ODAMIT (oh-dam-it)

Odamit (Later Chack-Chack), my Grandfather Harry Roberts boat, at Malaspina Galleries, Gabriola Island, 1924. The boat was about 35′ x 12′, built on the beach at Roberts Creek and launched 1923. Harry sold Chack-Chack in the ’30’s and replaced her with the slightly smaller schooner Leyo, also built on the beach at Roberts Creek and finished out at Cockburn Bay on Nelson Island. Leyo was subsequently sold and Harry built and used a whole series of smaller boats at his home on Cape Cockburn. He built a larger junk-rigged aft cabin ketch on the beach there, (Chack-Chack II), but he was too old, she was never launched and rotted away on her building blocks.

Chack Chack had a gasoline engine of about 8 HP right from the start. I don’t know if the engine was new or used when installed, but from the logbook it was incredibly undependable. Virtually every voyage was interrupted, “engine stopped”, and an hour or two later “engine going again”. In the 1920’s Chack Chack and Harry traveled the PNW coast from Seattle north to Minstrel Island.

In 1900 Harry, his father “Frank”, and his younger brother Bill and sister Ida, arrived by train in Vancouver. The three kids (Harry was oldest at 16) had never been in a small boat before. They set out to row an old dugout north to Roberts Creek. It was only about 25 miles but it took them most of two days, they camped on a beach on Bowen Island along the way. Harry learned to row but he didn’t much like it.