Reunion with the past...

VISITING A MEMORY

Peggy’s Cove and Maggies Bay

A nice place to split the trip from Sydney to Yarmouth is the popular tourist area of Peggy’s Cove. One could spend a week exploring the area including time at Nova Scotia’s signature lighthouse. Many visitors would stop in Halifax, but we prefer to avoid cities and focus on off-the-beaten-path places.

Pete and Pam referred us to a roadside motel in Clifty Cove that was very serene. Unfortunately, our schedule didn’t allow enough time to tour the area. We have been to Peggy’s Cove many years ago, including a visit Marvin made in 1969 (more about that later.) Although the stop was brief, we enjoyed the local food and views from our room. Surprisingly, we found that the area, this season at least, is not crowded with tourists. Many places have vacancies. Although it’s safer to have reservations, the obligations of a set itinerary don’t provide much flexibility.

Our reservation for the ferry that transits the Gulf of Maine from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor informed how much time we had and what we could do. Marvin had spent some time in the area in 1969 when, as a kid just out of high school, he spent the summer sailing on a wooden schooner from Chester, Nova Scotia to Petit Manan Island in Maine. He wanted to find the boat he sailed on, called the Elsie L. As luck would have it, we connected with Jim Carwardine a founder of the Nova Scotia Heritage Schooner Rescue Society that has adopted the boat for rehabilitation. We arranged to meet him at the East River Shipyard.

Jim’s organization is keen on preserving the vanishing schooners of Nova Scotia. In their day, these sturdy craft navigated the coastal waters for commerce (fishing) as well as recreation. As old wood boats require maintenance and dedicated stewardship, generational changes and maintenance expense have left many to fall into irreparable disrepair. The NSHSRS is working hard to keep the tradition alive and add new devotees to schooners.

55 years under the keel

Marvin’s reunion with the past.

In 1969, I was about to turn 18 when I was given a scholarship to join a research expedition awarded to me for my high school research efforts on plant community succession of submerged aquatic macrophytes in the Everglades. As one of twelve kids recognized nationally for field science research by the NY Explorer’s Club, I got to have dinner at the Club’s Waldorf Astoria banquet. I was seated with Gene Roddenberry. But, that’s another story.

In 2019 we posted, on our previous blog, the story of passing by Petit Manan 50 years after Marvin spent the summer on the island. This small rock, far off the Maine Coast, was an important light station and is now a national wildlife refuge. In 1969 the lighthouse was manned by the Coast Guard.

Here's a link to the 2019 post on our previous blog: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4123349886620590453/3094455687387934935

A researcher, Dr. Jeremy Hatch from Cornell, was studying arctic, roseate, and common terns and their colonial nesting on the island. His experiment involved capturing the birds, staining the wings with food color for identification, and transporting them offshore for release. This involved a sailboat, and that’s when my encounter with the Elsie L and offshore sailing occurred.

Traveling on my own out of the country to Halifax caused a bit of trepidation for a precocious adolescent. Arriving in the idyllic coastal settlement of Chester, Nova Scotia, I met Anthony Keasbey, sailor, WW2 vet, and teacher/headmaster of a private NY prep school. We were to take his huge (to me) schooner from Chester, across the Gulf of Maine to Petit Manan.

After a week of killing time visiting many nearby locales to keep busy, while staying in a small bunkhouse on his compound, we waited for his boat to be readied for the voyage. Finally, one day we visited his schooner, Heralda. It was hauled at a shoreside quay, without any top decking, and she had no masts stepped or rigged. Seeing this, Keasbey accepted his boat was not going to be finished in time to participate in the research project.

Keasbey spotted a small schooner at a nearby wharf and strolled over to speak with the captain. A half hour later, he returned with the news we would be sailing with the tide in the morning aboard the Elsie L. Amazingly, he had chartered the boat for the summer from the owner who he had just met!

This was the Elsie L, a 36-foot wood, gaff-rigged schooner launched in 1967 from the plans of a Maine naval architect. I thought, at the time, it was a vintage boat, but recently learned she was only 2 years old when I boarded her. It was not appointed with varnished mahogany brightwork or sporting a shiny hull like a gentleman’s yacht. Instead, she was a no-nonsense functional craft made to harness the wind for transportation along the coast. The engine was undependable, smoky and needed constant attention. Six of us were aboard for the voyage with Keasbey as the skipper. Fortunately, we had a very capable, crusty seafarer, Melbourne, along. He spoke in an unintelligible Newfie accent and was illiterate. His talents were resourcefulness in sailing and nursing a fickle engine.

