Mayday

There’s a sad collection of derelict vessels anchored in pretty well every harbour.  Some are worse than others – Brentwood Bay for instance has a particularly bad reputation as a last resting place of uncared for boats.  Saturday night when we pulled into the yacht club in Tsehum Harbour I recognized some of the derelicts that were there last year but this one in particular looked worse than I remembered it looking.

Sunday morning I said to Marilyn “I think that boat is sinking – it looks even worse than it did last night.”  Then I snapped a couple of pictures of it, we talked about hulks in general for a few minutes and both of us promptly forgot the conversation.  Until about an hour later. 

We could hear the Victoria Coast Guard trying to raise “Gypsy Wind”.  She sounded a little frustrated, like they often do when a vessel repeatedly hails them but doesn’t respond when they answer.  A while later we could hear Gypsy Wind hailing the Coast Guard and just about at the point where I thought maybe I should relay for them, they finally heard the Coast Guard response.  As soon as they said they wanted to report a vessel sinking in Tsehum Harbour I made sure I followed them up the dial when they moved off channel 16.  Sure enough they were reporting the same boat I had taken pictures of that morning. 

The woman at the Coast Guard was a little annoyed with Gypsy Wind for not responding to her so she first had to chastise him for his radio use.  Then she was clearly reluctant to accept his claim that the boat was actually sinking.  At one point she asked him “have you observed this vessel in the past?”  To which he responded “only a couple of times a day for the last 3 years.”  At that point she seemed to accept his assessment of the situation and moved on to the rote questions “GPS location?” “Any environmental contamination?” Etc.  Maybe we should have reported it but in hindsight my 2 observations in 24 hours likely wouldn’t have convinced her that it actually was going down.

We’ll be back at the club next Saturday – I’m curious to see if the boat is gone.