Liveaboards.

I was a liveaboard on my sailboat in Alaska for about a year. It was great.

It was also a very interesting existence as it was technically illegal. I guess you could say it was illegal but overlooked. Truth is the city fathers outlawed it in a futile effort to drive people ashore and make them rent a place and pay hideously high rents. Like most laws they were designed to take away someone's money and put it in someone else's pocket.

I'd imagine the harbormaster went along with it because it simply gave him another tool to work with. He could selectively enforce the law to keep things running smoothly. He could give troublemakers the boot and overlook those that were helpful to maintaining good order.

For the most part, liveaboards were actually a good thing as they kept their eyes opened and would give the harbor cops a jingle if they saw anything suspicious. The harbormaster knew this and it made his job easier. It made sense for us to do this as running thieves off was in our best interests.

This tended to breed a certain kind of self-reliant individual.

I think I posted somewhere about how a group of us wanted a dog gate installed to keep animal messes off of the pier. When the city fathers balked at the measly $100 or so to install it we started putting bathroom tissue on fresh piles of doggie poo and instantly stories of a phantom crapper started running wild.

It took the harbormaster a couple of days to figure that one out and was coincidentally authorized overtime to solve the mystery. The overtime was greatly appreciated as the harbor cops had bills to pay just like everyone else.

When the harbor cops had enough overtime the mystery was solved and a dog door mysteriously appeared. One harbor cop actually unofficially thanked us for that one. He said they had wanted a dog gate for some time. 

I spent two brief periods living on board in Port townsend, Washington and was made privy to a couple of liveaboard things there. Some weekenders would leave their halyards unsecured and on windy nights the ting...ting...ting of the halyard slapping an aluminum mast was the Devil's Tattoo.

Someone got some bungee type materiel and a bnch of coat hangers and we made bungee cords and secured the halyards. Come the next weekend the weekenders showed up and all but one of them seemed to be pleasantly surprised and either used them or wrapped their halyards around the mast to silence them.

There's always one and he ranted and raved about being boarded and threw the bungee over the side. 

He went home Sunday around sundown and ten minutes after he left the wind picked up. An hour or so later it was dark. At that point someone boarded me and stuck their hand below and growled "Gimme you're damned cable cutter."

I did and a minute later I was treated to the clatter as a stainless steel halyard hit a fiberglass deck. Thirty seconds later an arm holding my cable cutter entered my hatch. I took the cutter and heard a voice say, "Let's listen to that for a while."

To this day I don't know who it was.

The following weekend I got to hear the jerk that owned the vandalized boat rant and rave. He said he reported it to the harbormaster and when he saw me he started asking questions. He picked me because I was the first one he saw. I suggested he call Honolulu and get in touch with the famous Chinese detective, Charlie Chan and have him come and solve this big mystery. That added to his anger and I simply laughed at his plight.

Fixing the halyard was going to cost him a few bucks and he wasn't happy about it. Nobody had any sympathy for him, though.

I later heard that when he reported it, the harbormaster asked the guy why he didn't simply be considerate and use the bungee cord that was given to him for free. Then he said he'd 'look into it'. I think the harbormaster asked his dog what happened and got no answer so he closed the 'investigation'.

Oh, yeah. One of the guys told me that I had stolen his materiel. He had planned on using the Charlie Chan line. Brilliant minds must think alike.

The other liveaboard thing I dealt with in PT was part of was the deal they cut with the Coast Guard.

The Coasties had a bad habit of throwing a pretty good sized wake when they left and jostling us all over hell. We approached them one day en-masse and told the officers we wanted to see the Chief. We wanted to get something done.

The compromise we made was that if it was anything but a rescue they would leave on a slow bell. If there was any type of a rescue they would let us know. Incidentally we all insisted that a rescue situation meant flank speed for the Coasties. We respected that part of their mission. Lives were at stake.

I spoke up. "Can you let us know somehow? Bells? Whistles? Something?"

"I can do that," said the Chief.

"What's it going to be?" asked somebody else.

He Chief gave us a big grin. "You'll know and it will be unmistakable," he said.

The Coasties came and went about their business in the harbor at a slow bell for the next few days. 

Then one night around 2300 as I was sacking out I was brought straight upright as I heard the opening notes of the William Tell Overture blasting away. In a second I knew it was from the Coast Guard boat's PA sytem and immediately I knew what it meant. I braced myself for the wake I knew was coming as the huge boat cranked up and left its moorings at flank speed.

(Old guys know this particular piece of music as the Lone Ranger theme song)

The next day I heard from a couple of amused people that they figured the Chief would pull something like that. None of us had any problem with it and a few of us wandered by and told the Coasties that we were grateful for the warning. Almost everyone thought it was the perfect piece of music to serve as a warning to stand by because the United States Coast Guard was going To The Rescue. 

Later in Kodiak a couple with a kid moved into a ramshackle houseboat and let the kid run free on the docks. He went over the side a couple of times and I had to go into the water to fish the little yard ape out. The first time I verbally blistered the father's ass. The second time he was treated to a shot in the solar plexus. He reported that one to a harbor cop.

