THE DELTA QUEEN

Larry was a prairie boy. Like many boys born in Saskatchewan during the dust filled 1930s, he had always had a longing for the ocean. More to the point he had a suppressed obsession with owning a grand ocean going boat.

larry and Beth married in the mid 50s and moved to B.C. all on the same day, a few years later they moved to Delta. As the reader may know, Delta is a Municipality located on the ocean at the furthest South Western tip of mainland Canada. It took a few years and a few children later, but finally larry made the plunge and bought what was to his eye, a jewel of a ship. To more knowledgeable seafaring blokes it may have appeared to be more of a lemon.

To be sure Larry did have a few problems at first. He now owned a beautiful 21ft Cabin cruiser with a 110-horse power Volvo inboard/outboard that positively gleamed. It was with great excitement and expectation he for the first time pressed the start button.

Nothing.

Well not quite nothing, there was a little click. Eventually after several ‘experts’ giving their opinions with no results, the motor was shipped to the Volvo repair shop where it was determined the pistons were rusted solid to the cylinder walls. Several hundred dollars later the engine was returned and put into the boat, but not until a foot of water was pumped out of the wooden hulled beauty. This craft looked like a fiberglass boat, but in fact it was plywood, covered with fiberglass, this made it (at least for prairie boy) most difficult to find any leaks.

In any event Larry spent many a happy hour tinkering and fooling around with his beauty.  It was on one of these tinkering days (tinkering at the dock was much safer than getting out on the big ocean) on a spring afternoon that Larry had what was to be remembered for many years by his fellow Air Traffic Controllers as the “Adventure of the Delta Queen”

Larry was on his way to work at the Vancouver Airport on the afternoon shift and as he often did, left early so he could work on his boat. He took his good clothes to change into after working on the boat; no dummy was our friend Larry. So after an hour or so of basically wasting time, a brilliant thought stuck Larry, why not go to work with his boat. It is important here to visualize the terrain in this part of the world. The municipality of Delta is south of Vancouver BC, the south arm of the Fraser river is the northern boundary between Richmond and delta.  The Fraser River as it flows into the Straight of Georgia divides into three arms, The North Arm (which separates Richmond from Vancouver) the Middle Arm (which has the seaplane dock for Vancouver International Airport and The Air Traffic Control Centre) and the South Arm.

He threw his good clothes into the boat, pushed the starter, put it into reverse looked behind him, gave it a bit of  throttle and immediately fell to the floor as the bow rope tightened to the dock.

                                 This is where it all started

As he slowly chugged past the men working on their nets (AT JUST THE PERFECT SPEED TO MAKE THE GREATEST BOW WAVE) he felt like the proud and brave seafarer he was rapidly becoming. He realized this was true as the men all waved to him in what he took to be a nautical one fingered salute as he passed.

It was so peaceful sitting on his high stool on the bridge looking at this new and wonderful world, starting out on his first little adventure with his ship going down to the sea. As he chugged along he only had one more friendly one finger wave from a very large fellow, who it seemed to Larry was maybe chocking, since his face was quite red.

        Chugging too close to these guys as they worked – not good idea

No time to worry about strangers health, must keep alert to find where this famous Ladner Reach met the large South Arm of the mighty Fraser.  He really need not worry as it ran straight (well it did after the bridge opener guy at the Westham Island bridge told him to turn around) into this large rather scary body of water, complete with large ocean going freighters and local fishing vessels.

Reaching the South Arm was quite a thrill. Larry as was his wont spoke to himself out loud. ‘Well Larry boy, you did it, all we do now is follow the river to the Strait of Georgia make a right, another right at the Middle Arm and there you are at the Air Traffic Control Centre, piece of  cake.’ Once again Larry marveled at the beautiful blue sky and the feel of the sun on his face, although he did notice that as he proceeded west toward the ocean there seemed to be a little mist forming. Now was the time to see what this baby would do, he opened the throttle almost full and the feeling of power and joy thrilled his little heart. However he was a bit reluctant to open it all the way up as there was quite a bit of chop around from all the boats around. So Larry just left it so the hull was not planning properly, just at that in between speed  (maybe 15 knots) to use the most fuel.

