Pictures of the Neighborhood

Ive been taking the speedboat out a lot lately and have a whack of pictures of life on the river,Wreck Beach, sunsets and of the changes at the marina.


Here are a few marina before pictures



The Sea Ferring just before she was moved


Mt Kleeman, a huge boathouse that came here last fall. I hated it, it totally blocked the view and cut the marina in half


The Lightship listing badly to one side. looking like its about to land on the Bowie


Monty , the Lightships Captain, readying himself to go down with his ship

Our main ramp to the marina has come off its hinges and was hanging in the water. The boys jacked it back up with come-a-longs for now, but the dock its resting on needs to be replaced.

The Shirley sinks yet again (3X)



And some marina after shots...
The Sea Ferring being pulled out

The Marina starting to empty out. Tana's houseboat, Mt Kleeman,the Hari Mai and the Sea Ferring are now gone






The now empty lagoon, there were 6 boats in there, now there is only 3 and they are going soon

I finally get the speedboat running,yahoo.Paul is helping David hook up the last of the steering cables.



...and finally under way, time to go explore the river




Some wildlife we saw on the way included this eagle




A large crane


and this little baby beaver



The following pictures are of all the various boats, float-homes and businesses we saw along the river between here and New Westminster and back past our place to the river mouth and Wreck beach

Daves' competition on the river for dredging and pile driving


Paddle boats in New Westminster,never expected to see them in our river, the Tom Sawyer in me was tickled pink





The biggest one is a huge floating casino, it would sure make an awesome live-a-aboard


An interesting large building made from a huge barge,utilizing the metal walls for the first floor


Float-homes with cement floats being built on a large barge


A nice river front home on pilings

A lovely old wooden boat



Shelter island Marina as seen from the water.They have a huge working shipyard in the back with every kind of trade needed to refurbish any kind of boat.



Some cute float-homes and live-a-boards

Tana,s houseboat in its new home at Sayward Marina









This is a dilapidated river house with a somewhat nicer boat parked in front


Further down the river going back past Richmond there are some river front mansions

A fabulous rusty old barge with full fledged trees going on it


The swinging train bridge was closing as we approached it, luckily we are small enough to fit under it



The Richmond Rowing Club with its boats stacked up inside

MT Baker off in the distance.Its actually in the United States but we can see it on a clear day


Huge barges filled with sawdust



Wreck Beach from a distance,considering its attached to a huge city, you would never know it when your down there.


and a closer view of the beach


The Coast Guard Hovercraft at Wreck beach for a rescue of an injured person


The boat moored at Wreck Beach in Cowards cove



Our moorage spot came with its own private beach, just on the other side of the rocks were about 5000 people that day



The view of the estuary from our beach


Further out in the estuary is millions of cut trees in the water waiting for tugboats to take them up river to the mills


One of the many beautiful gardens that have been planted on the beach. People carried down soil, plants and fresh water to make these gardens bloom every summer, a nice touch Ive never seen on any other beach

A typical wreck beach sunset




A nice sunset seen from my back dock

Exodus

Just when I think the ball game is over, life throws another hardball at me. I don’t know whether to duck, swing or drop out of the game. In one month I lost my boyfriend, my place at the marina and my job. I was hoping to get the boat out of the water at the end of this month and figure out a way to save the hull. I was just informed today that my job is being cutback to one day a week. I can barely survive on that never mind have thousands left over to do the repairs. I’m in a bind now as I needed to do the repairs so I could move the boat to another marina, but now that I cant afford to do that, I’m hooped.

Life has changed dramatically here at The Richmond Yaught Club (our pet name for the trailer park like existence down here). I don’t even know where to begin or how it all went so wrong. I was so happy to find this place last year. I loved the community of people and the lifestyle. I had the perfect boyfriend, the perfect boat, the perfect job and the perfect friends to share it all with. I was so happy; I was finally in a place in my life where everything was going right.

I’m not sure when it started to go wrong, but it seems to me that the arrival of the Lightship was the beginning of the end. It is a huge ship and was put on the inside of the Bowie (another huge ship). This ended up pushing them quite far out into the shipping lanes as the year went on and the silt continued to pile up close to shore. From the moment it got here, there were issues with it and its owner. He ended up selling it to another fellow who, for various reasons continued to butt heads with Greig and almost everyone else down here. This eventually got the attention of the authorities and in the end the marina owner was told to get rid of the liveaboards and a bunch of the boats so that we fit back into our water-lease. Over the last year we had expanded gradually until we were over the limit in every direction. This culling of boats was done in a most brutal manner, hurting many people and causing a truckload of hurt feelings and resentment.

As David has the only real business down here, he was able to convince the landlord to sign a lease to rent him the majority of the marina. This has resulted in him being frustrated because he is paying rent on space he cant use as its still full of boats, most of which aren’t or haven’t been paying rent in months. However its just not that easy to find a place in a matter of weeks to put large ships and float-homes, especially as none of them are in good shape or insurable and all very large. I’m supposed to be out of here by the end of the month. The plan was to put my boat in the workshop here for a few months and get her shipshape so I could find another marina to accept me. Now I cant afford to take it out of the water and have nowhere else to take her in this condition. I doubt the boat will survive another winter in the water .The end of the month is looming and I’m at my wits end. I’m sure this will all look better in the morning, but I have no one to talk to and needed to vent. I don’t want to lose my boat, I love it so much.

In other mundane news, I managed to get one of the motors fixed for the speedboat and have been able to finally cruise the river system here and get to the beach on a number of occasions. It’s so awesome to finally be able to get out and about on the water. I took the motor in that had been on the boat when it sank, but it’s too far-gone and couldn’t be repaired, too bad; I sure would have liked to have one for the Lucky 7.
I got the electric toilet working finally by just using hoses going right into the river through the windows and bypassing the thru hulls for now. I'ts ok for summer but not a good plan in winter as I wont want the windows open, its hard enough to heat this place as it is.

Well not sure what tomorrow has in store for me, not sure I want to find out