Sailing the North Atlantic and across the mouth of the Bay of Fundy was an adventure for me. It was nothing like my small boat experience in the Florida Keys. My only sailing cred was on my backyard lake in a lateen-rigged dinghy. Learning the ropes, setting and reefing sails, navigation with dead reckoning and a radio direction finder, and “hot bunk” watches was my rapid introduction to cruising.

Our crossings to Maine and back to Nova Scotia ranged from becalmed boredom to exciting near gales and monstrous seas. The weather had fog, rain, sunshine and sleet – sometimes separately, sometimes concurrently. Special treats were observing a tidal bore wave far out at sea, a huge great white shark pass under the keel, and pods of spouting whales.

Our rations were Lunenburg sausage fried in lard with potatoes, 3 times a day – for most of the summer. We took with us 20 pounds of sausage, a bag of onions, and a sack of potatoes, along with a 2-pound can of lard, and coffee. Jimmy Buffett has a line in one of his songs about food on a boat “warm beer and bread could wake up the dead… reminds me of a menu at Holiday Inn.” That lyric always brings back the memory of the menu.

The “LCL” was a great boat, though I had no idea it was at the time. The skipper was a gentle and patient teacher. The capable sailors were paired and took watches, while a college student and I were tasked and trusted with four-hour rotation, usually midnight to four a.m. or four a.m. to eight a.m. It was a lot of responsibility for two kids.

The course we sailed was confirmed by a couple of landmarks, or rather sea marks; a lightship and the lighthouse on Machias Seal Rock. For a day at a time, there was nothing but the endless ocean horizon, the sun, and our compass.

The sailboat was integral to Hatch’s experiment to transport the captured birds out to predetermined locations for release at preset times. Sometimes I would be on the boat sailing out with the caged terns to release them at the designated coordinates and times. Elsie could make 6 knots, so a trip out 25 miles would take 4 hours.

At other times I was on the island. One task I had was to assist in monitoring the bird nests and watching for returning birds. With a parent absent from a nest, the hatchlings or eggs were unguarded and vulnerable to predacious herring gulls. The shore crew would watch unattended nests to scare off gulls, which meant we were constantly bombarded with excrement. A hat and foul weather gear was essential.

At the appointed release time, I would begin waiting at the edge of the island with a couple of grad students to watch when, or if, the birds returned. The food coloring stains were used in various combinations on the wings so birds could be spotted and identified among the thousands of gulls and terns scattered in the sky.

It became obvious that the birds were able to home in on their nesting island. Whether taken out 25, 50, or a hundred miles, they would return within their flight speed. With a flight speed of 25 miles per hour, they could return to Petit Manan quickly after being captive on a slow boat for hours.

Arctic terns are the world champions of migration. From breeding grounds on grassy treeless islands with beaches of the North Atlantic in summer, they fly to the Southern hemisphere to winter at the icy edge of Antarctica. So, of course, they had no difficulty in returning to their nests.

Ornithology wasn’t my main interest. My focus at the time was submerged aquatic plants and plant communities. In the idle hours on the island, I wandered the shoreline to observe marine algae and was intrigued by rockweed (Fucus sp.) with its bladder floats on hand-shaped leaves.

Staying in the Coast Guard quarters was a welcome respite from the schooner, and sharing meals with the Coasties was a break from the sausage and potato diet. Having a bed that did not have to be traded on each watch was another benefit.

After the time on Petit Manan, we retraced our course back to Chester. What a treat it was to see the Yarmouth Ferry crossing at a distance and even more gratifying to see the coast of Nova Scotia emerge from the fog.

This immersion into sailing infected me with a passion. Luckily, it’s something Lee shares an interest in, likely passed along from her father, and she is a capable equal partner in our maritime exploits. Although our excursions are coastal, we relish our time exploring the cold waters of Maine and the warmer Gulf of Mexico and Florida Keys.