After about what seemed a very long time heading away from land he passed the lightship, and almost immediately lost sight of land. What a feeling, all alone, just water, sun and mist, or was that fog on the water? It really didn’t matter as the sun was shining through, and it was now smooth as glass. Larry being an Air traffic Controller knew he  wasn’t  out of the shallows yet, and depending on the tide you had to go further out. Unfortunately Larry had not checked the tide tables, but like he figured they wouldn’t mean much to him anyway since this was his first time on the ocean. So he just decided to go a good ways out to make sure. The feeling of the water thumping the hull, and the exhilarating cool fresh damp air against his face was beyond joy. Suddenly it dawned on Larry; he had been steaming away from land for quite some time.  So he made a ninety degree right turn, pushed the throttle to the firewall and almost instantly his beautiful craft leveled out on the step and he was literally flying at about 30 knots.

As he cruised along with no cares in the world, the sun shining weakly through the thin fog, he kept a sharp eye out for water traffic and was just a little nervously scanning to his right for any sight of land. He figured he was getting close to the Middle Arm as he could see aircraft climbing off runway 26 at Vancouver International. As he strained his eyes to find sight of land he glanced to the stern, to admire his Volvo humming away. To say the sight he saw was shocking is an understatement of enormous proportions.

Larry had heard the saying ‘Rooster Tail” when referring to those monster speed boats that raced down in Seattle. It never crossed his mind his cruiser could ever go fast enough to make a rooster tail. So one can imagine, or maybe not, the joy and fascination Larry felt as he saw this plume of water rising at least ten feet into the sky behind his speeding craft.  At virtually the same instant Larry noticed something else: the plume behind him was brown, sort of the color of sand. Now Larry was a very quick thinking individual, his thought process went something like this – brown – sand – expensive Volvo engine – sand going through engine – very bad – cut throttle. Larry instantly cut the power.

A very big mistake.

The craft went from 30 knots to zero in about two seconds. When Larry picked himself of the deck it was eerily quiet, no slapping hull sound, no wind sound, no motor sound, silence. He stood up (as best he could on the twenty degree angle of the deck) and looked around. All he could see in any direction was water and thin fog, it was as if he had been dropped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in a life raft, granted a rather large life raft. His first thought when he chopped the power was he had hit a small submerged sand bar. As he took stock of the situation he noticed the water was about four inches deep. This really didn’t worry Larry that much, he could just get out of the boat and drag it off the little sand bar and away he would go. So with this in mind he took off his shoes and socks, and jumped over the side into the water. Larry was surprised to find the water rather warm, as he went around to the bow to unravel a bit of anchor rope and get this adventure back on track.

It turned out dragging a twenty foot boat grounded into sand was not going to be the piece of cake Larry thought.  As he pulled the ten foot length of rope from the bow (which was about five foot high) he sort of dug the hull deeper into the sand. In fact he couldn’t make it budge. As he stood in the warm water in the glorious sunshine he wasn’t really too worried since he still had a few hours to get to work, so he took off his shirt and pants, threw them into the boat, and in his underwear surveyed the situation from outside the boat. He decided to try and find out how large this sandbar really was, so he started walking away from the boat. After splashing merrily along for a few minutes two things struck him simultaneously, one, this was a very large sandbar, and two the boat was getting hard to see through the mist. The thought of losing sight of the boat made his heart sort of skip a beat and he hurriedly returned to the safety of his boat.

