Saturday in Lunenburg

Saturday morning, May 25th  

Before seeing the sights of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, it’s time to reconnect with home, meaning Mary Ann. She and I have often taken separate vacations in our 25+ years of marriage,

but these 6+ weeks on the Pride of Baltimore II will be the longest. So far, my trip has been less than a week.

These past five days have been a struggle, a challenge for my body, because of dealing with long term fatigue and pain. These days have also challenged my ability to control my own behavior. (I know; this sounds a little dramatic.) I grew up in the 1950’s working class, Midwestern U.S. - well entrenched in the work ethic of the time and place – meaning, that if you see someone working at something, you don’t just watch, you pitch in and help, guest (crew) or not. Then of course, there’s vanity that says, “I’m as strong as these young pups!” For the past five days I wasn’t able to control my actions, i.e. to not act like I was 30 or 40 or even 50, to accept that I was 65-years old. And I was paying the price. I asked myself, “I really love sailing and the ocean, but why am I doing this?” No obvious answer.

Back to Mary Ann. I call her late Saturday morning. The sound of her voice surprises me – the familiarity of it, the family-ness of it. Too worn out, and in the midst of an ordeal, the sound of my mate moves me to tears. My emotions come rising up from their murky depths. The phone call helps, immensely.

Saturday Afternoon.  

I check out Lunenburg while the crew and most of the guest crew holystones the deck. Except they use oil and brushes, instead of holystones like in the British navy of old. For me, it's a café. After too much coffee and too much internet, I walk through town. Captain Trost was right, Lunenburg is a great place. Great boats in the harbor, great architecture, and no franchise stores.

Saturday night.  

Mark, our cook not only serves plenty of good food, he also makes a birthday cake for whenever a crew member has one. Today is our First Mate Jill’s birthday. After dinner, after the galley is cleaned, it’s movie time aboard the POB2. No black and white 16” screen here, someone brings out a very large flat-screen which was stashed somewhere aboard. Since Jill is the birthday girl, she gets to select the movie. 

“Election” starring Reese Witherspoon and Mathew Broderick, about an election for a high school class president. I expect to not like it and retire to my books and my drawing. (Because, you know, I’m 65, and not close to being a high-schooler.) But I do watch it and like it. An excellent evening. A terrific end to a taxing week.  Here's what I saw in Lunenburg:

Bonus Postscript:

Bluenose was a fishing and racing schooner built in 1921 in Lunenburg. She displaced 258 tons and was 143’ long overall. It had a beam of 27’ and a draft of 16’.  The schooner carried 10,000 sq. ft. of sail and her mast height was 126’ The vessel had a crew of 20 and cost $35,000 to build.

After the 1921 fishing season on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Bluenose competed in the 1921 International Fishermen's Trophy race off of Halifax, where she defeated the American challenger Elsie. The following year, Bluenose defeated the American challenger Henry S. Ford, this time in American waters off Gloucester, Massachusetts. And in 1931 Bluenose defeated another American entry, Gertrude L. Thebaud. All this winning (especially against the Americans) made Bluenose a provincial icon for Nova Scotia and an important Canadian symbol in the 1930s. She served as a working vessel until she was wrecked in 1946.

A replica, Bluenose II, built in 1963, uses Lunenburg as her home port. Alas, she wasn’t there when the POB2 called in May, 2013.                                             (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

The boat on the stamp of the top of this post is the original Bluenose.

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Sometime on Thursday a rumor starts floating around the Pride of Baltimore II. We are east of Boston sailing almost due north, pointed towards Nova Scotia. Our next destination is the cut between Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island. The rumor is that we might stop at Lunenburg before approaching Cape Breton.

Lunenburg is not on our itinerary, but we are ahead of schedule and there is kinda sort of a storm somewhere in the North Atlantic, that we could, you never know, run into.

So by Friday Captain Trost decides that we had better get into safe harbor, quick. We let the Canadian maritime officials know we want to add a destination to our trip. Before leaving Baltimore earlier in the week the POB2 had to file a float plan with the maritime officials of both the U.S. and Canada and any deviation from it had to be approved. We let the Canadians know and they allow us to enter. Captain Trost says the storm is serendipitous because Lunenburg is a cool, historic port town, and he thought that the crew should see it, or at the very least enjoy a break from the rigors of sailing a 185-ton wooden schooner.

Lunenburg has been long involved in Atlantic fishing. Originally Lunenburg was a Mi'kmaq (the original inhabitants) encampment for fishing, trapping and clam harvesting. In the 17^th century the site became a Mi’kmaq and Acadian (French and French/Indigenous people) village for nearly a hundred years before the British forced them out. The English had been concerned that too many French Catholics were in the area and that more Protestants were needed. The English landed nearly

1450 settlers, along with a contingent of 160 regular soldiers, in the Lunenburg area without negotiating with the Mi’kmaq. Needless to say (but I will) the area was soon nearly all English.

The village of Lunenburg was officially founded in 1753 by the British who established fortifications in the harbor and laid out a rectangular grid of streets paralleling the harbor. Since then fishing off the

Newfoundland banks has been the primary occupation of the harbor. It was also a center for the building of wooden sailing/fishing ships. The United Nations (UNESCO) declared Lunenburg a World Heritage Site in 1995. It is considered to be the best surviving planned British colonial town in North America.

On Friday afternoon around dinner time, we dock next to the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. I’m glad to be

stopping here, not just because the port promises to be interesting but also because I’m spent. Four days at sea with all the tugging on lines has taken the oomph out of me. As an added benefit of Lunenburg, there’s no watch needed at night, so no getting up at 3:30AM.