The cop asked me my side of the story and when he heard it, replied "Nobody said anything about THAT $hit!" Then he suggested we both go up onto Near Island and settle our differences like men.

The father refused, having already taken one to the gut earlier that day. He figured I'd rearrange his face. As mad as I was with the irresponsible jerk I sure would have. To this day I can not see how parents could let a clumsy little kid like that run around on a dock.

Inside 24 hours the couple and kid were ashore. Selective law enforcement in action. 

They griped to the city fathers who told the harbormaster to do something. He told the cop to take care of it and the cop chased me down and told me I was a bad boy. I suppose that would have ended it if I hadn't pouted. When I pouted he told me that I couldn't pout for sour apples and I'd best give him a better pouty face than that. I did, he said it was more like it and the incident ended there. He was a character that knew his job and knew people.

A few weeks later a couple of the guys caught someone trying to steal electronics from a pleasure boat. They didn't know who owned the boat because if they had they likely would have ignored it. I knew who owned the boat and had I seen the guy I would likely have helped him. The owner was a jerk and a city big shot.

The guys simply beat the hell out of him, threw him off the float and took the electronics and piled them up inside the guys cabin. The thief hauled himself out of the water and fled while the guys returned his stuff. The next day we tipped off the harbor guys because we saw trouble brewing over that one.

Sure enough, a few days later the owner came by his boat and saw his electronics on his galley table and went straight to the harbor patrol accusing us of vandalizing his boat. He didn't get far. It was quickly pointed out to him that he owed the fact that he even had electronics at all was because of the 'E float irregulars' as he dubbed us. He told him he ought to buy us a case of beer!

One of the harbor guys had seen my boat and the way I had done her up and recommended me as the guy to re install his gear. He actually hired me and I re installed his VHF, LORAN, and part of his depth sounder. He was so impressed he had me do a lot of rewiring for him. Every connection was crimped, soldered and taped.   

The harbor cops were given an awful lot of latitude and overlooked a lot, really. There was a tacit agreement with the city police that they didn't enter the harbor without permission of the harbor patrol unless it was something really horrible that required immediate attention. 

A few years earlier before I became a liveaboard a couple of go-getter hot dog cops tried to board a fish boat looking for drugs. The skipper saw it coming and flipped the lines off making the boat legally underway. The cops boarded and were promptly thrown over the far side. When the smoke cleared in court a few days later the cops were found to be out of their juristiction as the boat was legally underway. Actually the thing ended in courtroom. The judge threw it out. The judge said it was a federal matter and the court didn't have the jurisdiction to try the case. 

I heard they had to hire a diver to find their guns and duty belts which they dumped to stay afloat. After that the local cops stayed pretty clear of the docks. They left things to the harbor patrol.

One funny thing happened to me personally, though.

There was a certain city cop that was a pain in the ass and a real go-getter. Most of his fellow cops hated him.

One cold night I left the Anchor Bar and took a pretty good hit when I slipped on some ice. I had not been drinking as I was in there doing some kind of business, but I was pretty sore. I limped and the hot dog cop saw me and I guess he figured I was pretty tanked. I saw him and figured out what was going on so I staggered my way back to the boat which was in nearby St. Paul's harbor.

The engine was out of it getting repaired and I hoisted the sails and started making way for Dog Bay, across the channel. The hot dog decided that he was going to try and tag me for a DUI and went over to the Harbor Patrol and asked to be taken to Dog Bay. The harbor patrolman had no real choice and took him there post haste beating me to my slip.

I sailed into the slip pretty as pie and tied her up and was approached by the pair of them. The policeman started questioning me and the harbor cop interrupted him and told him my sailboat wasn't a motor vehicle as the engine was sitting on the dock.

The cop turned beet red when he realized he had nothing and the pair of them left. After the harbor patrolman dropped the cop off he returned to me and noticed I was stone cold sober and asked me what that was all about. I told him and he grinned and shook his head. I guess he didn't like that particular cop, either. Truth is almost nobody on the harbor patrol or the police force could stand him.  

I believe the DUI laws have been changed to include sailboats now, but even so I was sober as a judge that night.

Another thing that often happened is the liveaboards were pretty generous with any freebies they found. I was constantly having people over for dinner and being invited over to dinner on someone's boat. Generally it wasn't anything fancy but there was usually a lot of it and it was good. Very little of it came from the supermarket. Generally it was fish, duck or venison. It was considered good manners to bring beer if you were flush but OK not to if you were broke.

We all were highly trained scroungers, recyclers and qualified dumpster divers and generally looked out for each other. Generally someone would check in at the Anchor Bar every day and report the goings on there. Every so often there was a free party and we were part of it. 

They kept a typewriter in the corner of the bar for people to use. It was originally put by somebody that said we could use it to write a pornographic novel on and sell to an outfit in California and use the proceeds to party with. Every so often someone would chip away at it and I believe they did get a few bucks for the trash people wrote. 

I used that typewriter to battle with Fish and Game all winter trying to get a permit to fish mermaids. Alaska bureaucracy at the time had a pretty good sense of humor. I sent in a prospectus and was told they were an endangered species. I asked why they were not on the list and a battle of wits ensued for several months. About every eight or ten days I'd get an answer and I'd go straight to the typewriter and fire one back. It kept a lot of people interested and entertained. I ought to write about that some time. 

