On New Years day, 2008, the 42 foot fishing vessel ‘Gulvik’, stoutly built in in 1929 of oak and fir and yellow cedar broke free from a new but improperly secured mooring and was blown ashore in Oak Bay, near Victoria on Vancouver island in British Columbia, Canada. Some say that the Oak Bay Sea Rescue Society was alongside in their powerful craft and crew were on board while the Gulvik was adrift. Their mandate is to save lives and as there was no one aboard the ill-fated ship, they abandoned it to avoid liability. Although there was some attempt made to refloat the vessel on the following high tides, the weather was adverse and the co-ordination lacking severely. The prompt removal of everything of value from the vessel far outstripped the effort made to save it.

The Gulvik was owned at the time by a seventy-nine year old man named Fritz, or Fred. Despite his age he has a son of twelve who attends a catholic school in Victoria and lives with his mother, Fritz’s ex-wife, a Cuban woman who works at Wal-Mart and lives in social housing in Glanford area. It was at this townhouse complex on January sixth that I met Fritz. His son’s mother was back in Cuba, visiting, so Fritz senior was playing the single father routine and caring for Fritz junior.

Fritz’s story is an interesting one. “Everything fell apart in 1948 in Germany,” he began, and proceeded to recount his flight from an overcrowded family living in post-war destitution to Canada and riches and losses and of cobblers shops and farm-land, feuds with sons and disastrous divorces. He told me about building a plywood sailboat, a cruising boat, he built it on his farm in Alberta and trucked it to the sea. He showed me photographs in an album, he pointed to pictures of beautiful women squinting in the tropical sunlight, posing on his boat. He told me about the birth of his son, at a hospital in Jamaica that didn’t cost much, had the appearance of a social club, women gossiping on the verandah. There were some photos of his last wife, the boys mother, far younger than Fritz and perhaps more focused on the destination than the journey.

The Gulvik was also seventy nine years old. While still a serviceable vessel it was at the end of its career. It had a long fishing career catching hundred of thousands of pounds of salmon along the west coast of british columbia and had been converted to recreational use by previous owners, some of whom I have met on the beach. Fritz had bought the boat several months ago with the intention of moving aboard. He was frustrated by the high cost of rent at the apartment building he lived in and had actually moved out just before the boat broke free. He told me that before the boat was wrecked he was all set, his will was wrtten, his funeral payed for, and the boat would be home for the last years of his life. He had some work done to the boat, installing all the comforts of home and was looking forward to living afloat again, to get away from the neighbors and the high cost of city life.

He was now afraid of being blamed for the mess his shipwreck would create and wanted to get rid of the boat. We drew up a bill of sale in duplicate and we each signed it. It said that I had bought the vessel from him for one dollar with the understanding that I would remove it from where it was on the beach.