Remembering Jack

From:   "Don Crooks" <sailordon@n...> 
Date:  Tue Mar 9, 2004  1:41 pm
Subject:  Remembering Jack (and Anne)


Hi Don,
Thanks for the walk back through time. Jack was quite the character. We didn't always see eye to eye, but for the most part got along good. 

Remember the cruiser he bought whose name was "Joy"? I arrived home from a short hitch at construction in the big T.O., in the summer of ' 54, which, come to think of it is a half century ago, and was sitting at the counter in the canteen, probably eating a western, on the evening of my return, when Jack broached the subject of rigging "Joy" for sword-fishing, down Cape Breton way. What beautiful words!! YES! YES!! YES!!!
I had the mast and rigging but it was too heavy for little "Joy", so Jack, Mike and I went over to the Mount (Misery) and cut a smaller stick and with bits of bark still hanging from it we put the stays on it and stepped it in the "Joy", and made a stand, or pulpit, and put that on the bow. We were ready for the high seas; only trouble was the weather was thick as mud, and Jack didn't like the idea of running in the fog. So we waited, and waited, and waited. My need to get to CB could be likened to a sun baked desert traveller striving to reach an oasis. Finally one morning the fog glenned up enough that one could see out past Goose Island, so I called Jack, and said, " It's cleared, Jack, lets go" all the while knowing it was black thick below New Harbour Point. We got as far as White Head that day, and the next day Jack insisted that we go through the Lakes, because, he said "It might blow hard outside". We did and took a howling norther going across the big Lake, while the weather off the coast was white ca'am and the boats from Gabarus to Glace Bay
took many fish, while we were punching across the Lake to Baddeck. The next morning we got away early with the wind out of the north at about fifteen knot and ran down the channel When we got out to Black Point I said to Jack, “Perhaps you had better go aloft and get the feel of the rig". "Okay, kid" was his reply, and up the mast he went. This Mount Misery crow stick started to twist and protest under Jacks weight and I heard him aver that "I don't like this!" When we got out in the chop of the north wind meeting the receding tide from the Lakes, and the boat started pitching Jack came down, but when we got outside Haddock Bank, I said, "Jack, you better go aloft again, we could see a fish anytime now (never dreaming we would) and we didn't get to Point Aconi buoy before I spotted a fish and pointed him out to Jack who was on the remote steering station on the mast. I yelled at Jack: "You give me a decent shot at him and I'll buy when we get to the ' Bay"! Sure enough, he put the boat up on the fish in a highly credible manner for a novice, and after I ironed (harpooned) the fish, Jack went ballistic. "How many do you think we'll have when we get to Glace Bay," he shouted. We stayed down there three weeks and came home. We missed out on a big tame fish on Smokey Bank, due to a fuel pump failure, but in all we had a great trip. 

Again, thanks for the memories, Don.
Don Crooks