On Saturday morning we have a late muster. Jill, the Chief Mate, assigns tasks for the regular crew – checking the rigging, making small repairs, cleaning this and that, and the biggest job, oiling the deck. The guest crew is released for the day, but Jill asks if any of us want to volunteer to help oil the deck. Several do. I decline and feel like a slacker.

To ease my guilty conscience, I go ashore to find a café with a wireless internet connection. Coffee and the internet – a place to reconnect with family and friends, and drink lots of coffee. What more could a sailor want in the daytime?

Young Crew of the POB2

Here’s the regular (as opposed to the guest) crew of the Pride of Baltimore II as we left Baltimore harbor in May of 2013:          

                  

This crew, except for the captain and cook (both 35 – 45+/-), were all in their 20s on this voyage to the Great Lakes in 2013. The oldest was Jill, the Chief Mate, who turned 27 on the first week of the trip.

Aside from nephews and nieces at weddings and reunions, I hadn’t spent much time with young people. (Offspring don’t count.) I lived aboard the POB2 with these 20+ers for 6+ weeks. By the second or third day of the trip I started to see general characteristics of the crew emerge.

First I noticed that they were willing and eager to share their knowledge of how to manage boat operations – from how many time to wrap a line around a winch, to which line is the jib sheet (a sheet is a line is a rope), to which line is to the topgallant brace. The did this without emotion or hesitation (considering our age difference) and with the clear eyes of teachers who want their students to actually learn something.

They were adventurous, funny and hard working. When there was a call for “All hands on deck”, they came running. When there was a heavy line to tug, they did it with enthusiasm, and humor – often singing out with sea chants or silly ditties that is a part of tall ship heritage. Thorough in their work and proud of it, they were professionals. All were in decent physical shape, some in extraordinary shape.

I didn’t hear any back-biting or gossiping while aboard the POB2. Nor any complaining. Even when a crewmember had galley duty (doing the dishes, scrubbing the floor and cleaning the heads, the toilets) they did it in the same manner as when they were on deck controlling the helm.

They were a family, in the best sense of the word. They looked out for each other and Captain Trost looked out for them all. He took them to the port of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, just because it was a cool, interesting port. He got tickets to a Toronto Blue Jays (baseball) game and took a bunch of crew with him.

I asked Jill if most tall ship sailors were like this crew? Yes, mostly. And why were they like this? Because they loved what they were doing, and what they were doing was exciting, useful and adventurous. Because they were mostly free spirited and relatively unafraid of life.

These people don’t become sailors for the money. Jill said if someone wanted more material things in life than a cell phone, a computer and a little beer money then sailing tall ships wasn’t for them.

Tall ship sailors take their job seriously because it is a serious job. Safety and even life hangs in the balance. The ocean is neither benevolent nor malevolent – it can swallow someone with as much indifference as when we inadvertently step on an ant while walking down the sidewalk.

These tall ship sailors were/are exceptional. It was a pleasure to experience the ocean with this little sub-culture of young people.

Wearing Sails

Wednesday 5/22/2013

On that first morning at sea, I awaken from a post-watch nap, drink some coffee and bring out my sketchbook and markers. It’s more therapy than art, a way of loosening my mind into a swirl of curves, spirals and colors.

At noon “C” goes on watch and “A” becomes standby. Shortly after this, Captain Trost calls for a course change and for “A” Watch to come on deck to help with the required sail changes. We will have to wear the sails, that is, move the sails and spars from the port side to the starboard side while the helmsman turns the boat through the wind. The direction of the wind has not changed, so as the boat turns to a

more northerly direction the wind shifts from the starboard to the port side.

Easier said than done, of course. The wooden boom and gaff for the mainsail are large and heavy. So is the canvas – no nylon or carbon fiber on the POB2.

But...ingenious as humans are, they have invented and perfected devices to aid in the hauling and tugging. And on the POB2 they don’t require fossil fuel, only muscle power. Winches, pulleys and levers are all over the boat to aid the sailors. Still, the tugging isn’t for the faint-hearted.

Showing the crew that I am a competent guy I tug and haul with the rest, all the while knowing that I will pay that night. I don’t care – better to be sore than to be considered something less than a full participant in sailing the POB2.

I don’t have to wait until night to pay for my pride. I don’t remember how long it took to wear the sails, but when the POB2 is pointed northward, and the sails are trimmed properly, I’m so spent my legs buckle and I fall to a crouch. Luckily no one seems to notice, and more luck, Erin does notice. She tells me to go below. But I “man-it-up” and tell her that I will after I tell Jill. (This is boat protocol; the watch leader needs to know where her charges are.) Jill is below at the chart table with the captain, talking navigation business. Again lucky for me, Erin doesn’t buy my manliness. She goes below and tells Jill that I’m going to my cabin. And I do, muchly grateful for Erin. While resting in my bunk, the event weighs on my mind. I’m quiet during our evening watch.

That night I’m more than sore.  Immediately after our post-watch dinner I retreat to my cabin.  Completely depleted in body and spirit, tears from the exhaustion flow out.  I moan into my pillow, “I can’t do this”, and “I can’t make this all the way to Cleveland.”  The tears are not from any particular saddness, only from a body in much pain and completely exhausted.

Luckily my cabin-mate, Mark, a computer consultant from New Jersey, is on the watch immediately after mine, so I have the cabin all to myself.  Even knowing that tears are only the relieving of internal distress, I can’t let anyone see my collapse.  Gotta always be the capable, “can do” Bob.

More luck – by our morning watch, I am sufficiently restored. Thanks to modern medicine and the north Atlantic.