Often I would find useful things in my cockpit when I came back to the boat after being ashore. Several times I found freshly killed and gutted ducks. One of the guys was a wing shooter and was generous. The ducks tasted a little fishy but were pretty good after you got used to it.

I remember finding a humongous pile of torn up halibut gear in a dumpster and unceremoniously dumping on someone's deck because I figured he could use it. He came home pleasantly surprised and a couple days later I found a mostly full quart can of varnish in my cockpit as a thank you. It took him days to untangle the gear but time we seemed to have although money was short. 

The day after I gave him the tangled up ball of gear he bought a six-pack and I spent the afternoon helping him untangle it and making sure he didn't drink the whole thing and get tanked. It gave me something to do. A few days later he helped me strip a couple wooden combings and we took them to Tony's Bar where I hid them in the back room for a day or so to warm it up and then re varnished them. It took a few days as I put several coats on it. When they dried I took the combings back in and re installed them.

There was one liveaboard that was a little slow and we all looked out after him. His boat was an open skiff and he slept under a tarp. That got fixed in short order. We scraped up some plywood somewhere and decked part of it in for him and that kept him dry. Someone else loaned him a heater of some sort and he managed until he sneaked off hunting one day and wound up getting eaten by a bear.

The truth is that one by one guys dropped out of wintering on board. A couple had a messy breakup I won't get into here. Later on that winter their boat got mysteriously got stolen. A few days later he left town for Seldovia and was last seen arriving there. About two or three years later a post card caught up to me from him with a Solomon Islands post mark on it. Let's leave it at that.

We had a suicide unrelated to being a liveaboard. A couple guys found convenient wintertime girlfriends and went ashore to stay with them. Another guy got sick and wound up at the Mayo Clinic. 

Come early April there were two of us that had wintered successfully and some of the other guys slowly trickled back in. For me it had been a great winter, but for some it had been rough. There were two of us left and the truth is we had fared better as liveaboards than we would have ashore. It was in our nature to live that way, I guess.

Actually it was in April I was mentally overwhelmed when I saw I was one of two guys left on the float. I got a little over emotional and went on a brief crying jag. The harbor cop I knew well saw me and simply went on board my boat and emerged with my Camels, Zippo and a glass of brandy and sat me down and heard me out. You don't find good cops like that anymore. He was a rare one for the times, too when you think about it. I doubt any cops today would hand an upset person a drink. Maybe a smoke and a shoulder to cry on, though.

I would imagine today they would have carted me off for observation of some sort when all I needed was to calm down and vent.

The truth be known, he was an interesting man. He respected us, liked us and treated us like friends which in a way we were. He neither drank nor smoked but didn't look down on those of us who did. He accepted us for what we were, a group of odd ducks with adventuresome souls. He kept us posted and let us know when trouble was brewing. In return we did what we could to make his job easier. He had never married and sometimes I think he regarded us as the sons he never had. 

I his giving me a place to vent that time was a generous payback after the suicide a couple months earlier. Both of us were entering the greasy spoon for his memorial service and neither of us could bring ourselves to go in. Instead we stayed outside telling each other stories about the screwed up things the deceased had done until we were both laughing ourselves sore.  

It didn't bring him back, but it sort of made his loss bearable. The suicide was a well loved part of the gang.

Incidentally when I heard his father was coming to bring his son's body back I spent hours cleaning his brains off of the coachroof and squaring away his boat. The city cops were pissed off I had altered a crime scene but this particular harbor cop stepped in and reminded them that basic decency prohibited letting a father walk in on such a terrible thing. I later heard the harbormaster himself intervened on my behalf in that one.

I also met his father at the airport and helped him out for a couple days.

Another thing happened to the two of us that lasted all winter. We were quietly given keys to the shower next to the harbormaster's building. We could use the shower there that had been closed for years because some of the fishermen left the place in terrible shape and ruined it for everyone else.

The other guy and myself went in there and fixed things up and scrubbed the place down from top to bottom. We kept it clean and as a result we were allowed to use it. Nobody else was, though, except on very rare occasions. I think one or two of the harbor cops didn't have running water in the winter and cleaned up there. That would be my guess. At three bucks a shower in the laundromat or having to go to someone's house it saved us either money, gas or goodwill with our shoreside dwelling friends.

Several of us had a codes with the harbormaster's office in case we wanted to report something on the marine VHF and not have anyone else know what was going on. I'd ask the person on duty to loan me $20 the next time I saw them  and in minutes there would be a harbor patrolman showing up. I only used that once when someone coked up, drunk and out of his mind started looking to start trouble one night. They arrived and carted him off in a matter of seconds. He was being a danger to himself and everyone else.

Still, it was a pretty discrete way to call the harbor patrol. Incidentally the following day after I called them I got a thank you from the harbormaster himself. 

I suppose that being a liveaboard in other places is a whole lot different but that's what it was like for me for the time I lived aboard. One thing remains pretty solid, though. You get out of something what you put into it. I was generous with my time and effort and got it back in spades.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY