READER BOAT: Quinque

Many articles have been written on boat restoration.

- Stephen Mohan

This is a story of how a boy named Jasper restored his parents. When they were down and broken, he sent them a gift: a special boat from their past—to help them heal, to make them smile and laugh again, and to rekindle their love of sailing.

Rewind to a time 25 years ago. Friends owned a lovely wooden boat named Quinque. They kept it in a slip year-round in Oak Bay, B.C and were generous to offer its use to others. My wife Barb and I would happily borrow her for daysails out to the Chatham and Discovery Islands. Little did I know at the time what a significant role this small craftwould play in our future.

Quinque , Latin for “five,”was so named by the original owners for their five young daughters. The boat was built in the mid-1980s on Galiano Island by Greg Foster at his Whaler Bay boatyard. At 19'-5" overall and 18" draft, Quinque is Foster’s own design of a scaled down Sixern (or Sixareen—a 28'-30'-long, sixoared fishing boat once common to the Shetland Islands).

Greg, his wife Shay and their family have built many beautiful boats: dories, jolly boats, shallops, whalers, pinkies, faerings, tent-boats, fourareens, cargo schooners, sixerns, and scows—just to name a few. In 1986 the backbone and frames of the tall-ship Pacific Swift were constructed at the Whaler Bay yard before its completion at the Expo 86 site in Vancouver. (Years later, Barb and I met and got engaged while sailing offshore on the Pacific Swift!) Greg still builds boats today for his own personal enjoyment. He has an amazing eye for keeping the rigging, sails, and hulls of his creations all in proportional harmony.