Click to go to Mahone Bay Regatta website

The Mahone Bay Classic Boat Festival, formerly known as the Mahone Bay Wooden Boat Festival, isn’t happening this year, but a new group has come together to present the Mahone Bay Regatta on the same weekend.

So if you’re used to making a trip to one of Nova Scotia’s most scenic towns at that point in the summer, for food, entertainment and a bit of “messing about with boats”, or if you have a boat and like to take part in the races, you should continue to mark that weekend on your calendar.

This year has a strong Pirate theme, so if you come on Saturday or Sunday, bring along some Pirate garb, or at least be ready to say “Arrrggghhh, me hearties!”  You can practice by changing the language on your Facebook to Pirate:  Account > Account Settings > Language and from the drop-down, choose English (Pirate).

Look who has his Pleasure Craft Operator Card!

We moved to the South Shore of Nova Scotia for the sailing, essentially. Lots of folks here have boats. There are kayaks, runabouts, sleek motor cruisers built for speed, a few “trawlers” (non-planing motor cruisers), fishing boats converted into pleasure boats, “personal watercraft” (sea-doos), small and medium-sized sailboats of all vintages, some wooden, and more (if I left your kind of boat out, no offense; just leave a comment below). No mega yachts to speak of; when you do see one of those, it’s probably “from away.”

Even if your boat is just a runabout with an outboard, and even if you’ve been running about with it since God was a boy, since September 2009, if it has a motor, you’ll need your Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC) to run about with it in the future – in Canada, that is.

So there’s a bit of a rush on to get the card. Courses are popping up here and there, and presumably they’re being filled by those who’ve been putting it off all these years.

Courses are offered by various groups, such as the Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons (CPS), where I got mine in 2003 as part of their more in-depth Boating Course. CPS now offers a standalone Boat Pro course which is geared towards the PCOC exam.

Converted fishing boat

My husband, a lifelong sailor, and our 9½-year-old son recently took a 2-evening course with local instructor Michael Ernst. Ernst uses the curriculum developed by the Lifesaving Society.

Taking a course with a group of people and a teacher who knows what he or she is talking about is actually fun. It allows you to ask questions and learn from other people’s experiences.  There are also online courses available, or you can study the materials on your own and write the standardized exam online with a proctor. Exam challenges are also held at boat shows around the country.

Course prices vary from $30 to $85 or more, depending on venue costs and what the instructor charges. Some teachers, such as the CPS instructors, offer the course voluntarily, as part of that organization’s long-standing interest in promoting safe boating through education. For other providers, including the online courses, it’s obviously a business. Some of these providers are probably showing up in the Google ads on this page, above left.

We are proud of our new young cardholder!  The card is good for life, so he has lots of time to benefit from getting it now.  It serves as a great base for developing his boating knowledge.

I camped out last weekend next to the cottage of friends on Lake George, on the South Mountain near Aylesford, in the Annapolis Valley.  We swam and kayaked and wished we had a little sailboat there because it was windy.  We hung out and talked and read books and ate.  When it was cold we lit a fire.  We grabbed the last bit of summer.  That’s what cottages are about.

Lake George on a September morning

Hurricane Bill approaching Nova Scotia as seen on StormPulse.com. Click image to see fullscreen current version. Select clouds, windfields and map labels, to get a picture like this.

“Batten down the hatches” – it’s an old expression from the days of “wooden boats and iron men” and describes perfectly what Nova Scotians are doing as Hurricane Bill approaches our shores. Memories of 2003′s Hurricane Juan, which hit Halifax hard, are fresh in our minds. There’s a sense of anticipation in the air, weighted down with high humidity and a fresh breeze. Boat owners are checking moorings, moving boats to safer places, removing canvas to reduce windage and damage, and literally securing the hatches. Everyone is stowing lawn furniture and garbage cans. Apple growers in the Annapolis Valley are concerned for their bumper apple crop, but there isn’t much they can do at this point except wait. And “pray to the rum god,” as a sailor told me as she watched her classic wooden daysailer being hauled out of the water.

Environment Canada's hurricane track predictions. Click image to see current version.

Bill is currently forecast to pass south of Nova Scotia during the day tomorrow, Sunday as a Category 1 hurricane. I’m monitoring it on two websites: Environment Canada’s marine info section, and the more spectacular and information-rich StormPulse.com. We’ll see which of the two has the more accurate predictions!

I made a little video of this year’s Fast and Furious Sea Trials.  It’s in two parts.

Part 1

Part 2

Sunset at Covey Island, one of the islands protected by MICA.

The first settlers of Lunenburg must have been in awe at such freedom.  What we now call Germany was at the time an assortment of many principalities of various sizes.  Going down the “highway” of the river Rhine to Rotterdam, where they boarded the ship that would take them across the Atlantic, the emigrants would have been stopped at every border crossing and paid tolls.  Many of them had even needed to secure permission from their feudal lord to leave the land they were bonded to as peasants.  Once they reached Lunenburg in 1753, they must have been very appreciative of the freedom to profit from their own labour and build their future with their own hands.

Even some of the modern-day German immigrants to Nova Scotia that I know have expressed to me their appreciation of the freedom they have here in a society that is less regulated than the one they left behind.

The entire natural coastline of this island has been destroyed and replaced with a rock wall.

The Mahone Islands Conservation Association (MICA) works to protect public access to the islands of Mahone Bay, as well as to preserve their natural environment.  The islands are increasingly under pressure by private owners and developers.  Natural shorelines and nesting habitats are disrupted (photo right).  Owners of some islands chase visitors off beaches that have long been used by the general public. (Some have been known to brandish guns in their efforts, something  that Canadians or at least Nova Scotians just don’t do.)

From what I understand, depending on the type of deed, the intertidal zone has legally remained public except in a few cases where water rights were transferred.  In a country where travel by boat was the norm, the right to land on a shore would have been an issue of public safety.  Nowadays, it seems that there is a trend for private property rights to be extended into the intertidal zone -  whether by deed, by custom, by complicity of the authorities or by ignorance by the public, I don’t know.  Enlighten me if you know anything more about this issue, please, by commenting below.

Meanwhile, I take pleasure in seeing the decendants of the original Lunenburg settlers, with names such as Meisner and Ernst,  involved in MICA, perserving public access to the islands of Mahone Bay for future generations of humans and seabirds.

Larinda's figurehead frog in a new coat of paint

The highlight of the Tall Ships visiting Lunenburg was seeing Larinda. She’s a replica of a 1767 schooner, built over a period of 26 years by Larry Mahan of Barnstable, Mass.  She was a labour of love, full of wood carvings and fancy and fun. Mahan sailed her in many Tall Ships events, where she was much admired. Then in 2003, having taken shelter in Halifax Harbour during Hurricane Juan, she was rammed by another ship during the storm and sank, right next to a sewerage outlet. It was a big mess, and Mahan despaired of ever being able to repair her.

Larinda's stern, reflected in the water of Lunenburg Harbour

The salvaged boat was bought by a Nova Scotia couple who live on St. Margaret’s Bay, and is being carefully restored.  Larinda didn’t actually make it to the Halifax Tall Ships event, and hasn’t been fully rigged yet. But she was towed to Lunenburg and rafted up alongside the schooner Unicorn, from whose deck we could admire her. Larinda is sporting a new colour scheme of black, white and bronze instead of green and off-white (see photos of Larinda before the sinking).  Her distinctive red battened junk sails were irreparably damaged, and her new sails will be white. The frog in the tricorner hat still graces her bow, and her brasswork is shiny.

Larinda truly is a special ship.  It will be exciting to see her sail again.

Larinda's deck, with graceful carvings, is being restored.