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| LETTER FROM MARK AT SHOAL BAY
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September 11, 2003. Mark MacDonald is the likeable romantic who bought the Shoal Bay Lodge a few years ago. He spends his summers there, rebuilding after a fire destroyed nearly everything, and welcoming visiting boaters and locals alike. The winters, he spends at his day job, buying and selling race horses. He buys the horses in England, at the end of its racing season, and sells them in Southern California, at the beginning of its racing season. To all appearances Mark is a conventional person, but behind the mask is a most unconventional reality. He's bright and engaging, he's falling-down funny to be around, and he regales us from time to time with his newsletters. Ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment and amazement, from Shoal Bay on Cordero Channel, north of Desolation Sound and south of the Broughtons, is a Mark MacDonald newsletter.
Shoal Bay Yacht Club
beer, boats, babes, burgers
September 4, 2003. As I sit down on the deck to write this, it is 3:00pm on a Thursday afternoon. I have just snapped the picture above from the very seat at which I now write. The generator is off, and I am listening to the cackle of Kingfishers, the songs of sparrows, and the lap of the tide. Please understand that I am not a complete wacko for wanting to always be here.
The summer is unfairly closing and things have already gone quiet in Shoal Bay. The weather continues to be perfection and the only weak hint at the coming of fall are the shorter days. It has been, and continues to be, glorious.
I had an truly memorable visit from a close friend from London and his two boys, aged 9 and 12. Piers (yes that’s his real name), Oliver, and Simon (the boys) and myself all loaded up on the “Bessie J”, my 50 year-old ex-commercial fishing boat and went on a bit of an odyssey. It took almost two days just to top up all of Bessie’s vital fluids, she tends to burn oil like a cheap furnace, and the hydraulic fluid just seems to continuously disappear below decks somewhere. But we soon had the old girl seaworthy and were shoving off from the Shoal Bay pier. Headed northward, into the bowels of the Pacific-Northwest, retracing the steps of Captains Cook and Vancouver, to explore hidden uncharted waterways, and to rape and pillage the aboriginals. So with good intentions only, our voyage began.
It truly was a fantastic journey. A big mistake on my part was not applying nearly enough forethought into the fact that I, a lifetime bachelor with no children of my own, was about to imprison myself on a 30 foot chunk of rapidly rotting wood with a pair of pre-adolescent brothers. For good measure I was surrounding myself on all sides with a bottomless expanse of truly inhospitable water while traveling slowly for days on end with no radio, TV. videos, or any other similar distraction which virtually all boys of this age require in order to function on even the lowest level. In spite of my small oversight, we all had an ass-kicking time. The boys were absolute stars. We saw Bears on the shore, traveled amongst the Killer Whales in the open sea, and visited abandoned Indian Villages complete with fallen totem poles. We stopped at the docks at Telegraph Cove, where we checked out the whale museum, and tied up at the fish-boat harbour in Alert Bay, a modern-day working Indian Village. Piers and I even closed the Pub there that night. It was like Custer’s last stand. A total massacre.
We have had an incredibly good summer in regards to the two diesel generators. It has truly been fortunate that every time one of the two blows up, and they seem to be blowing up quite frequently, the other one has just been fixed at great expense and ready to take right over. Lady luck continues to smile out of my backside.
Fresh water and electricity are not so easily taken for granted when one provides them for oneself. Along with sewage and garbage disposal, fresh water and electricity make up the four vital systems that constantly occupy your mind out here. Friends from the city who are always asking what I could possibly do all day without traffic, T.V., mail, magazines and the such have never been required to supply their own fresh water. When you sit on the toilet in town, you are not usually thinking about where the water came from that runs it, and then where it goes after you flush it. When I am on the toilet in Shoal Bay, where this is going when I flush it is the ONLY think I can think about. I also breathe a small sigh of relief every time clear clean water comes out of the tap when requested. I have either repaired or replaced almost every inch of water line in Shoal Bay. If I had fixed or installed your water line, believe me, you’d be holding your breath too. All of the utilities that are provided services in most places are big jobs in Shoal Bay. The water that we drink, bathe in, and cook with has to be found, collected, filtered and treated, then piped with pressure into the houses. This all within a system designed and maintained by myself. Then after being used, whether in the toilet, shower, or sinks, it has to again be treated by septic system or soap boxes before sent into a large “perk” field that is a safe distance away from the ocean or fresh water.
Whenever I turn on a light switch, and it comes on, it means that out back there is a diesel engine running, turning an electric generator. Again on a system largely maintained by me, power is supplied through a network of transfer boxes, fuse panels and wire. The generator motors demand constant oil changes and tuning. They need a constant supply of fuel. They break. They require maintenance. I now know much more about diesel motors than the average guy on the street. I still have a hell of a lot to learn. There is no shortage of things that need to be done. Or done again soon after.
It is now 7:18 in the evening on the same day that I initially sat down to write this. This is not what I have been doing all day, but have come back to it after several interruptions. I stopped writing for a while and worked on leveling the laundry room with a couple of big jacks and some blocks. I think I did O.K. It certainly looks better. It didn’t exactly go as planned but this should probably be another story for later. Then a guy showed up in a small boat that turned out to be this fellow that Bert and I are hoping to hire as a watchman this winter. (sic…more money…) With the passing of Chris and the poor health of Newfie Frank, we were left with no year-round resident in Shoal Bay. So this guy lives with his wife and baby in a remote winter location with little contact and just watches the place. It is imperative that somebody be living in the bay during the winter so as to deter vandals and would be thieves. It’s sad I know, but we do have people that prey upon summer homes and resorts during the winter when empty. Does this sound like “The Shining” to you? I kept looking at this guy and imagining it was Jack Nicholson looking back at me, mumbling “Heeree’s Johnnny!”. By the time he left I couldn’t tell the two apart. I’m sure that he was wondering why I kept looking at him like that; I never did hear a word that he said. He’ll just have to come back again when Bert’s here. Some people also came up off of a boat that ordered a drink at the Pub. They were from Texas. I mentioned that it must have been a hell of a high tide to get that boat here from Texas, and not one of ‘em even cracked a smile. I still have no idea whether they’d heard that joke so damned often that they no longer saw any humour in it, or if maybe they just didn’t get it. I’m only just now beginning to realize that not everybody on the planet finds me quite near as funny as I do.
7:39pm now and I will leave you with another shot of the same view but at a different time of the same day.
I will need to go now, as the cat seems to have picked a fight with some kind of an animal that is quite willing to fight back. I do hope that it is some species that I recognize.
See you around,
Mark
www.shoalbaylodge.com
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