Chapter two recap: Linda Syms spent her childhood constantly on the move across the prairies with her large family, until they eventually wound up on the west coast in the 1960s. Soon after they arrived, her father died from the effects of alcoholism. In the summer of 1969, Linda attended a basement party where she met a man named Wayne Lewis. She was 15, he was 24. Her family was totally against any relationship between the two, but Linda was persistent. By the time she turned 18, she was living aboard Wayne’s sailboat in the Deep Cove Marina.
When Linda thinks of her father, she tries to remember the good times. She describes him as a “partier,” and some of her best memories are those of her dad playing the guitar at family gatherings. Linda’s dad was from Winnipeg, and rode the rails west to Alberta in the 1930s looking for work, which is how he met Linda’s mom, a woman of Norwegian heritage. They had seven children together before Linda’s mom eventually left him.
Linda admits that when she saw Wayne Lewis playing the 12-string guitar in that smoky basement, he reminded her of her father: a rebellious partier, a musician with a wanderlust.
When she moved onto Wayne’s trimaran sailboat, fittingly called Fantasy, she essentially became estranged from her family; they were still anti-Wayne.
Linda stopped speaking to her mother, who had found religion since her husband’s death. Occasionally, her older sister Audrey would show up at the wharf and try to convince Linda to leave Wayne, get off the boat, get a job and make amends with the family. But Linda wouldn’t budge.
“People have been trying to talk me into having a normal life for my entire life,” says Linda.
Wayne had done well with the sale of a houseboat, which allowed the couple to spend the rest of 1971 exploring the many gorgeous oceanic nooks and crannies of the Salish Sea. Neither of them had much sailing experience, so they taught each other as they went.
They had mishaps, including running aground on Spanish Banks and hitting a rock in Howe Sound, but at age 18, Linda knew she had made the right choice; she was already having the time of her life. She loved the freedom of the ocean, the wind in her hair and the salt in the air, and that they could drop anchor and sleep anywhere they pleased, or drop a hook for the freshest food in the world. This was living. This truly was a fantasy come true.
On that sailboat, Linda discovered a passion within her she didn’t know she had. She had awoken her inner viking. This Norwegian prairie girl loved to sail.
When winter weather arrived, Linda and Wayne would dock the Fantasy at Fishermen’s Wharf on Granville Island. Linda would get a job at a restaurant, while Wayne would get a gig welding in one of the machine shops, until the spring came and they had saved enough to set sail again. This was their life’s pattern during the early 1970s. Soon they both yearned for open ocean sailing.
Hawaii bound
Opportunity blew their way in the fall of 1974. Their friends were sailing down to Hawaii and needed two more people to form a crew. But there was a catch or two, the first being that the boat was leaving the next day. Linda and Wayne didn’t hesitate, and with $12 between them, suddenly, they were Hawaii-bound across the ocean blue.
The other catch: it was a one-way trip. Linda had no idea how they were going to get home, and she didn’t really care.
The voyage down was exciting. Their friend’s boat proved to be safe and seaworthy and stocked with plenty of provisions. Upon safe arrival in Hawaii and contemplating their next move, Wayne spotted a dilapidated sailboat being towed by the coast guard into the harbour, the sails a tangled mess on her deck. He took one look at what most would consider a hunk of junk and said: “Linda, check it out, there’s our ticket home.”
Around the docks of Vancouver, Wayne was known as “Buy Low-Sell High Lewie.” He was adept at purchasing for peanuts what looked like a lemon and turning it into a seaworthy vessel that would sell for thousands.
Sure enough, the boat being towed was owned by a fellow sailor from BC who was calling off a proposed family sailing trip around the world because his family hated every minute on the water. When their tiller broke in a storm, the sailor’s wife informed him that she and the kids were getting off in Hawaii. That was enough for the sailor to join them, which meant he needed someone, anyone, to sail the boat the nearly 4,000 kilometres back to Canada, a 30-day trek against the current, under the darkening skies of November.
Enter an eager 21-year-old Linda and her partner Wayne, who was convinced he could get the boat shipshape for the epic journey. A deal was struck.
Crewing up
Wayne and Linda spent a couple of days joyfully hitchhiking around Hawaii while the owner of the sailboat promised to fix all that Wayne noticed was broken or needed replacing. The owner also swore to provide plenty of fuel, food and drinking water.
While they were hitchhiking, they found one able crew member who wanted to get to the mainland, but they needed one more and time was tight. They had to set sail as soon as possible before the November gales set into the North Pacific, and sail around the clock if they were going to make it, which meant a fourth person was vital.
Linda noticed a young, eager and somewhat out-of-it surfer dude named Lenny hanging around the dock, who seemingly had no job, and no prospects, so she convinced Wayne that Lenny should be their fourth crew member. Wayne thought it was a terrible choice, but they had no other option and time was ticking.
The decision to take Lenny would soon haunt Linda and prove Wayne right. The boat’s name was Felicius, the female version of Felix, meaning lucky, fortunate and happy. Their attempt at a voyage home aboard Felicius would be none of those things.
That story is the next chapter of Wild Pick: The life and adventures of Linda Syms, oyster farmer of Desolation Sound.
Grant Lawrence is the award-winning author of Adventures in Solitude, and a radio personality who considers Powell River and Desolation Sound his second home. Wild Pick originally aired as a radio series and podcast based on Linda Syms’ two books: Salt Water Rain and Shell Games. Both are for sale at Pollen Sweaters in Lund and Marine Traders in Powell River.
