Stage Thirteen - Reconnecting

The next day was a little disappointingly drizzly (why on earth would I not be expecting that?) but was glorious for provided a great treat that everyone from my era particulary signed up for - a trip on the Gikumi.

The Gikumi, which means 'Chief' in the Kwakiutl language, was my grandfather's tug, his last boat and the only one I ever knew.  Going out on the boat to Alert Bay to pick up supplies or to a native village to deliver wood or just out fishing and picnicking were highlights of my summers.  Grandpa would let us steer the big wooden wheel, its spokes smooth with use, while he slept up in the wheelhouse.  We knew he was asleep because he would snore and puff, but he always seemed to know exactly when to wake up and take over through a narrow passage or a treacherous tidal path.  He would calmly steer through tide changes and rapids that would run a lesser captain aground.

The only time I remember seeing him stressed was when I was about 6 I guess, and we had delivered someone to a freighter that loomed above us.  However, the freighter's captain immediately started up its engines without thinking we would need time to move aside.  There was a vicious scraping hull against hull, and the Gikumi was driven closer to the freighter's churning propellor. If Grandpa had not been the man he was, we would have ended our lives chewed up like sawdust and littered on the waves.

The Gikumi in my day - the 1970s

At the end, the Gikumi was sold to Jim Borrowman and his partner to start a whale watching enterprise, the first in British Columbia.  My grandfather, who was not new age, thought they were idiots.  "Who would pay to see a blackfish?" he'd ask to no one in particular.  But of course "blackfish", or killer whales, were exactly what people did want to see. We are creatures of our times after all.

Jim took those of us lucky to have earned space out for the morning, and we did a bit of a tour of the strait.  The compnay's newer boat was out as well, but those of us on the Gikumi Gikumi spent those few hours with smiles glued to our faces as we moved from bow to stern, wheelhouse to galley, listening to that familiar engine and smelling those familiar smells.  The wheel was just as smooth to the touch as it used to be, smoother in fact, and my hands slid on it just as easily and familiarly as before. 

New technology with an old wheel

What was on paper now online

Friends reconnecting

dolphins in our wake



A camoflaged seal



Killer whale flukes

Coming back to harbour

coffee and a familiar view

 

so many times here!




same stove but a more deluxe galley than in days of yore