Larry now realized he was going to be here for bit of time, so he decided to lie on the deck and get some sunshine while he tried to figure out his next move. It occurred  to him that if the tide was coming in, he would be afloat before too long, if it was going out he would notice that for sure, but he wasn’t going to dwell on that possibility until it became a reality. As he lay there with his eyes closed Larry imagined the craft would move every now and then, but he would look over the side and everything appeared the same.  After enjoying the quiet and sunshine for about a half hour, a disturbing thought struck Larry. What if the tide was coming in, but just keeping the boat at the same level as it moved them closer to shore, wherever that was.

With this disturbing thought going through his mind Larry decided to use the whole hundred feet of rope do try and drag the boat out to deeper water. Being further out would lessen the angle from the bow to the water, and hopefully let him get out to deeper water. Before he again entered the water he decided to take off his shorts as he didn’t want them wet when he got to work. So now naked he began uncoiling the rope to its entire length. As he worked away he  noticed little waves pushing the craft to the east, he now figured he was definitely on the right track. As he  got to the end of the rope the boat look a long way back, as he strained with all his might to get it moving. For a few moments it looked hopeless, but then he felt the slightest ,movement he strained even harder and if he kept the pressure on the rope the ship was slowly following him, like a dog on a leash. 

 Larry realized this might be a rather long trek, so with head down and back straining  he staggered along,  but at least he was encouraged as he heard the departing aircraft going over head, meaning he was close to his destination. He went along for some time like this, head down, straining back, and  imperceptibly at first but then he realized the strain was getting noticeably less. At the same instant he noticed the water was above his knees. As the depth of the water increased the fog simply melted away, and Larry full of hope decided to look at where he was going.

As Larry looked up he was dumfounded to see a very large Japanese cargo ship not more than three hundred yards from him. It was probably a tossup as to who was shocked the most, Larry or the crewmembers leaning against the railings of their ship, looking at a naked  man, out of sight of land, walking on or in the water, pulling a boat behind? It was at this time he noticed the Pacific Western Airlines, Convair 540, banking rather steeply right overhead, he could almost make out the faces of the crew and

passengers as it flew by, so he waved. 

And he waved to the men on the Cargo Ship.

And they waved back

At the same time at the Vancouver ACC the following dialog was taking place.

“Departure, PW 323 is with you.”

“Pacific western 323 Departure, radar identified, climb runway heading to twenty-five hundred, then left direct the VOR, climb on course”

“Roger, twenty-five hundred, left on course, PW 323.”

“Roger”

About one minute goes by.

“Uh, Departure PW 323.”

“323 Go”

“Yeah, Departure we’re going to level off here for a moment, something strange on the water.”

“That’s approved 323, let me know the situation.”

“Will Do.”

About another minute goes by.

“Departure 323.”

“Go, 323.”

Laughing “You won’t believe it Departure, there is a real life African Queen scenario going on down there, some guy miles from shore is walking in shallow water pulling a cabin cruiser behind him. And you won’t believe this there is a very large freighter that looks like it is about to run him over. Oh, and now he is waving at us – he looks happy, and the crew on the freighter appear to be waving at him – oh and by the way he is starker’s. We are now continuing the climb on course.”

Dave the Departure controller turned to the Arrival controller Al, and told him the story.

They both laughed then Al said “Sounds like it might be that idiot Larry trying out his new lemon.” They both laughed and continued working.

Epilogue:

            The rest of Larry’s day went relatively smooth. He went over his head in the water as he was waving to his friends. He finally got back to the dock after making bigger waves on the way into his berth. The friendly fishermen did not wave. \no they did one better several of them met him and helped him tie up as he bumped into the dock.

            They actually were not very pleased with him as it turned out. With clenched fists these very healthy fellows explained in very plain language the trouble he had caused them. As Larry was apologizing and explaining his predicament one of the biggest fellows cut off his explanation.

            “Aren’t you number nine who plays for the North Delta hockey team?”

“Well yes, why do you ask?”

“I’m from North Delta and go to all the Games at the Army base in ladner, you are my favorite player.”

So things went swimmingly from there on.

Except for being an hour late for work.

And trying to explain it wasn’t him out there pulling the boat.