Two Bluenose deckhands meet. Kate Smith of Sydney, N.S., is currently part of the Bluenose II crew. Craig Harding of Liverpool was a deckhand on the ship in the 1960s. (Rick Conrad)

The Brooklyn Marina rolled out the red carpet for Nova Scotia’s sailing ambassador on Tuesday evening.

A few dozen people turned out to meet the crew of Bluenose II at the small clubhouse as it visited the Liverpool area in its first stop on a tour of southwestern Nova Scotia. 

Others drove down the small wharf in Brooklyn or towards the breakwater to get a look across Liverpool Bay to where the schooner was anchored near Port Mersey Commercial Park.

Volunteers at the marina had food and drinks ready for the crew and fans of the Bluenose.

Capt. Phil Watson was one of the dozen or so crewmembers who shuttled from the sailing icon to the marina.

“We haven’t been here in a long time and we were developing a a cruise along Southwest Nova and so Liverpool it is. There’s great alumni support here and community support and the club has always been good to us so it’s pretty easy to put Liverpool on the list.. … It’s good to come back to this side of the province again.”

The tour of southwestern Nova Scotia was hatched after the Bluenose crew cancelled an early September trip to Gloucester, Mass. Instead, they said they’d do what so many other Canadians are doing this year, stay closer to home and support local tourism.

Kate Smith, a deckhand from Sydney, N.S., is spending her third summer on the Bluenose. It was her first visit to Liverpool.

“I love it. It’s great. People are sweet. It’s super awesome,” she said of the Liverpool welcome. “We really like going around this area and we figured we’d go on a little staycation basically around the south coast.”

Liverpool’s Craig Harding sailed on the schooner as a 20-year-old from 1968 to 1969.

“I’d been on fishing boats on draggers and so on but I’d never been on a sailboat until that year and I learned to sail on it,” he said. “I’ve been connected to the Bluenose ever since. Hard not to be. Really, really happy to see the support. It was beautiful to see her come in.”

The last time the Bluenose II was in Liverpool was in 2021 when the ship celebrated 100 years of Bluenose history. 

Jamie Frankel of Massachusetts just happened to be at the marina when he heard about the Bluenose’s visit. He and some others arrived on his boat The Sea Quester a couple of days before to wait for a weather window to continue their journey through the Gulf of Maine.

“None of us knew she was going to be coming at the time, so this is an incredibly welcome surprise. … As the sailing ambassador for Nova Scotia I think everyone loves her but in addition, she has beautiful lines as a ship and as a tall ship of that size I’d say that it’s always a wonderful event to be someplace where she comes in and it’s the splendor of old sailing ships and old-style sailing ships.”

Capt. Watson says the Bluenose always draws a crowd. 

“It’s bringing a fishing schooner back to a fishing community. You know all these communities have shipbuilding, fishing heritage and these schooners, whether it was a fishing schooner or a cargo schooner, they all have that history there, so to be able to put a thing in place in the harbour where you can then talk about it and you can talk about, ‘oh those schooners used to be here all the time’ or ‘they used to build them over there’, it’s a chance for the community to talk about the history of their communities and share it with them themselves and hopefully they’ll come and share it with us as well.”

The Bluenose II left Liverpool on Wednesday afternoon, sailing around Port Mouton to its next stops in Clarks Harbour, Yarmouth, Digby and Lower West Pubnico.

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

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Sailboats line up along a dock at Brooklyn Marina. Photo Ian Clark

Brooklyn Marina is thriving during the pandemic.

The organization just released their annual report which shows the number of people involved with boating has increased dramatically in the past year and a half.

Membership is up from 69 in 2020 to 86 this year, while the number of docks being used has also risen from 47 last year to 63 in 2021.

Marina president Ian Clark says people were tired of being stuck at home and were looking to get outside.

“The pandemic has really seen recreational boating really take off in the past one and a half to two year and I think basically, what it came down to is that, people were tired of isolated and literally, they wanted to get out, you know, a breath of fresh air,” said Clark.

He says they’ve reached capacity at their docks however, members can still bring boats and launch them on a daily basis. Anyone wishing to find a permanent home for their boat needs to get on a wait list.

Clark is not surprised the marina has become so popular.

“The area around Brooklyn Marina is fantastic,” said Clark. “The fact that you’ve got a fairly sheltered bay on the open ocean. But the other thing of course, is you’ve got Coffin Island which you can go and visit.”

Clark says some of their members have been with the marina since it’s founding almost 25 years ago.

He says having people in the organization who know the history is an amazing resource and he’s equally excited about many of the new faces he is seeing.

“Getting people coming in from different communities or even out of the province is that, they have had membership at marinas elsewhere and come up with ideas that we’ll take a look at.”

Clark says those ideas are welcome now that many of the pandemic restrictions have been eased and the marina can return to hosting more social events.

“We’ve got a really good bunch of people on the marina board who are constantly coming up with great ideas. 2022 is going to be pretty exciting.”

E-mail: edhalversonnews@gmail.com
Twitter: @edwardhalverson

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