A Sea Pig Weekend 2009

This is a picture of my Dad on the up-dated Sea Pig at Present Island about 1979 - Remembering the Sea Pig.

Judy peruses the fresh strawberries at Sarnia Farmers' Market

Bill and Wendy at the market.

The weather forecast was somewhat ominous and the skies were filled with clouds as my old friends Bill and Judy arrived from Brampton at around noon on Friday. Our other old friends David and Reenie were arriving Saturday. I have known Bill and David since we were in seventh grade when my family moved from North Bay down to Toronto in 1960. It has become somewhat of a tradition over the past ten years or so for us to get together here in Point Edward on a long weekend. Luckily, the sun started to break through and by seven Friday evening (better late than never).

Click any picture to enlarge it.

Reenie helps set up the buffet lunch aboard the Phoenix. All part of the Sea Pig Reunion weekend.

Now, as back in Sea Pig days, the food has always been part of the ritual. David checks it out.

Bill and David watch the boats go by from the bridge of the Phoenix.

The original Sea Pig with oil drum pontoons. Look how small the front deck is.

In 1967 (age 18) David and I began construction of a home made houseboat named the Sea Pig. My mom was office manager at Canadian Oxygen at the time and she sweet talked somebody into loaning us a welder. The original plan involved used oil drums, welded together to form the pontoons. The result was a ‘ship’ with all the styling finesse of a case of beer on two salamis. The boat was started in our back yard in Long Branch and completed up at David’s family cottage at Duck Bay, near Port Severn Ontario.

Several years later, when I was living in London Ontario, I managed to acquire a dozen stainless steel agricultural spray tanks from the bankruptcy auction of the George White Farm Machinery Company. Nose cones were fabricated at London Steel Industries and David hauled the ready-to-assemble pontoons on his trailer up to the cottage near Waubaushene. This enhancement made the old Sea Pig much more seaworthy, increased her weight carrying capacity, and increased her length by 7 feet to about 38 feet. Longer and better balanced, she even looked much better.

That's Wendy and me with David and his Mom, Mabel.

We sold the Sea Pig in 1980 for $1800 but in those dozen or so years we had countless adventures as we explored the lower part of Georgian Bay’s Thirty Thousand Islands. I had become part of David’s family up there at the cottage as did the Sea Pig. His family’s un-ending hospitality is something I’ll never forget. Over the years, the youths of the Sea Pig grew up, married and had children. Parents and older friends and neighbors passed away one by one but the memories of those Sea Pig days live on at these annual get-togethers.

Wendy and I in the galley of the Sea Pig.

Bill seems to be having a good time. I remember it was a rough water voyage from Midland to Waubaushene.

Barry's mom Lois laughed until tears ran down her face

We took the Pig through some pretty rough water. How it stayed together is an engineering mystery.

David's mom Mabel seems to doubt the sage admonitions of Captain Tim.

The new, stainless pontoons ready for installation during the late 1970's refit.

Judy is aboard their Alcan houseboat. The hands are my son Tim's 1979 (born 1977).

Reenie thirty years ago.

Bill and I on the 'roof deck' of the old Sea Pig

So, almost every year for the past forty or so, we have gotten together somewhere for the Sea Pig Reunion. This year, I dug out some old photos to put on a slide presentation of a hundred or so snapshot pictures of some of the highlights of those Sea Pig Years. As usual, we had a really good time, albeit much more subdued than those wilder and carefree days aboard the old Sea Pig.

A buffet on the 'Lido Deck' of the Sea Pig over 30 years ago.



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