Of water and wood | a short story about loss & surfing
On a trip to the big island of Hawaii in 2009, Tim Watson and his wife Terry met a man selling thin, wooden body boards near the beach where they were camping. Watson, a woodworker at heart who had been out of the ocean for years, was inexorably drawn to the handmade watercraft.
“That afternoon, seeing those boards in Hawaii, it was magic,” the 52-year-old recounts from his seat on a moss-covered stump under towering Cedars and Sitka Spruce.
Our hair is still wet from a morning surf session. It’s late September and we are camped on the edge of a remote, salmon-filled river mouth on the northwest edge of Vancouver Island, enjoying a rare window of dry weather in rustic Raft Cove Provincial Park. A group of seven friends has assembled for a week of wave sharing and fishing. No one is complaining about the falling swell. Watson’s ultra fast, maneuverable boards — wooden shapes he’s planed himself called paipo, in the image of those Hawaiian boards from years ago — easily connect sections in the crumbling shore break and the crew is hoarse from hooting each other into wave after wave.
The mood in our conversation has shifted though, and Watson explains why he had avoided the ocean for so long. He fights back tears while recalling the details of a boating accident that left his family reeling.
In 2000, Watson’s parents were scouting Pender Harbour, B.C. by canoe looking for a piece of property; a place to retire. They’d found a likely spot in a bay accessed through a channel called Gun Boat Narrows. It’s a paddle with a reputation Sunshine Coast boaters know well, where changing tides create rapids akin to riding a river downstream. Watson and Terry had shot the narrows just two weeks prior on a manageable three-foot tide. When his mother and father tried for themselves, it was on a treacherously low one foot tide. But, they were experienced canoeists, up for the challenge. Watson has early memories of his father teaching him to paddle and sail at the family home on Cultus Lake. His was a water family.
On the way out of the bay the two elder Watsons got into trouble. Their canoe capsized after hitting rocks and both were thrown into the water. His father wasn’t wearing a life jacket. His mother held onto the boat with one hand and her husband with the other, struggling with the current and cold water for half an hour, before another boater spotted them. It was August 1st. B.C. Day. Watson credits the busy long weekend boat traffic for saving his mother’s life.
“I needed something to get me going, to point me in the right direction,” Watson reflects, 14 years after the tragic loss of his father. “I’ve moved passed my issues with the ocean and now its my playground. [my dad] would be fully into that. He’s near and dear when I’m out using my boards and especially when I’m making them.”
“The water was such a big part of our family’s life he wouldn’t want us to hide from it,” he tells me.
Its his conviction about his father’s relationship to water that has set Tim Watson free.
As we wrap up our conversation, he repeats a mantra he has said to me several times over our week shared in the park:
“My dad taught me many things about wood and water.”
Five years after that chance encounter in Hawaii, Watson has honed his board designs and launched a label, Radish Empire, a name with roots back to his skateboard days. His paipos are available at the Switchblade Surfboards shop in East Vancouver and he’s stepped up production through a collaboration with another, larger local business — Rayne Longboards.
From our seats in the dense, damp forest next to the surf, I think to myself how fortunate we, the friends Watson has pulled together for this trip, are to be sharing in the fruits of those lessons handed down from father to son, recognized in retrospect, looking back over the waves.
This story was originally published in the Winter 2015/16 issue of Coast Mountain Culture magazine.
