At least once a week, Roger Shaw ventures onto Howe Sound with his kayak to enjoy a paddle. But last weekend, he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
“There was this huge old boat tied up to the Spudnik,” the Squamish resident said.
The old fishing vessel appeared to be burnt out, Shaw said. Two men were aboard the boat that was tied alongside one of Squamish’s most unpopular ships — a former U.S. Navy transport freighter moored in Howe Sound.
Shaw said the men told him they were renovating the 73-foot steel boat. If work was being completed on the boat, Roger said he hopes it would be done in a dry dock where there’s less chance of harming the environment.
Two days later the boat had been moved. It’s now moored in the Mamquam Blind Channel, Shaw said.
“I just hope this is not a continual thing,” he said.
The former fishing vessel made it into the Peninsula Daily News. Named La Rata Bastarda, the boat had been stored at the Platypus Marine Inc. in Port Angeles, maritime columnist David Sellars told The Squamish Chief.
“It had been around long enough that it wasn’t a thorn in anyone’s side, but also long enough to be an eyesore,” he said.
While being serviced on land, the vessel caught fire in the dockyard. Smoke from the fire could be seen all around Port Angeles, Sellars recalled. The boat had been in the dockyards for some time, but was only on the water for approximately seven weeks before it disappeared, he said.
“I was quite surprised that someone would want to buy that thing,” Sellars said, adding he had heard the buyer was Squamish resident Steen Larsen — the owner of the Navy freighter.
Larsen would not comment on the La Rata Bastarda. On Tuesday, Sept. 9, he said he was headed to Vancouver to talk to his lawyer about his vessels.
In an interview with The Squamish Chief late last week, Larsen said he’d picked up a large, steel vessel with which to move the Spudnik out of Squamish.
“Within a month there will be big changes here because that was the reason we went to get this,” Larsen said.
- with files from John French
