Well one more small one and I will leave it alone. This north sea trawler was a work of art but kept Ted busy maintaining it in that condition. no paint at all except perhaps below the waterline. All brightwork otherwise.

Had pretty well a flush deck and features like prisims in the deck for additional passageway and cabin lighting. As a younger guy him and his girlfriend/wife went to europe for a few years. They brought it as a trawler.

I have no ideal of where they had the conversion done but it was done very well probably by some smaller yard over there. They took a few years touring the european scene with it when the conversion was complete.

Eventually they came back to Canada. That boat in my opinion could have made the passage back across the atlantic but they had it shipped. When transfering it to a flatbed at the end of the voyage someone had dropped it. How far it fell and how much damage I have no ideal. Other than it could not be fixed by canadian boatbuilders at the time. So the insurance company brought in a small crew from europe to do it.

Well Ted as I had mentioned was a good graphic artist and had a lot of commitments. They had reciently purchased an older classical type house. So with this artistic tempernment of his decided to save some bucks and learn plumming by doing his recent older home aquisition over himself.

He got into it anyways and set his house on fire. Repaired the damage that was not too great and repeated it again. We felt that after fire number two he might get a plummer or be really a lot more careful. The temperment unfortunatly also made him stubborn so he lit the house off for the third time.

Someone then adressed him as torchy at the club and the nickname grabbed on instantly. I did not use it as I felt that temperment might flare and we talked quite often in a friendly fashion.

I was right and did not fully realise it at the time in that it was really bothering him. Then one day he appeared at the club with a t shirt that had torchy done well front and back on his body. Being a graphic artist he had incorporated flames, Plumbing torch etc into the design as well as the script.

Besides me finding it creative and really funny personally. The nickname fell into disfavour as quickly as it had started. People can get the message.

I think that was also the year he did not sail the distance to the usual place and have the boat taken out of the water for winter. It was too heavy for local lifting. He felt the ice conditions where not that bad so he left it moored in the harbour for the winter. At some point the ice had managed to break it loose from the mooring and the boat was found to be grinding itself against a concrete wall almost out of the harbour. I think if his original intent was to save a few bucks it flopped.

He was forced to bring in one of the larger mobile cranes to get it out of the water. They had to be expensive even back then with transit costs. Every winter after that one as before it was pulled out.

The much smaller but largest local mobile crane we normally used had his boom out a little too far one year when lifting even my light boat and was starting to go over as he was letting the boat back into the water. This as soon as he detected the movement. Still I thought it was close. Just repositoned the crane giving a more acute boom angle and all went well.