GULF ISLANDS, Canada "I'm not ashamed to say it," Colin Griffinson says, as he scans the island-dotted Strait of Georgia, "I have wooden boat disease!"

And as he spins the very big wheel of his 1943 Pacific Yellowfin, one of a string of wooden boats the Dublin, Ireland-born captain and master carpenter has bought and restored over the years, he looks like a kid playing with his favorite toy.

And so do we, eight passengers cruising British Columbia's Gulf Islands aboard this floating toy box stacked with mountain bikes, mopeds, kayaks, golf clubs, fishing rods, shotguns for skeet shooting and a water slide, with a hot tub on deck and a speed boat with wakeboards and water skis.

This 114-foot vessel boasts varnished mahogany and gleaming brass but modern conveniences. Griffinson has poured more than $2 million into this retro gem, which has been plying the Inside Passage along British Columbia's coast as a luxury charter yacht for the last decade around the Gulf Islands, into Desolation Sound and north to the Great Bear Rainforest.

In spring 2013, the Yellowfin began accepting individual passengers for the pampered experiences once enjoyed only by the likes of Pearl Jam, Uma Thurman and the Saudi Arabian oil minister. The experience is active small-boat cruising with four traditional staterooms comfortably holding eight passengers.

We set sail on a June afternoon from the 1880s Britannia Shipyards in Richmond, near Vancouver International Airport, for four days of touring the Gulf Islands. The other passengers are two Vancouver families Marc and Karen Telio with their teens Sophia and Jack, and Cyndie Martinez and Gus Jassal with 5-year-old Javeen.

We chug from the mouth of the Fraser River into the Strait of Georgia to the original engines' "pocketa-pocketa" rhythm while sipping the ship's signature Bloody Caesars spiked with Pemberton, British Columbia's organic Schramm potato vodka. They're delivered on the sunny front deck in vase-sized glasses just as a pod of harbor porpoises surfaces port side.

We overnight in Montague Harbour off Galiano Island, and I awaken at dawn to cawing gulls and the aroma of salt air and brewing coffee. I treasure the serenity of being the first guest awake, cradling a steaming latte and a freshly baked banana muffin as I settle into my favorite hangout an ornate 19th century barber's chair in the wheelhouse, a prop from the movie "Mississippi Burning" that serves as the captain's chair.

When I see Dominic "Dom" Giossan, our guide, lower the first of the kayaks, I drop everything and slide into a red one, gliding across the glassy water that ripples as seal heads pop up around me. A bald eagle hovers above the mossy forest. Pink light creeps across white beaches with the rising sun.

Lighted by those soft rays, the cream-colored Pacific Yellowfin looks every bit the classic character it is. Built in Maine by the U.S. military and named JMP64 a Junior Mine Planter to protect East Coast harbors from a German invasion in World War II the 450-ton vessel saw only a few months of military service before the war ended. It was bought by California's Department of Fish and Game for tuna research (hence the name). It boasts a colorful rsum, including an early 1960s stint in the Caribbean with mysterious CIA connections during the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco. Then it lounged, deteriorating for a decade on the Sacramento River as a houseboat, until oilman Pete Whittier bought and nursed it back to health as his private yacht.

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Cruising British Columbia's Gulf Islands, luxury toy box in tow