Since we've been delayed quite a bit longer than any of us had anticipated, we've had a couple of opportunities for sightseeing in and around Lunenburg. This week, the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, which is located on the waterfront in Lunenburg just down the street from our dock, invited all of the Picton Castle crew to visit anytime free of charge. While some of us may have gone initially because it was warm, dry and not windy inside the museum, I think everyone will agree that it is a delightfully interesting and comprehensive museum. On Wednesday afternoon, they offered us a special guided introduction to a number of the exhibits. We learned about lobster fishing, scallop fishing and the rum runners during Prohibition.
We also saw a movie, "The Captain and The Queen" about Capt. Angus Walters and the Bluenose schooner. The Bluenose and Capt. Walters are famous in Nova Scotia, and all of Canada, for having won the International Fishing Schooner Race. The Bluenose appears on one of the Canadian coins and the Bluenose II now sails out of Lunenburg. In fact, tomorrow morning we will wave her off on her first voyage of the season to Halifax.
Another movie at the Fisheries Museum that has been very popular with the Picton Castle crew, and which has been shown numerous times on request, is Irving Johnson's "Around Cape Horn" which he filmed in 1929 when he sailed on the Peking around Cape Horn. Although I have seen this film a number of times before, it always amazes me to see it again. (In case you don't already know, Irving is my father's uncle...my great uncle.)
Besides going to the Fisheries Museum, we also took an excursion yesterday to see the surf and breakers on the ocean side. Since we are in a protected harbor, we have not seen the full effect of the gales that have been storming all around us. Sure we've had a lot of wind and rain, sometimes as much as 40 to 60 knots of wind and rain that seemed like it would never end. Yet, even the local folks kept saying how amazing the storm effect was at the beach on the ocean side. So, yesterday we piled into several vehicles (I rode in a 1963 Mercedes Benz, which was an adventure in itself) and drove out to Hertle's Beach and to The Ovens, some caves where the water goes way into the cave and roars loudly. The spray was tremendous. As I was shooting some video footage, the wind nearly blew me over sideways. We were impressed by the huge waves and tremendously grateful that we had stayed in port this past week!
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