Captain’s log
The start of harbour cruises
It’s been two weeks of victories and losses onboard the schooner. When we last met, we had just passed our annual inspection and we were ready to begin our annual harbour cruise season. We have managed to find enough tourists to make the trips worthwhile in the mornings and have been sold out in the afternoons. As always, we are meeting people from all over the world who come to Nova Scotia for the adventure.
Sail training and safety drills
Well, eight weeks have gone just like that. It is always so hard to fathom. In the past two months, the crew have gone from green horns to a crew. They have learned the basics of paint and varnish work, knots and splices, safe working practices ashore and at sea, how to safely work at heights, how to fight fires, abandon ship and rescue a person in the water. Our young crew have all steered and raised sail watched the world go by under sail on the far side of the Battery Point lighthouse.
Voyage to the summer berth
I cannot begin to tell you how good it feels to turn the key to start the engines and feel the low thrum of the John Deere main engines idling away and to be waiting to give the order to let go the mooring lines. The crew have put in six weeks of long days painting and varnishing and it’s time to get off the wharf, even for few minutes.
Safety training and hull painting
I wish I could share a photo of the wharf with you all today. We are in the center of big budget TV land here in Lunenburg. I have mentioned in past writings that the wharf would be transformed, but I had no idea the extent they would change the waterfront. There are barrels and bales and crates in heaps all along the waterfront behind the museum. Old style wooden lobster traps are piled along the building and there is a small cargo derrick with wooden crates suspended in a net near the ship.
'A step back in time'
It’s beginning to feel like somebody turned the calendar back here on the waterfront. Maybe as far as the 1840’s! There are barrels, crates and bales of cargo piled on the wharf and the modern 1930’s look of Lunenburg waterfront is fading away. Even the museum ship Cape Sable has been towed down the waterfront to the Ocean Gear Wharf to keep the area looking period appropriate. All this kerfuffle because a TV series production crew has descended on Nova Scotia. The book being adapted is Washington Black by Canadian author Esi Edugyan. Ms.