Ad - Wednesday, September 28, 1983 - North Shore News

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

are 0 ‘halibut

A FRIEND OF MINE, Pat Moore, the Greenpeace
chap, found himself on the endangered species list
recently when he got dumped in Quatsino Sound,
on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island.

He’d headed out at 6:30 a.m.

to go fishing at a place called.

North Danger Rock, a
submerged plateau where
kelp beds attract all sorts of
fish. It is located in the
mouth of the Sound, nearly
two miles from the nearest
beach.

A westerly was blowing,
although not too hard.
Travelling in his little
aluminum outboard, Pat

took an hour getting to the .:
spot he wanted and quickly vs
caught two ling cod and a

couple of rock cod that he in-
tended to use for crab bait.
As he was jigging, his hook
got snagged on what he
thought was the bottom. He
tugged away until,
amazement, he realized he
had a halibut on the.end of

the line. He estimated the —

creature.to be.150 pounds. |
He got a gaff hook into it,
but the monster broke away,
pulling Pat’s little boat with
_ its:six-hp. engine around in
circles.
Using all his strength, Pat
. finally hauled it to the sur-
face again, gaffing it once
This ..time, it didn’t

VICTORIA -- MLAs
escaped another all night
‘sitting of, the legislature,
giving final reading to one
piece of legislation before
adjourning just before
10:30 p.m. Monday.

VANCOUVER -- Sexual
assaults on children in Co-
quitlam and in the area of
the University of British
Columbia have prompted
police to issue warnings.
In Coquitlam, a threc-
year-old boy and a nine-
year-old girl were lured in-
to a wooded area by a
man with a camera and

MANILA -- Despite fierce
government reaction to
demonstrations, opposi-
tion to Phillipine strong
man Ferdinand Marcos
continues to grow.

“to his -

d Pat made his big.

gets final okay

Sexual attacks
bring warnings

Opposition groups
gather in Manila

He pulled the halibut into

‘the boat with him, hammer-

ing it on the head repeatedly,
aware, even though he’d
never caught a_ halibut
before, that they are extreme-
ly difficult to kill. Most
fishermen, in fact, dispatch
them with a rifle.

An eleven-foot boat is
hardly the proper vessel for
carrying a fish of that size
and Pat realized it, but by

then couldn’t see any way of

getting it back into the water
without capsizing.
So he quickly started the

home at Winter Harbor. H
hadn’t travelled very far,
however,

engine and headed for his
e

coming down on one of the
gunwales. The boat tipped

sideways and was immediate- |

ly swamped.

As he went over, Pat grab- |

bed his lifejacket. Then he
was bobbing in the icy water,

his boat upside down, just.

the bow sticking up (thanks

The legislation given
approval is Bill 7 which
will allow municipalities
to put in place the variable
mill rate where different
property classifications
can be taxed at different
levels.

the girl was attacked. The
man is described as 30
years of age, with straw-
berry blonde hair.

in Vancouver, an
11-year-old boy playing at
an elementary school was
coaxed into a wooded area
by a man who requested
help in looking for some
people and was attacked.

The Laban party, which
was headed by assassinat-
ed leader Beningo
Aquino, has adopted a
resolution calling for a
congress of all anti-Marco
groups.

before the fish —
“‘just came alive in the bot-_.
tom of the boat.’’ It lurched ':
-two feet straight into the air, “|

righted so long as the out-
board engine remained, so he
unclamped it and let it sink.
The boat’s stern rose, but it
‘ was still upside down and the
wind was coming up. The
waves were about a foot
high, washing over his head.

A powerfully-built guy,
Pat managed to wrestle the
boat into an upright position,
leaving him in a situation
where the boat was full of

water, with more water
splashing in every few
seconds.

The next step was to push
down on the stern so the bow
came up, spilling some of the
water, then hanging on to the
sides and:reaching an arm in-
‘side to paddle and splash the

water out as fast as he’ ‘Could. ©

OPEN

7 DAYS A WEEK
FOR.

MEN & WOMEN

After 20 minutes of this, he
tried to slither aboard but on-

Jy succeeded in swamping the

boat again, His kidneys were
Starting to get cold and his
toes were numb.

Back into the water he
went, repeating the exercise,
keeping an eye on his water-
proof watch, knowing that at
60 minutes hypothermia
would be setting in.

After he’d been in the
water 52 minutes, he decided
it was time to make his last
desperate lurch over the stern
into the’ boat. It was a
delicate balancing act bet-
ween waves, but he was final-
ly sitting in a half-filled boat,
still a mile from shore, with
one oar which he had salvag-
ed during the first minutes in
the water. ;

Using this, he swept the re-
maining water out of the boat
and began a frantic
45-minute row to the
lighthouse at Kairns -Island,
where he was picked up. By
this time his teeth were chat-
tering rather badly - an
ecologist who almost fell

from: ‘grace with the sea, but
not quite.

"BMW. MUNICH, GERMANY. :
c 1982 BMW of North America, Inc The BMW trademark and logo
are registered trademarks of Bayerische Motoren Werke, A.G

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