What's the best road map?

I had to make sure that this was not an April 1st post.

This story made my day.

Now, this is no sea story ...

Way back in my youth I worked on a tug that towed a barge loaded with gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet fuel up the inside passage between Puget Sound and Southeast Alaska. It was and still is pretty remote country and it's a long way between nowhere and anywhere else.

At the time there was a Canadian oil company that had marine gas stations at most of the Indian fishing villages and canneries along the route. There weren't many and they were a long distance apart. Few recreational boaters made the trip, it was mostly fishing boats running betwee Seattle and the panhandle the Alaskans soggily refer to as "Southeast." We would see a pleasure boat from time to time though but they were rare above Campbell River.

One day a pleasure boat came up behind us and fell in alongside. The captain shouted across to ask if he could take a look at one of our charts for a few minutes. This struck us as a bit odder than usual but then we were tugboaters and enjoyed most any diversion without much question. It seems the fellow and his wife were on a boating holiday and planned to cruise the inside to visit Ketchikan and points along the way. I say planned with a little bit of tongue in cheek because his planning didn't involve a lot of chartwork.

As a matter of fact, he didn't even have charts for our location between Port hardy at the north end of Vancouver Island and Prince Rupert, near the Canada Alaska border, heck it's only about as long on a map as this line of text. At least it was on his folded up single page map of "Imperial Oil Company Marine Gas Stations of the British Columbia Coast."

We all got a good laugh out of that one, including the intrepid cruiser. I have no idea what he had to endure from his chief mate before he broke down and asked for directions. At least he had enough fuel to make it to the next floating gas station. Not all of them we met did and they made for some good entertainment as well as costing one poor barge operator his job.

Not quite as bad, but I'm sure everyone who has a copy of "Exploring Puget Sound and British Columbia" has at some point ignored the warnings on every page and used it for navigation.

Back in the early 90's a guy headed to the Bahamas from Ft. Lauderdale in one of those little rental boats with a placemat "chart" from a diner. Luckily he was found.

that was hilarious mate ...

TWO in the uk ...... hmmm ...

must be something to do with the weather ...