Accusations and threats are flying after two boats were sunk in the Dogpatch area of Ladysmith Harbour in two nights.
Sometime Monday night a boat sank and ended up off the eastern tip of Slack Point. A man believed to be its owner was seen Tuesday morning at about 11:30 a.m. engaged in a heated shore to ship verbal exchange with people aboard the Dream Chaser, a 37 ft. Bayliner reportedly owned by Nathan Churchill of Ladysmith.
BC Supreme Court documents from Dec. 16, 2014, show that the Dream Chaser was sold to Nathan Churchill in August, 2010 by Nanaimo chapter members of the Hells Angels.
The man on shore Tuesday was accusing the people on the Dream Chaser of being involved with setting his boat adrift, then sinking it.
On Tuesday night the Dream Chaser burned to the waterline, coming to rest on the north beach of Slack Point, where it sat Wednesday afternoon, with a boom surrounding it, a gooey mess of debris-filled, oily water inside, and a sheen of diesel fuel clearly visible on the water outside the boom.
One of the people who had been aboard the Dream Chaser during the previous day’s exchange arrived in a skiff to inspect the carnage, and said the hostilities were not over – that there would be retribution for the burning and sinking of the Dream Chaser.
Dan Casler, who walks his dog on Slack Point just about every day, witnessed the Tuesday morning altercation between the boat owners, and said he thought things were going to come to blows then.
“I’ve been going down there every day for five years and watching the situation deteriorate,” Casler said. But he’s never seen things escalate like they have recently. “I think the whole situation down there needs to be cleaned up,” he said.
Just over a month ago another vessel burned and sank in Dogpatch. A houseboat, tied up next to the Viki Lyne II went up in flames and sank July 18, the night before a protest against the Viki Lyne II’s presence in Ladysmith Harbour was held. Police said that incident was suspicious.
“The level of illegal activity has certainly ramped up in the last little while,” Rod Smith, executive director of the Ladysmith Maritime Society said. He’s concerned there’s going to be a major fire in the harbour, an environmental disaster or that someone is going to be seriously injured.
Cpl. Rick Fraser with Ladysmith RCMP said that due to the extent of the damage it will be difficult to determine exactly what happened with the Dream Chaser.
“Unfortunately it’s not going to be easy to tell whether that was an accident or not,” he said.
He added that the RCMP is concerned about ‘vigilantism’ that might be going on in the Dogpatch, but that there is not enough evidence to take action.
