The Perfect Trifecta
What if I told you that experiencing the finest of what Vancouver has to offer in a mere 10 hours is limited only by your imagination? That, with the right boat, you can pack four days’ worth of activities into just one day? That it is indeed possible to challenge the very idea of time itself and bend it to your uncompromising will?
The nice couple sitting next to me on the flight into British Columbia thought I was kidding. “You’re going to do what?” the husband exclaimed. Even their infant daughter sitting in his lap stared at me with suspicion. And though she couldn’t talk, she pointed one finger accusingly, as if to say, “father, this man, seated in 23D, is depraved.” In response, I stuck my tongue out at her. She placed both hands over her face and giggled.
Honestly, it was hard to explain. The short of it was Tim Charles, owner of Tactical Custom Boats, had invited me to take part in a crazy plan he had concocted aboard the next-generation of Tactical vessels—the Adventure 44, or Tank. Once we left the dock there would be no going back, and no time to rest, if we were to complete BC’s trifecta of boating-accessible activities: chinook salmon fishing and prawning, a round of golf and, finally, some twilight skiing. Or what he had taken to calling “fins, skins and skis.”
“Bottom line is it’s a brick shithouse,” said Tim over the phone. “It is a tank all the way through its name, and it’s an absolute beast on the water.” A trifecta was all in good fun, but it was also meant to illustrate the versatility of this vaguely militaristic vessel. Our biggest impediment was time, of course, but also the wilderness, with its legion of deadheads floating ominously is outfitted with triple 300-hp Cox diesel engines, which combine for 1,470 ft. lbs of torque that results in a cruising speed of 30 knots. If one of the three propellers were to make contact with a piece of driftwood, it may not be game over, but we would be limping our way through the low-lying islands of Howe Sound, and perhaps never reach nirvana—the perfect trifecta—at the peak of Cypress Mountain. And I am, after all, a professional journalist, so I had an obligation to , for good or ill.
