Chapter 1: The Resurrection

I'd always imagined a life where I could retire early and do only the things I wanted to do. Maybe I would win the lottery, or maybe someone would recognize my special skills and pay me an insane amount of money to work for them. Or maybe the tooth fairy would leave me a few gold bars to tide me over. So much for fantasy.

What did I have to complain about? Nothing ... really. I'm not rich, but I'm secure. I'm not tied to an eight-to-five job. I'm a contractor who decides which jobs to accept and whom to accept them from. I'm not married and I don't expect to be. I live in an apartment in Vancouver on False Creek part time, and on a boat in Coal Harbour for the balance. All in all, I like my life and I want to keep it that way.

My boat is a 1959 50 foot Thornton Shadwell diesel cruiser. I inherited it from my father when he died. He hadn't used it for over ten years and you can imagine the state it was in when I first looked it over. I've spent a lot of money and far more time on restoring it to better than new. Along with the boat, I also inherited a nice house on a big piece of property in Burnaby and that fetched a handsome price on the exploding Greater Vancouver property market at the time.

My name is Patrick Samuel Hamelin. I am the only son of the late Samuel Wyler Hamelin. My mother disappeared long ago when I was a child. I was told she ran off with some guy she was having an affair with and was never heard from again. My father never remarried and while he had a couple of lady friends, he aw no need to risk the pain of marriage a second time.

I'll be twenty-nine years old next fall. I'm beginning to feel it, to be honest. Working around the boat is becoming somewhat of a chore now despite how much I love the Captain's Choice. I charter my boat for both cruising and fishing. I have two Zodiacs, one on the transom and one on the foredeck, that are ideal for inshore fishing. It's also a way to get people ashore when they want to go exploring some island or remote location.

My retirement fund is more than holding its own these days. I've enough charter work to cover my upkeep, maintenance costs and living expenses in the off season. I can afford to be choosy about who I accept as clients. I've been thinking about hiring a permanent deck hand, although I have no problem finding able-bodied young guys during the summer months. The local universities and colleges are loaded with potential crew who have some experience. What I've been thinking about is someone year-around.

I've also been wondering where to find another girl friend. My last one got fed up with my unwillingness to live ashore and get a "real job." I warned her from the start, but I guess she was sure she could change me. Ah well, there are plenty of fish in the sea, as the saying goes.

I'd just finished putting up the Christmas lights on the boat. I'd be participating in the "Carol Ships" parade in a week. It was about the only acknowledgement of Christmas I allowed myself. I had no family to get together with. In fact, I was the last of the Hamelins. I was an only child, as was my father. Christmas Eve would be celebrated by a couple of pints and dinner at McGillicuddy's Pub unless I got an invitation from one of my friends.

I was fully booked for customers on the Carol Ship nights. My usual catering firm had called me to confirm the menu and the boat was set up for the maximum twelve passengers I would allow. There were a total of twenty-two cruises from December 1^st onward, but I participated in only six of them, from the middle of the month to Christmas Eve. All my trips were on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

The cruise took from two to three hours, depending on the route, and the cost was $200 a head, catered. My costs were between $100 and $125 per head, depending on the route and the price tag of the cleaning crew the next morning. The closer to Christmas, the more things seemed to cost. I was happy with the profit, however. I probably could have charged more, but there was no need to get greedy. All in all, if things went as normal, I would take about $5,000 to $6,000 profit over the two weekends, a very nice Christmas present.

This year, Christmas Eve was a Monday night and it was an easy decision on which six nights to charter. My crew would be two young men I had hired previously. As college students, they needed the cash and were happy for the job and the tips that came with it. Serving drinks and making sure the food was in good supply was more work than it appeared, but I knew I could count on them.

I hadn't yet hired anyone to help me with the cleaning between charters. It would take about five to six hours from morning to afternoon for two of us to get everything done and ready for the next charter. Even a dozen people could make quite a mess when they started to party. The bar was run by a professional I hired at the union hall and it was a decent profit center as well.

A fellow captain and friend, Tom Thompson, would be with me on the bridge in case I had to go below to fix something that had caused a problem. Usually, it was one of the two toilets. Sea toilets can baffle some people. I'd pretty much decided that I would replace the two original units with new vacuum flush units, similar to what you'd find on an aircraft. More expensive and complex, but fewer problems in the long run.

Tom was almost a father figure to me. We had first met when I was taking on the task of restoring my father's boat. He had pulled his sailboat out of the water to clean and recoat the bottom and recognized my boat from the yacht club. We struck up a conversation when I was taking a break from scraping down the hull, and he gave me a couple of tips on how to make the work a little easier.

As time went by he visited regularly, even though his sailboat was back in the water and moored at the yacht club marina. He had a storehouse of contacts for some of the work and suggested places I could find parts and pieces for a boat of the age of Captain's Choice. It was he who recommended stainless steel deck fittings and the specific type of polyurethane best suited for the exterior brightwork. As time went on during that year of reconstruction, I became dependent on him if for no other reason than his encouragement and admiration of my work.

