Lunenbug, Nova Scotia

3 schooners

OK.  We’re taking a run down to Lunenberg today to visit the old fishing village by now dolled up for us tourists.  Hopefully I can get a ride on the Bluenose II fishing schooner.  It is a replica of the Bluenose that was lost off the cost of Haiti.  

Ironworks distillery

We hit Mahoney Bay on the way down and spent a few hours there actually it was so nice.  It was Sunday so the flea market was at the square and we had lots of time to look at boots (me) and yarn (Jo) and to eat some bad for you stuff that I’ll never remember the names of but I know it’s probably melted sugar with a few things mixed in.  An old Scotsman selling tartans painted on oak barrel staves ( I don’t know why) told us there were a lot of Coolens, my brother in law’s name, in the next town so we decided to drive through on the way back.  First we headed to Lunenburg.

framed hulls

This town even though theres a lot of fresh paint still has the unmistakable composition in its narrow streets, parallel to and sloping up from the waterfront ,  with tall wooden buildings on both sides of an old fishing village.  The buildings enclose the streets with the sense of ships hulls arching up and away from a keel.  It was easy to imagine the noisy, smelly, probably muddy streets with the whole nautical world of ships and sailors and merchants filling the  voids and alleys between the walls.  It must have been bustle of the saltiest order.  For sure drinking and painted ladies was on every man’s mind.

Ah but the main reason I came here was the Bluenose with its  cod fishing off the Grand Banks.  I have heard stories of it for 40 years, since college.  I even had a wooden Grand Banks dory for a while in Seattle. They were built to nest into each other on deck.  A single fisherman and his dory would be let out a mile or so apart from the next and the schooner would circle back and pick them up.  Needless to say with the distance, loneliness and weather many a fisherman were not found.  

Uptown Lunenburg

The first thing we discover, the Bluenose is in dry dock for all of 2010!  It is apart and cannot even be seen from any vantage point and is restricted.  I can’t believe it.  4,700 miles to see it and to discover I can not.  I should have known but up until last year I knew it was still in service.  So we nurse myself up to the Bluenose Company Store and fumble around looking at photos and paintings for sale.  Shit.

We then walk down to the edge of town, like old sailors, to the Ironworks Distillery.

Back Harbor Chester

There we sampled apple vodkas, apple brandy, and fruit liquors.  It helped a little.  We walked back to the truck at the other end of town looking between buildings for a glimpse of the Bluenose but not a mast or spar in sight.  I’m strangely resigned to this missed opportunity and we leave Lunenburg.  On the way back to Wayside we stop by the exclusive community of Chester. It looks like old money with grand homes, yachts and intertwined streets that look more like someone’s meandering landscaped driveway.

Chester, the back harbor, was where an old college friend Scott Flanary helped to restore a big wooden schooner with a friend.  I don’t think that boat ever got further west than Florida.  A long story in itself.

Well it’s back to Glen Margaret’s Cove for the last time.  Tomorrow we will decide whether to head east or west when we get in the truck and turn on the key.

We decided to head East to Cape Breton.