Last August 18, Shannon came to cruise with us for a week or so. We traveled exactly one day, then got stuck in Ludington because of bad weather. This August 19 Shannon came to cruise with us for a week or so. We traveled exactly one day, then got stuck in Lunenburg because of weather conditions. We’re pretty sure she’s unlucky rather than bringing a curse, but we delivered her back to college just in case. It’s always sad when one of the girls leaves us although at least we now can move on. Hopefully.
The silver lining is that if we can’t leave a town that starts with L, Lunenburg is a pretty decent spot to not leave. Among other things, no need to dodge the Badger. In fact, on our journey so far we’ve stopped in about two hundred places, ranging from huge cities to isolated anchorages. Lunenburg is a consensus top-five.
What an awesome little village. It’s like a tourist town that’s full of shipbuilders and artists and old buildings and good restaurants, but thankfully not many tourists.
Dana loves bookstores. This place has three. Her favorite—Lunenburg Bound—arguably was one of them.
Lunenburg Industrial Foundry and Engineering has been in business since 1891, which at least implies that they’re good at something. Since among other things they take care of those mega-yachts like we saw in Fort Lauderdale as well as fleets of huge fishing boats and the Bluenose, we figured to be in pretty solid hands. The new shaft seal indeed is working like a new shaft seal is supposed to work, so we should be okay on that front for another six years.
The original Bluenose—Canada’s most iconic vessel—was a schooner built by Lunenburg shipbuilders in 1920. She not only adorns the Nova Scotia license plate, she’s also been engraved on one side of every Canadian dime minted since 1937. (Apparently the name pays homage to “bluenosers,” which is the nickname given to Nova Scotians because of blue potatoes or some such thing.)
Here’s a photo of a model of the Bluenose.
The original boat is no more, but Bluenose II is a faithful replica and supposedly sports the largest working mainsail on the planet, although we certainly can’t verify that claim. We’d have taken a photo but she wasn’t in port.
Some of the original Bluenose parts and equipment were made in the local blacksmith shop. Now it’s a distillery. Because we needed things to do and a distillery tour seemed interesting, we joined the No Drama crew.
We took a photo we call “Still life still life.”
Mostly everything around here is old, at least according to the signs on the building.
Some of the buildings look freshly painted. Some of them not so much.
As noted boater Geoff Chaucer wisely observed, “All good things must come to an end.” And so it is with our extended stay in Lunenburg. Actually, we’re ready to get the hell out of Lunenburg ASAP, because we’re starting to feel the pressure of approaching winter weather. Andrea Gail sank in an October storm not far from here and it’s damn near September now.
Indeed, trouble already is looming large. Just north of us today it the weather radar looked more than a little swirly. As noted boater Jeff Brooke wisely observed, “Anything that looks like a toilet bowl should be avoided.”
Also Dana’s dad is keeping us informed about Tropical Storm Dorian, which is slowly heading north. Tropical Depression 6 already is tracking directly towards our new shaft seal. in other words, we’re fixing to get it from both sides.
We’re not finding anything humorous about this situation, and mostly just want to get to Maine and hunker down there if we can’t go on. Tomorrow we hope to move a step closer by reaching Lockeport, which has a small-but-supposedly-protected dock we can tie on. However, if something happens and someone writes a book, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the obvious choices to play us in the movie adaptation. The harder part will be casting a perfect lookalike for Oscar.