long as they don’t impede traffic. It is just an anchor and one of the few remaining real freedoms we have is to anchor where we please.

Secondly, what you see out there in those two venerable old ships and a couple more that regularly show up here are pages out of West Coast’s maritime history, history that is quite quickly being lost.

The Tyee No 1 was built in Seattle in 1914 as a halibut schooner. It was in fact the biggest halibut schooner built on this coast and fished halibut in Alaska and off the Queen Charlotte Islands. In 1928 it was refitted for the Russian fur trade, taking supplies and trade goods up the Bering Sea to trade for furs. Eventually it went back to halibut fishing and ended its working life as a fish packer, bringing fresh iced fish back to market from the fishing grounds. About two years ago, with more than 90 years as a working boat, it was bought by Tyee Tom, as he is known around the harbour, with the idea of taking tours out for coastal cruises. Tom admits he maybe needs to win the lottery to do that.

The Seahorse is a work in progress too. It was built in Texas in the 1940s and towed supply barges out to the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. After it finally retired, it slowly made its way up the coast. It is now owned by a local ferry captain, who is gutting it and will soon begin restoring it. Restoring old tugs has cult status among boaters. It’s akin to restoring old steam locomotives.

Also often in the harbour is the Atrevida, once the Powell River to Texada Island ferry. Some islanders here remember watching with trepidation as their cars were hoisted aboard her with a winch.

Omage, a sturdy little Vancouver 29 that is out on a mooring buoy, was single-handed here from Panama after a few years in the Caribbean with one stop in Hawaii after three months at sea, a trip that would make even veteran sailors pause in admiration. After a winter refit at the dock it is shipshape and ready to cruise this coast.

Oh there might be a couple of boats out in the harbour and a few more over in what some call “Squalor Bay” or “The Trailer Park” that are a bit past their best-before dates. All you can see of one old Tahiti ketch is a few feet of the mast — an ignominious end for one who sailed the South Pacific in days before satellite navigation and radar, when all most sailors had was a compass and a sextant if they were lucky.

Some argue all the mooring buoys should be taken out and the harbour reserved for visiting yachts.

Me, I prefer these boats and fish boats like Ed Newman’s venerable old trawler Lady Jane, which has spent a lifetime feeding people prime trawl-caught salmon, to the huge plastic mega yachts that cruise by and tie up at Ganges Marina, safely behind a locked gate and tinted glass.

Remember, some of those old boats were B.C.’s life and livelihoods for a long time. They are what make a harbour picturesque and worth looking out over.

Others are veteran travellers and have seen the stuff heroic stories are written about.

If the people in Grace Point want to do something more than dog in the manger mooring buoys or lawsuits without a shred of merit, they might consider spearheading a fund to help the owners of these two boats spruce them up. Money to help them pay to get the hull scraped and painted would certainly accrue them more merit in this and the next life than carping.

All nicely painted up they would be quite a sight, something their dinner guests could ooh and aah over and give the Grace Point owners bragging rights.

“I helped restore that classic old boat, a piece of maritime history.”

The writer is a seasoned sailor and the captain of the Cat’s Paw II, a 32-foot sailboat, which does about 2,000 nautical miles up and down the B.C. coast each year.