The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship

To Whom it May Concern:

I am in British Columbia. I am on Vancouver Island, in Boat Harbor, a few miles south of Nanaimo. I am on a modified CAL 25. The modification is a little vault to the ceiling inside, so that I can almost stand. I am tied to a float, tied to three anchors set out in a triangle, in about ten feet of water, maybe ten feet from the costly dock. That is our “Eff You!” to the marina. You can drop anchor anywhere, and so we set the boat up mind bogglingly close to the dock.

The boat is 25 feet long. CAL 25, 25 feet long.

Names. For a while, I thought of naming it “Fool's Errand” but I thought that that would invite bad luck, and bad words about whoever was on the idiot boat whenever the bad luck did hit. I call it the Fool of the World now, for the book my mom read me as a child. It helps me be humble when I am in trouble, and people look at me and I get embarrassed. I think, “Here I am, a fucking idiot, making a fool of myself on a boat.” And then I remember that that is the basic concept of the name of my boat, and I think, “Yep. Yeah, that is me. I am a fool. Ah, well.”

There is a culture of live-aboards here in Canada thanks to an ancient maritime law. The law is that no harbor may turn away a ship, ever. This is to ensure that ships can come in to find safety in storms. This combines with another law that says that no one can own water, and water extends up to the historical high tide line. I can walk along any beach, and even over recent high tide lines, if I can cite a time when the tide did extend to where I am. I can walk onto your beachfront property, and say, “In 1826, the tide went into your living room,” and I'd have a pretty legitimate claim. When I got here, a man told me I was trespassing on another man's land and water. Derk said, “I didn't know you could own water. You guys don't have high tide laws?” The man responded, “Well, yeah, if you wanna get technical...” Oh, I do. I want to get quite technical.

To claim water, all you have to do is set a mooring, or an anchor. A mooring is a huge weight with a float at the end of a line for you to tie onto. Drop one of those, and that is your float, and you can charge people to tie up to it. People fill nice bays with moorings, and people come to live on their boats. The most people I have see so far was Cadboro bay, where it was all basically earthy punks. Maybe ten of them. There were more in Vancouver, but that town is trying to flush them out. Live aboards look and are crusty, so the sparkly city tries to flush them out. However, that ancient law is well know and long cited by the live aboards, so the city can't really get them directly. And the law is so old that it will maybe never be undone. It is maritime law, which is federal, so no matter the local laws that threaten the people on the boats, the federal law will always trump. Vancouver doesn't like them, but they are safe.

None of this applies in America. In America, you can own the beach and the water. Old families set moorings in the best spots many decades ago, and they are occupied, and costly to use. You can't just drop an anchor if things are not safe. The water there belongs to someone, and you could get hit with trespassing.