Tom and I could handle the wheel and docking and have plenty of time for pleasant conversation. Tom was sixty now, nearly thirty years older than me. He was a widower for the past five years and lived aboard his 42 foot ketch. He had retired from Air Canada as a senior pilot with a good pension. It was his plan that his wife and he would spend their retirement travelling the world. It would never happen.

He seldom chartered, preferring to sail alone since the death of his wife. They used to go everywhere along the B.C. coast together. I'm not sure when Tom will get over her loss ... if ever.

Tom's other values included his keen eyesight and an awareness of what was going on around him, even at night ... in the dark. A couple of years earlier, a novice boater decided to take a short cut into the harbour after the parade was past and cut between a tug and its tow. He didn't make it, and neither did two of his passengers. Two dead and one missing and presumed drowned. Tom spotted the problem before it happened but couldn't prevent it. He called the Coast Guard and they responded immediately, but it was too late to save the boat or the three people. Apparently, the boat owner didn't realize that three vertical lights on the tug's mast meant he had something in tow.

A few years later, the government mandated that you had to have a proper license to operate any powered boat regardless of size, and you had to have a certificate of competence from a recognized instructor as well. It was about bloody time. Too often in the past you could plunk down a bunch of money and that was good enough. For those of us who knew better, we could usually spot these people from some distance. They were almost always ill prepared to deal with an emergency, either with skill or equipment.

My father died when I had just turned twenty-two. He had a massive stroke and didn't survive it. It came right out of the blue. He was fit and trim and didn't smoke or drink to excess. He was just a victim of circumstance. It seemed desperately cruel to me at the time. It was one thing to lose my mother at a young age. It was quite another to lose my dad. He was my mentor and someone I looked up to as a role model.

Dad was a half-owner in a very successful specialty wood finishing company. He wasn't a millionaire, but he was very well off and as a result of his death, I was now able to pick and choose a career. I had just graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts. As I was quickly reminded, that degree and four dollars would get you a latté at Starbucks.

I couldn't live in the house any more. It was like a tomb, empty yet full of memories. Far too big for my simple needs. I listed it within the month. I found an apartment in the west end of Vancouver and set about looking for something worthwhile to do with my life. I was lightly attached to a young woman named Claire Garlock. I didn't view our relationship all that seriously, although she had taken up residence in my apartment. More like a friend with benefits. I think I was still brooding over my father's death.

I hired a university colleague, a young lawyer fresh out of law school to be the executor of the estate. Since I was the only beneficiary, it was a very straightforward process. Sam Fowler was interested in what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. He suggested that I find a reputable investment counsellor to protect my assets. At that point I hadn't sold our house and since it was mortgage free, it would bring in a sizeable amount of cash.

It was an enlightening experience, going through probate. After taxes, I had over six hundred thousand dollars to invest from my father's life insurance and his investments. In addition, there was the half share of the business and the house to add to it. I needed someone to advise me and shelter me from the taxes for which I might otherwise be liable.

I contacted my father's investment advisor and set up an appointment. Joel Burger had served my father for over twenty years and I was confident that he was completely trustworthy. We met four times over the next two months and he set a path for me that would virtually assure I would have a reasonable income for many years to come.

The house sold in five weeks, taking that long simply because every time we got an offer, someone came in and bid a higher number. My real estate agent told me this was more like Toronto than Burnaby as he shook his head in wonder. I'm sure he was counting the dollars on his ever-increasing commission.

The business was another situation completely. My father's partner, Kerry Hewland, was unable to raise the cash to buy me out. He had leveraged his share of the business against a new home he was building and the costs were getting out of hand. Together, Sam and Joel worked out a plan for Kerry to buy me out on a long term payment strategy. When we were done, both of us were satisfied that we had struck at reasonable compromise and I had another income stream.

The last piece of business was my father's boat. I had forgotten all about it to be truthful. I can remember being out on it when I was young, but between school, summer jobs at Dad's business, along with other interests, it had been something that was just a distant memory. Sam reminded me when he noticed the quarterly moorage payments to the yacht club.

Joel and Sam accompanied me down to the yacht club, thinking we would just give the boat a wash, fuel it up, and go for a cruise. One look at it told us that wasn't going to happen.

"Good Lord, Pat, this thing is a mess," Joel moaned.

"I'm surprised it's still afloat," Sam said, shaking his head at the sorry state of what once was a lovely boat.

"Yeah ... looks like I've got my work cut out for me if I want to sell it," I grumbled.

"Shouldn't take more than a year or so to get it in respectable shape," chuckled Joel. "Good thing you have nothing else to do with your time."

"You need a marine survey before you bother spending dime one on this tub," Sam intoned.

"Yeah ... I guess that's right," I sighed. "I'll get in touch with someone this week. Might as well get the bad news right from the horse's mouth."

"What a shame," Joel said, looking over the big vessel. "This once was a really fine looking yacht. It would be worth saving if it's possible. They don't build them like this any more."

"And you know this how?" Sam asked.

"The builder's plate on the cabin bulkhead says so," Joel said, pointing to the cast metal plate. "It's a Thornton Shadwell. Nearly fifty feet I'd guess. Custom built right here in Vancouver."