Ch 28: Majorettes, rum and coke

       I had never  run into a bunch of naked women and didn't have any idea how I would react to such a sight. Surprisingly it turned out to be very casual. “Hi, do you mind if I join you?” I asked. They didn't mind so I took off my dirty clothes and jumped in. The water in the pool was very hot. We could only sit in it for four or five minutes and then had to climb out to cool off, so we were all in constant motion, popping in and out of the water, exposing our bodies in full colours. I tried not to ogle too much, but after a while it seemed completely natural to sit there and talk to naked strangers.

       It turned out that we were all strangers: A couple from Belgium, two  Parisian girls, one from Montreal, another from Vancouver and a guy from the States who was their “leader”. He worked as a cook at a ski resort in Colorado and his hobby was visiting various hot springs. They all met in a campground at Long Beach and the cook had given them long spiel about the hot springs. He suggested they rent a sea plane to fly to Hot Spring Cove. When they got there, he told them that the only way to enjoy the hot spring was to go naked and took off his clothes. The girls didn't have much choice but to go "natural".
When I got back to the boat, my body felt like a half-cooked lobster and I fell asleep without eating any supper. The next morning I rushed back to the hot spring but was disappointed, nobody was there. Maybe the air plane I had heard earlier had flown them back to the campground at Long Beach.

      It was a perfect sailing day with a following wind. The boat was being steered by the Autohelm, I was inside the cabin, reading Shogun, and was completely  enthralled by the book. Suddenly some inner voice told me to get out.  Just in time, as the boat was on a collision course with a big log! No, it was not a log, it was a WHALE! I scrambled into the cockpit, disconnected the Autohelm and pulled the tiller hard over. Suddenly there was a commotion in the water, a big tail, a splash, and the whale was gone. Only the swirls on the surface and my pounding heart were evidence of the near miss. Later I saw another sailboat going in the same direction. Two guys aboard were also heading to Victoria so we decided to sail together. They had been trolling for salmon yesterday and had missed the hot spring show.  When I told them about my hot spring adventure they cursed their fishing addiction


    

Two days later we tied up our boats in the Victoria Harbour marina and were celebrating our trip with rum and Coke. “Could we take pictures on your boat?” Five young girls were standing on the dock. They took some pictures and the skipper gave them tour of his boat. They  were Majorettes from Texas and had come to Victoria for a Majorettes competition. This was their first unsupervised trip and they were enjoying their freedom. “What are you drinking?” asked one.“Rum and Coke, would you like some?”  “YES!”
They drank it like it was water.  The skipper poured another round, increasing the portion of rum. After the third round some started to giggle and two admitted they had never drunk rum before. Another round and we were watching with satisfaction at how they were slowly getting drunk.   However our enjoyment didn't last long. “They are minors, we could be in deep shit serving them liquor.” casually mentioned the mate. It dawned on us that he was right and the skipper hastily poured them farewell drinks. We then relished a spectacle of drunken teenyboppers, yelling and giggling, swaggering through the downtown of Victoria, watched by disgusted tourists.

     

       Newcastle Island Provincial Park, a stone's throw away from the bustling Nanaimo Harbour, was going to be my base. On the weekend it was busy with tourists but at other times it was almost deserted. I went to the Manpower centre to look for jobs. ”It is a bad time to look for a job” the clerk told me and showed me a big file. “These are job seekers.” Then he pointed to a single file.“And this file is the jobs posted. You are lucky, it came yesterday and you are the first one to look at it.”  He read “...temporary job for mechanical engineer, preparing estimate for fabrication and installation of equipment...”

The company, a big fabrication shop, was located in Nanaimo. The shop was almost empty and in the office were only the secretary and the accountant, who told me about the job. “Our shop had run out of work and we had to lay off all our people. A local pulp mill has some work we are going to bid on a. They sent us drawings and you will be working with college students preparing the cost estimate. It is a rush job and our last chance. If we don't get it, we have to shut down the shop.” He then advised me: ”When you see the owner, tell him you want to be paid weekly, in cash. The bank is reluctant to extend us more credit and your cheque could bounce.” The shop owner looked a bit shifty but he agreed to my conditions and promised that there would be more work coming.

   

      I couldn't believe my luck, two days after arriving to Nanaimo I had job! It was a strange arrangement. Most of the estimation was done by the fabrication shop foreman and myself, but really I had been hired so that my engineering stamp on the bid would make it official. The five college students could barely read drawings and were mostly preparing paper-work for the bid.  The owner was away most of the time and the shop was run by the accountant, who spent a big part of the day fending off creditors demanding payments. We submitted the bid on time only to find out that the job was cancelled. 

       I was kept on doing odd jobs and watched as our ship was slowly sinking for lack of work. One day the office phone went dead. “The phone company didn't get paid and cut off our phone. We might as well go home,” said the accountant. “I will go to the bank to see if there is any money left.”  I asked him where the owner was. “I tracked him down yesterday, he was on his boat, fishing. He walked away from everything and told me to take care of the shop.” Luckily there was enough money in the bank and we got paid.  He then locked the shop door, we shook hands, wished each other good luck and parted ways.

     I always admired liveaboard sailors. But now when I got the chance to live on the sailboat, my life was being pulled apart in different directions. I was stuck in Nanaimo. Our furniture was stored in Campbell River, the camper was parked at friend's house on Gabriola Island. A thousand kilometers north in Kitimat was our house that I had not seen for almost two years. Five thousand kilometers east, in Owen Sound, was my wife with the kids, living with her parents. The kids had to go to school next month and we had to decide where to live. My wife urged me to go to Toronto, there were engineering jobs still advertised in papers. 

WHALE !!