A few excerpts from the book



Excerpts….

(From the Foreword)

Living aboard is just a dream for most people, but for those intrepid individuals willing to swap space and amenities for the romance of the sea, it can be a dream fulfilled. The Life and Times of the Floathouse Zastrozzi offers a fond but realistic look at our life at Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria’s harbour. Throughout the 1990s, my husband Alan and I lived aboard Zastrozzi all year round. Surviving and thriving at the Wharf required a certain kind of maverick resilience.
While the book paints a vivid picture of our life on the dock, it also chronicles the changing times we lived through. For years Victoria's harbours were ignored by the City and mismanaged by Transport Canada. Liveaboards were tolerated but not welcome. Nevertheless the liveaboard community played its part along with those who were concerned about the harbour, in the struggle for self government.
We were also trying to save our neighbourhood. In the 1990s, James Bay was still an area of mixed use, with industry and small businesses and residents co-habiting in comfort. We didn’t want to see the harbour walled in by high rise luxury condos. We battled gentrification and sadly, we lost.
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(In the Beginning)

The man at the piano moving company just had to ask. “What do you mean, come at high tide?” Where are we putting this old piano?”
The old Econoline van full of my belongings had finally arrived from Toronto and I’d gone over to Steveston to bring it back to Fisherman’s Wharf in downtown Victoria. My master packers had done a wonderful job and everything was intact. But getting my 1917 Gerhard upright piano out of the van and down to the floathouse was going to require professional help. I had visions of my precious piano taking off under its own steam, rolling down the ramp and leaping into the chuck. The piano movers were more than amused when I explained that they simply had to come when the ramp at the loading dock would be just about level with the main float.
The piano movers arrived a few days later, and with considerable care loaded the piano onto a sturdy dolly. It took two of them to push it and pull it down the ramp, along the main float and onto our floathouse Zastrozzi, which promptly listed ten degrees to port. When we shifted some of the furniture to the other side of the room, we were floating level again.
With the piano installed, and the rest of my belongings unpacked, I knew I’d arrived for good. Starting with a full three bedroom house in Toronto, I’d reduced my holdings to one box of books, three boxes of silver and six pieces of furniture.
…………….

Alan’s first winter aboard Zastrozzi was one of the coldest since 1865. One very frosty February morning, he and the girls woke up to find their power was off. When he went out to check the fuse box on the dock, Alan found that his power cord had been pulled out. Furthermore the fuse box was locked up tight, and he couldn’t plug back in.
He soon found he wasn’t alone in the cold and the dark. The Coast Guard had pulled the electrical cords on 98 of the 350 vessels and floathomes at Fisherman’s Wharf and the Wharf Street docks. The local press was paying attention: “The Coast Guard says those using the Wharf and Erie street wharves were informed of the requirement (for proper electrical cords) and notices were posted stating the compliance deadline. Terry Berscheid, Coast Guard area manager for Vancouver Island harbours and ports, said he had no choice but to enforce an order of a Public Works inspector that the cords be removed. Berscheid said that the previous week a spot inspection by Public Works Canada found several substandard cords and the inspector said they should be unplugged immediately. i
The neighbours were furious as well as freezing.
…………………
In 1990, life aboard Zastrozzi was fairly basic. We paid a fixed rate for electricity, and given our location at the corner of Finger One and the main float, we had plenty of power. Most people managed with just 20 or 30 amps and could only plug in one appliance at a time. We cheerfully heated with four electric heaters, and only occasionally used the wood stove and propane range for extra heat. I was well into my first winter before I realized the front of the wood stove was actually glass. It was so encrusted with black guck that you couldn’t see the flames.
However, when it dropped below four degrees Celsius, we needed that woodstove. Mostly we bought pressed sawdust logs because real fire wood didn’t grow on trees, nor did we have room to store very much of it. We burnt off-cuts from Alan’s construction job and from our neighbours’ renovations. In fact, scavenging for fire wood became an expedition, and we were resourceful. We’d cruise James Bay looking for construction sites and beg, borrow, or steal off-cuts. And about once a year we’d head over to Beacon Hill Park, scout around for windfalls of a usable size and fill the trunk of the car.
But it wasn’t all tea and oranges. One of the things that drew us together was our collective sense of injustice and lack of fair play. There were many reports of harassment and ill treatment and a lot of anger and tension was directed at our masters, the Federal Department of Transport personified by the Harbour Master’s Office. We had a lot of questions and we couldn’t get answers. Why couldn’t we have phones? Why couldn’t we get mail delivered? Why couldn’t we have recycling boxes alongside the dumpster? Little by little we began to work together to find the answers.
…………….
(The French Connection) Jean-Luc arrived one fall from Montreal and moved aboard an old boat rafted to Jacques. Like Jacques, he was a hard working labourer, paid his moorage and liked his brew. But he was the cause of another near disaster. An insomniac fisherman who was up early for a dawn departure saved the day when he smelled smoke and didn’t disregard it. We were ever grateful that he took the time to investigate. What he found was a blazing mattress, floating fire side up wedged into the tight space between Zastrozzi and Murray and Judy’s new home, the Muranda J.
The stellar James Bay Fire Department was there in minutes and hosed the mattress down. We escaped untouched, but Muranda J’s inflatable tender melted, sending the outboard motor to the bottom. Apparently Jean Luc had fallen asleep, but wakened suddenly to find his mattress on fire. He did the obvious thing and threw it overboard. He swore up and down that he never smoked in bed and he certainly was sincerely apologetic. We did suspect he’d had a beer or three, which might have been a contributing factor. Despite his profound distress at the damage he’d caused, he was never completely welcome in the neighbourhood after that incident and soon returned whence he’d come.







i Carla Wilson, Times Colonist, (February 15, 1989).

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