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?