I first saw Pam years ago when we both had booths at the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council shows. Pam was a force behind that organization, as well as local business organizations and community groups like Second Story Women’s Centre, all while co-running Birdsall-Worthington Pottery Ltd. and raising a family.
Among her other legislative duties, Pam is chairing the committee to set up Arts Nova Scotia.
Pam would like her website to bring government and people closer together. Nova Scotia being a small and friendly place, its can happen.
Father’s choice on Father’s Day, so of course we went to the Rope Loft on Chester’s Front Harbour.
The Rope Loft in Chester
We didn’t dock and dine this time, but you can do that, and berth your boat for the night too, if you’re lucky.
If the walls could talk, they would have many nautical yarns to tell. The old oak timberframe building dates back to the privateer ship Teazer, as it was built with remnants of the famous ship after she burned and sank in Mahone Bay in 1813.
But there’s no salt pork and hardtack on the menu. The Rope Loft Burger is the best around. One of our fathers was very pleased with his sirloin tip roast with baby potatoes and Yorkshire pudding which, he declared, was almost as good as his own. That’s high praise! The mothers enjoyed Baked Salmon and Seafood Marinara respectively.
A walk around the Village completed our lovely Father’s Day outing.
When the weather is warm enough, you can sit on the deck and watch the activity on the Front Harbour.
The restaurant is a busy place during Race Week. Last year, the Tanzer 22 class was headquartered at the Rope Loft.
Check out the Rope Loft website for a bit of history and some pictures – and of course the menu!
And so the shoveling begins. We have about 3-4 inches of very dense snow here near Western Shore on the shore of Mahone Bay. A friend near New Germany, inland, reports at least a foot and a half of “thick heavy snow”. Meanwhile, someone in Kingsburg, which juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, has no snow at all! This pattern is typical: rain near the coast, snow inland.
Here’s how a tidal inlet on Mahone Bay looked this morning:
Jan. 13, 2011, after a snowstorm. Taken with a Fujifilm FinePix S1800 at the widest angle setting, equivalent to 28mm.
St. John's Lutheran Mother & Daughter Choir, taken from the back of the church with a Fujifilm FinePix F1800, which has an 18x optical zoom. This photo was taken hand-held, from the back of the church, and isn't even at full zoom.
Don’t ever imagine that life in the more rural parts of Nova Scotia is devoid of fine cultural experiences. In fact, there is more going on in many communities than a busy person can take in, and often it is all the richer for being home-grown.
Such was the case tonight when the St. John’s Lutheran Mother & Daughter Choir, directed by Leslee Barry, presented their Christmas Concert. The beautiful, large church was packed. No wonder: the music was very fine, with interesting, complex arrangements well executed, and very accomplished instrumentalists accompanying the choir. Much money was raised for the local food bank, and everyone went home satisfied, and in fine Christmas spirit.
Christmas concert in St. John's Lutheran, Mahone Bay, one of the "Three Churches". Taken at wide angle (28mm) with the Fujifilm FinePix S1800.
So much the better for knowing several people in the choir! That’s the human scale of life here in Nova Scotia.
House on Edgewater St., Mahone Bay, between the churches. I was impressed by how the S1800 could take pictures at high ISO settings (here ISO 800) allowing after-dark, no flash, no tripod photography like this.
Many people were without power for a day or two due to trees and branches falling on power lines.
Damaged roller-reefing jib in Mahone Bay harbourOne of the two floating cabins in Mahone Bay harbour dragged its mooring inland.Who's the strongest of us all? This spider's web is battered but not broken.
Around noon, it brightened up, the wind died down and then shifted, and blue sky started to move in. We weren’t expecting a well-defined eye, but when we saw blue sky, we got excited.
Was it really the eye? Perhaps it was just the sky just clearing after the brunt of the rain had passed, because according to the storm’s dynamics, most of the rain was ahead of the eye.
Our T22 at 9 am near Oak Island causeway in Mahone Bay. Waves crash on the Marina's jetty in the distance.
We woke early to the sound of the wind, and the news that Hurricane Earl is tracking more easterly than predicted last night, and should pass us directly overhead. Right now it is just south of Yarmouth and has not made landfall yet.
Environment Canada calls it a marginal category 1 hurricane, though some other sources have downgraded it to a tropical storm.
Satellite image of Earl at 9:45 AT
The rain comes in waves.
I have fantasies of being able to photograph the eye if it passes overhead, but may not get blue sky behind. The satellite image doesn’t show a clear hole in the middle.
The wooden gaff-rigged sloop was on its way from Lunenburg to Mahone Bay. But the cable used to raise the centerboard had broken. So the sailor ran her up on Bachman’s Beach, on Second Peninsula, hoping to fix her at low tide.
The team of draft horses was in training, as usual, and was pulling a sledge. Their driver brings them down to the beach to cool off. We’d met them before, a couple of years ago, on this beach.
The hull of the sloop was built by David Westergard from a half-model he’d found. (Westergard is currently building a couple of schooners at the Dory Shop in Lunenburg.) Only after he’d built it did he learn that it was a particular Pubnico type of fishing vessel that was often fitted with a make-or-break engine. The sailor (whose name escaped me; add a comment if you read this) had rigged the boat himself and was bringing it to Mahone Bay for the schooner races.
“Are the schooner races part of Chester Race Week?” I asked, naively.
“Not at all.”
“Do the schooners eschew Chester Race Week?”
“Fiberglass Race Week!”
Right. The folks who perpetuate the skills of wooden boat building live in a different universe from the carbon fiber and kevlar world of the most serious racers. But they sail the same waters.
And so do we, on short overnight cruises in our 32-year-old fiberglass sailboat, not belonging to one group or the other, but glad to admire both, from a respectful distance.
Draft horses cool down at Bachman's Beach, July 2008
