< : 4 _ Even — seagoing ‘rubes’ - - Can ap| reciate __ By. KARL BEGRICH - Sailors hang around sailboats and prefer to. talk shop only to their own kind. Power- boaters prefer to talk about high per- formance engines and have a -hard_ time relating to raghangers. Sailors have the ten- ‘dency to look down at stinkpotters. But what do fishermen -think about us_ pleasure boaters? - Last week I had a first-hand opportunity t to find ‘out. The perfect spring day lead me to the Marinas in ’ Richmond. I had the urge to look at flashy boats and talk. to old sailing buddies. But. somehow I ended up at the fishdock i in Steveston. By noon I was sitting with a bunch of fishermen on the edge of the fuel dock holding on to a bottle of beer that was pushed into my hand. | tried to get a conversation going and admired the = sturdy fish-boats, the workhorses of our Pacific coast. The guy next to me, (the called him ‘Tugboat’ Joe) was obviously nursing a hangover, and he had hardly recovered from what caused it. His eyes were so red he kept looking out to the mouth of the Fraser and telling me what a beautifu sunrise it was that morning—and it was high noon. Besides, he was looking towards the west, which he didn’t realize at the time. In spite of Tugboat Joe keeping an eye out to seaward, it was his buddy Jack (nickname ‘Pigface’) who first saw the boat coming up the river. It was a sailing yacht—and what a beaut. You don’t see a flashy 60 foot yacht every day closing in on an oily fishing fleet. Tugboat Joe woke up **Hey, this — ain't a stopping place for sailors’. As it got close enough for even Tugboat Joe to see its t Salling Lessons Come out to sea with us in our 26' Thunderbirds 6 lessons for $79 Gat your certificate from us Next course starts 8 P.M. JUNE 6 THUNDERBIRD GAILING SCHOOL (Est. 1908) 2640 Botleyue Ave., Weat Vancouver 926-2634 ‘side, beautiful-details through his red mist, he poked me in the repeating himself. * ‘“‘There is one of your ragboats coming. Look at that ragboat:. Haven’t seen one of them pretty Ttagboats for years.” . She -was.a fine, beautiful thing, sat on her. line__real-. and. she was chugging slowly ~ towards the fueldock under power. Real quiet engine. She was a fibreglass boat, which got a grumpy snort out of Pigface, who thinks glass boats. are all bleach bottles and fit for nothing else. But she had a lot. of teak on her—and she was kept up well. Not a spot on anything rail, stanchions, pulpit clean and shiny. ' The man at ‘the helm, cut-off jeans, laid her along- . side the fueldock. Jack and ] . got up and took the lines and helped make her fast. Tugboat Joe’s eyes cleared up in a second when he saw what came up the compan- ionway. She was a girl in a bikini what didn’t leave much to the imagination. When she saw the look on Joe’s face, she popped down below very fast and came back up a minute later wearing some kind of wrap around jacket out of towel- ling. Meanwhile, Jack handed the skipper the hose from the diesel pump, making sure that’s what was wanted, and asked how much the tank might take. He almost fell off the dock when the sailor said he'd probably only need five gallons. Some of the fishing boats burn that much getting their creeky old engines going in the morning. Learn to Sail in just 10 Easy 3 howr classes North Shore Sailing School Ltd. 180) Grenville 5t., vi anceuver wader north ond of bridge - right off Beach Ave. ot Bewter’s Tol, 669-0840 fellow when he topped of _ college, and while he’s got _the smarts, he didn’t learn | pretty: Sails. were_al]. furled__ the manners, and he asked - ing, and cold sober after his Pigface Jack asked the - last. We. waited a long time. for the answer. Sometime a | month ago, maybe two, he . told us, apologizing for not being sure. 4 Pigface Jack has been at ‘the skipper right out, what: . the yacht cost him. Oureyes widened when he told us, he picked ‘it up for only $100,000! - Anyway, he took in his lines, after paying for the fuel, backed out into the middle of the muddy Fraser and headed upriver towards New Westminster. When the lady took off her wrapper and stood up on. deck in her bikini, Tugboat Joe did fall off the dock. FRAMED NEATLY by the photographer’ 's sailboat, a small sailboat heads west on a We fished him out sputter- tack in southern Howe Sound. (Ellsworth Dickson photo) dip. We all decided to go for a ‘Grog. The sun was starting to fall over the yard arm anyway. The bartender didn’t mind Joe’s dripping condition a bit. He was used to serving wet customers. Most of the fishermen get wet from rain and spray when out fishing, but water's water, and wet is wet. I was delighted to be able to talk about sailboats to these people. Folks from the Sober Joe wondered if he should go back to a sailing | boat like the one his father used to fish in back on the East coast. Jack ended all our philosophizing. First off, he pointed out that powerboats. are more efficient at fishing, that manhours cost more than gasoline and probably would, even if fuel prices kept going up. We finally agreed we are better off with motors in our boats. . Tugboat Joe (1 never found how he got that name) stared into his third beer. The Grog hadn’t done him any good. He looked up and said that we had forgotten something. ‘Sailing, he said, ‘‘is just too darned much work, and you cannot be a_ working sailor and working fisherman at the same time without plenty of muscle.’”’ We drank to that! city sometimes think they are a bunch of seagoing rubes— but they are far from that—and they can apprec- iate a pretty boat. 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