A Lunenburg Dory - built afresh, I get to chat to the builder.
This blog is a bit misleading, the last blog covered Baddeck in the Bras d'Or after which Nick and I head back ( I keep thinking "head South" but actually it is West as Nova Scotia is tilted a fair bit, compass course are also 20 degrees different to true chart courses, so our compass course is actually due West magnetic).
We leave Baddeck, stop again at St Peter to wait for a lock opening, but I blogged about that in the (single) St Peter entry. We sail direct for Halifax, 149 miles and an overnight sail where we pull into Halifax docks, wait a day while some bad weather blows through and visit Lunenburg by bus. We then go to Dartmouth, 4 miles up the river for a cheaper nights stay and to get fuel before departing for Lunenburg again - by boat! however we arrive at night, anchor and leave the next morning early
I hope the photos don't confuse you. I include a few nautical ones, despite being out of order.
On our way back we see an interesting rig, a marriage of a modern Western hull (I think) with a three masted Chinese junk rig? Junk rigs are interesting - all control lines run to the cockpit and it is easy to alter sail area. Not sure about beating ability but Hey, who am I to talk and anyway gentelmen don't go to windward...
We also see .... a black blob which quickly dives away... We think it was a whale as it is quite broad, and big. We also saw porpoises which where camera shy and I also saw a big big turtle a few weeks later in Long Island sound.
And coming back from St Peters we had a sunset - no green flash, but pretty nonetheless.
And then to Lunenburg by bus! I had been told to visit here when I visited the Dory shop museum in Shelburne.
Wall to wall docks, lots of boat activity, once they made dories in 4 or 5 places here
Houses well preserved too - it is a Unesco protected town.
Love the boat, strange place to park
The dory builders also built houses off season - the top dormer window is a Lunenburg trademark
A lot of tourists come here, including us I suppose, there are lots of restaurants and antique shops - and a rather good second hand book shop where I buy 4 books on boatbuilding!
Must have been prosperous as many buildings are large. The boatbuilding spawned lots of support industries to make fittings,ropes, sails and ironmongery - so a hive of industry in its day
And of course fishing as well as boatbuilding, which came first, chicken or egg.
And of course, in these waters fishing was hard, in any waters in fact, boats from here fished far and wide.
Poignant to see how complete families get wiped out when a complete boat goes down. The sea is not sentimental.
Schooners were made here, in this case we test Nick who has been learning Signal Flags - while I revise mine, I seem to have a 90% retention rate. We are so busy working out what these flags say that we fail to notice that the "E" flag is upside down, shame on us... (it says Welcome Aboard)
The dock walk has an Adirondack chair - a better version than some I have seen. This is my first woodwork project when I get home. Nick has trouble remembering the name until I ask him to picture a "deer" on "Deck".
Given the state of my memory I use mnemonic and analogy a lot - to remember the signal flags I have a little saying for most of them. - The O flag has two ramps (triangles) for instance and I ask Nick to picture someone sliding down the ramp and falling overboard - which is what the "O" flag is used for; Man overboard.
Note the curved back and the curved seat. A top designer would tilt the armrests in a bit and lift the hand resets, if it can be done without undue effort, I am all for the KISS principle to craft work. Shirley and I had visited a chair exhibition in the Copenhagan Design museum a few years ago. Good design should be simple and work. Hence my fascination with Dories.
I chat to the boatbuilders and they refer to me John Gardiners book and suggest I try the nearby secondhand bookshop which I do. I am also building up snippets of folklore - all frames are the same slope (2 in 1) and are flat of course. The floor rise is about 3 to 4 inches (3.5 in the Shelburne ones)
We discuss American Pine versus European Pine, the Americans have much better woods than us. Pesky English took all the Irish Oak to make ships already... I may have to go to Architectural Salvage companies and "rescue" old pine floorboards when I get home! Iroko might be a candidate for frames though my iroko rudder on my selfsteering is showing splits. I may laminate instead.
The museum in Shelburne is interesting too, though not much on Dories - they do have an exhibit on Bluenose - a very famous Lunenburg Schooner that competed against USA Gloucester boats for a cup - these races were for working fishing boats, none of this highfalutin' yacht races like the America cups, these are real boats, not aircraft that pretend to go on water and cant sail in more than 27 knots of wind << rant mode off >>
The competition...
We also had a lecture on the history of the bluenose and her captain.
All to soon, we return to the bus, not as well organised, or as cheap as the Bras d'Or ones but certainly handy - it drives through Mahone Bay on the way back - Stephen, the commodore of Dartmouth Yacht Club had told us that he has spent years cruising the bay and it has beautiful sailing, the town we pass through certainly looks lovely. (I hope I haven't mixed up houses from Lunenburg with Mahone Bay - but they are all in the same county)
And finally, halloween is coming? or maybe they just eat a lot of pumpkin pie. Castleward's pumkinfest would go down well here!
And then we continue back to Halifax, then back to here for an overnight anchor before heading to Shelburne where we wait two nights before heading to Boston - 290 miles which we cover in 48 hours. This includes 5 hours of force 8 and 5 hours of force 7. Nick saw 10 knots on a beam reach - with two reefs in the main and a small number 2! Gribs had said 25 knots, they lied, gribs often underread by a beaufort force (see www.passageweather.com )
Suprisingly cold in Nova Scotia but weather in Boston runs hot and cold, depending what day it is. We seem to be getting one bad day and two or three good days as fronts "Northers" come down from the lakes. I will be weather watching closely from now on.