Halifax was the furthest point north and east for Journey as we turned southwest to make our way towards Florida. We reboarded her September 7th on her mooring at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron, where we left her for 12 days as we joined Jay and Janet on their boat, Gusto, for a voyage further northeast to Cape Breton Island and into the Bras d’Or Lakes. We traveled over 400 miles, a “down hill” ride with the wind to Cape Breton; hard beat against 15 to 25 knot wind returning - ninety percent of it motoring. Our highest speed recorded was 27.7 Knots that we figured occurred when Marlene was at the helm and the boat was airborne over the crest of a 12 foot sea with the little water wheel that measures speed blowing in the wind so to speak. It was a long haul along a desolate coast with some spectacular scenery and anchorages and the blessing of no lobster pot buoys to dodge.
As always, more spectacular than the scenery are the people you meet. Marlene and I walked a pebble beach in St. Peter at the southern end of the lakes where we laid over the heaviest of the five days of non-stop strong southwesterly blows. We came across an elderly woman (that’s saying something for us!) with a walking stick beach combing. Her specialty was finding fragments of colored glass called sea glass that has been tumbled and smoothed by the actions of waves, treasures born from litter. She told us that she made all kinds of mosaic pictures and frames with her glass and would give them away. Having recently moved with her husband to an apartment she said with a twinkle that “she was either going to have to have a larger apartment or get rid of her husband to have room for her collection.” We joined the search and even I, a pathetic forager at best, could spot little bits of green, amber and milky white glass, but not treasured blue. She led us to the best place where a stream emptied onto the beach. We talked about our grand-daughters love of sea glass, and she emptied into our pockets her day’s harvest.
For those of you who will be joining us on legs of our adventure you can consult with Steffi and Charlie who nobly and skillfully served as first crew in this odyssey for Journey's 36 hour crossing from Teel Cove to Halifax. We christened with them the highly technical and innovative piece of equipment – the IOPC, a.k.a. the Illusion of Privacy Curtain, that as Marlene noted when it was installed, “with this in place one can’t hear a thing.” Not to worry for those of you who don’t know boats and Journey, we do have doors. The IOPC is an added feature and comfort.
Charlie races his own boat and gave us great lessons in sail trim to squeeze the extra point something knot out of each sail set. Steffi brought innovation and improvisation to the galley. We had an exhilarating run from Lunenburg to Halifax with winds in 20’s, reefed main and jib, on a broad reach clocking along at 7.5 knots. We were in full battle gear – foul weather pants and jackets, life vests and tethers to secure us to the boat. As Charlie said: “Houston do you copy?” A truly exhilarating day.
We left Halifax on Sunday, September 9th, pondering options regarding tropical storm Gabrielle that might have passed over the Maritimes Tuesday and Wednesday. We aped the strategy of our friends Jay and Janet by doing an overnight passage from Halifax to Shelburne, “Founded by the United Empire Loyalists in 1783,” when thousands fled the rebelling colonies, including a sizeable number of freed black slaves. There are lots of wonderful, historic homes and buildings, but we were puzzled by an English Tudor building raised on huge wood pillars above an open floor. We stopped a local who explained it was built a few years ago by a movie studio for the filming of The Scarlet Letter. We also discovered that a wonderful tower and wind vane on a water front building was an add on, as was the expansion of a building labeled The Coopery. History and Hollywood.
We kept Journey at the Shelburne Harbor Yacht Club and Marina, a place of note for the most unexpected reasons. Its manager, Sue, sets a new standard for hospitality, and as we learned over the three days, it is a hub for community. We had lunch one day. You order food on the first floor across a Dutch door from a woman who was beamed from 50 years ago out of the ladies guild serving Wednesday night suppers at First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, IA.
Hookers lead to Whirligigs
We were told the food is delivered to you upstairs in what is a bar and function room where we discovered tables set up like a church basement strewn with material and frames, lunch dishes and ladies. We went to sit at the bar, but three women asked us to join them and introduced themselves by saying: “We’re hookers!” And indeed they were - artists in making hooked rugs. We learned that hooking rugs began as a craft of poor women who could use burlap bags as a foundation for weaving in strips of wool rags, leaving a nubby surface. It gave us a new appreciation for the ancient hooked rug made by my grandmother, probably in the late 1800’s now in our hallway in Boston.
We noted that men don’t seem to be as good at gathering for hobbies. The three ladies almost said in unison, “whirligigs.” They are the hooked rugs for men of Shelburne. Later that afternoon we stopped for coffee at Beandock Coffee, and ran into Brenda and Dale Clark. Dale was setting up across the street from the coffee shop a promotional whirligig that he had made for Whirligig and Weathervane Festival to be held on September 22nd and 23rd.. His folk artistry creates exuberance in these devices made from scrap materials bent, screwed and glued together to convert wind to motion.
Dale told of us another fellow whose name he couldn’t remember but identified two spots where he might live. We met Charles Hardy coming out of a shed behind his home. His work wasn’t as polished or joyful, but there was imagination in subject mater and a modest income to be made from his workshop in an old camping trailer.
Community of Cruisers
Shelburne also gave us our first glimpse of a new community we might discover and the novices that we are even with 20 years of sailing under our keels. Ken and Lynn have been sailing aboard Tryst for 25 years, traversed from California to Alaska back down the west coast through the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, several years in Maine and now headed to Norfolk to pull the boat for the winter. Ken graduated from Iowa State eleven years before us. We also met Moe and Greg from Minneapolis who sail a Mason 43, the big sister of our boat. We discovered that we sailed side by side in darkness, but in radio contact approaching Shelburne in the wee hours of Monday morning.
It’s too early to say much more about the depth of this community formed by this optional pursuit of cruising on a small boat, but at first glance it could be rich indeed.