Now, back to the present, when Jim and his wife Marie graciously agreed to meet us at the East River Shipyard. The facility is a sprawling new boat yard “for sailors, by sailors” that is generously hosting the storage of Elsie L for the Nova Scotia Schooner Heritage Rescue Society.

https://schoonerrescue.org/elsie/

We followed behind Jim’s Subaru up a hill to a recently cleared lot with several huge fabric storage tents. Driving inside one with anticipation we saw her, on jack stands and alone in a far corner. The Elsie L! She was covered with tarps and missing the bow sprit and her masts were laid out on sawhorses. What a reunion, after 55 years! to reconnect with the artifact that had such influence on the life’s course Marvin would steer. The Elsie L, now named just Elsie, looks a little rough. She needs structural and cosmetic work to get back in the water. Jim says she’s got good bones and the hull is in pretty good shape. It appears the keel needs some work, and the future of her engine is yet to be determined. A spruce log laying next to a broken main mast is being crafted as a replacement.

Jim struggled to pull off the tarps which floated to the storage tent’s gravel floor when the tie-downs were cut. Marvin scurried up the tent structure supports and stepped aboard to visit the topsides and cabin. There she was - the wheel and small cockpit and the curved cabin top, painted blue, with peeling fiberglass of a past repair.

Going inside, down the steep companionway steps I could see the wood hull fastened to the oak ribs. Light streamed into the cabin from small portholes. In the dimly-lit interior I could see the bunks that I traded with other crew during watch changes. To port, there was the galley where the sausage and potatoes were cooked. Starboard, near the engine compartment, was the small direct-discharge manual head. Looking forward, I could see that the V-berth where the skipper and mate slept was so small.

How much smaller Elsie is in life than in memory! With 36 feet on deck, an approximately 11-foot beam, and 6 and ½ foot draft, she’s not much larger than our 32 foot Shoalsailer. But, add on the 8-foot bowsprit and she would look much bigger. It was a little unnerving to recall that I sailed on this little boat as a novice on an ocean expedition. The experience infected a passion for transiting the water under sail and taking on the challenge of navigating to an unknown destination.

Schooners are an anachronism today due to the changes in boat building technology and changes in society. With the generational change from the original owners and builders, these old boats are fading away. Prized wooden vessels require time, talent, and money to upkeep. The heirs of inherited schooners don’t know what to do with them.

It is heartening to see Jim and his organization devoted to keeping these traditional boats from being discarded. Their goal is to rescue schooners and foster the skills of new devotees into sailors and boatbuilders. Check out their website https://schoonerrescue.org/elsie/

 Sailing on a gaff-rigged schooner, hoisting a topsail and seeing it transform from flailing canvas to a wind-filled shape is a reward few may know. Perhaps the Elsie will take another boy or girl out on the bay to hear the creaking song of the hull and rigging as she plies the water before a fresh breeze to the rhythm of ocean waves. I hope so. It meant a lot to me.

I wish them well on this noble quest to save the past for the future.

On to the fabled Bluenose

After the heady experience revisiting the Elsie L we drove on to Lunenberg to see the greatest schooner, the Bluenose, or rather the Bluenose II. But, to us it seems more like the Bluenose 2.5 (more about that later.)

The Bluenose is the pride of Nova Scotia and Canada’s maritime heritage. The original 143-foot schooner was built in Lunenberg in 1921 as a working fishing boat. She also participated in the International Fisherman's Cup, a predecessor race to the America’s Cup, between Canada and United States. She was undefeated in contests for commercial fishing schooners, and even defeated American boats that were built specifically to take her on.

Due to changes in the industry from sail to power, the Grand Banks sailing fishing fleet became obsolete. In 1936 a diesel engine was installed and the topmasts removed so she could fish year-round. In 1942 the Bluenose was sold to the West Indies Trading Co. and used for hauling cargo. In 1946, while hauling a load of bananas, she wrecked and was lost on a reef off Haiti.

A decade later the Bluenose II was commissioned and built to the same plan. Launched in 1963, she sailed a good life for many years, first as a private yacht, then as a sailing ambassador of Nova Scotia. Out of respect for the original Bluenose, the Bluenose II does not race. But all good old wood boats succumb to age and elements, so, in 2009 she was drydocked for restoration. The restoration was financed by Oland Brewery to advertise their craft beer products. Many of the same people who built the Bluenose II in 1963 worked on the refit. However, during the refit, nearly all of the boat was discarded! The masts, sails, booms, gaffs, deck boxes, rigging, and some ironwork were all that was left of Bluenose II. Yet it was determined to be a restoration and not a replacement, ergo, to us, "Bluenose 2.5."

This storied boat has her own song.

The Bluenose II alternates port between Lunenburg and Halifax, offering day cruises. Unfortunately, when we were in town, the ship was away from the dock and at anchor of the Lunenberg Yacht Club, some 15 miles away. We travelled to find her, admiring from the shore of Heckman's Island.

The picturesque village of Lunenberg is lined with restaurants and specialty shops. The harbor is filled with local and transiting sailboats.

While we were in Lunenburg, we had to visit the Bluenose II Company Store to get the merch.

And, we had to find Lunenburg sausage. It took 50+ years but Marvin had a hankering. We learned that the place to go was Foodland, the local grocery store, that makes their own. We were concerned that U.S. customs would not let us through with meat, so we asked someone in the store. Brad consulted his manager, Lucille. Neither knew what the rules were and, in the end, we decided to chance it. We also bought pudding, which is something that looks like sausage but is cooked.

Then we sped on to Yarmouth to prepare to catch the ferry the next day. We needed to go to the Canadian Border Patrol office to submit forms to get a rebate on the tax we paid to “import” Marvin’s artwork when we crossed into Canada from Calais, Maine. We learned we had to now “export” the artwork. A much more laid-back officer than the thorough border agent who discovered our “contraband” helped us with the necessary forms and we were on our way in short order.

As we sat on the ferry watching the Yarmouth harbor as we left Canada, we reflected on our eventful trip. We found the people we met were very nice. It was obvious that society was inclusive, with many rainbow flags on buildings and painted on roads, as well as their washroom signs showing gender neutrality. It was refreshing to be away from the culture war and divisive politics we have in Florida and the U.S.

We were surprised to find that there was no unsweetened tea at restaurants and convenience stores, with only sweet tea available. We thought sweet tea was a "southern thing" but I guess when you look at the historic trade of salt cod from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to the West Indies and bringing sugar (and rum) back from the islands, it makes sense.

Poutine was offered at all of the restaurants, as well as fish and chips. Poutine is French fries with brown gravy and cheese on top. Poutine is considered a meal, not a side dish. French fries was also available as a side dish. Seafood chowder, containing fish, clams, mussels, shrimp, and scallops, was delicious and a little different at each restaurant, sometimes thick and sometimes more broth based. Depending on where you ordered, the fish was mostly cod but it could be haddock.

The CAT is a fast ferry that runs from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor. The crossing takes only a few hours. The boat is well-appointed with comfortable seating and several café options. An advance notice email warned that the trip could be rougher than usual but we did not notice any serious discomfort.

It was interesting to watch a Harbor Pilot board the CAT when we entered the fairway into Bar Harbor. What an unusual occupation to board large ships in all kinds of weather by jumping from the pilot boat and climbing a rope ladder to the helm station.

Coming through the border at Bar Harbor was very easy. The U.S. border patrol agent asked a few questions, was mostly concerned about fruits and vegetables coming in, and no declaration sheet was required. She did not ask if we had meat or soil, but she did ask about alcohol and tobacco. That means we now have Lunenburg sausage and meat pudding in our freezer.

As an aside, before boarding the ferry in Port aux Basques Newfoundland to Sydney Nova Scotia, a Canadian agriculture inspection agent asked us many questions about whether we had soil, agricultural products, or had been to a farm. It seems that Newfoundland is under a quarantine because their soil contains nematodes, fungus, or bacteria that could be detrimental to agriculture in other parts of the country. We were told that in the past cars had to have the undercarriage washed before boarding the ferry.

It’s a couple hour’s drive from Bar Harbor to Rockland. Our road trip concluded, it’s good to be back on our own little boat. Now we can resume our waterway adventures. We are anxious to finally leave the dock for some peaceful and sedate time at a quiet mooring.

Thanks for reading!

Note: Our past blogs can be seen at http://shoalsailer32.blogspot.com