At the Bluewater Cruising Association, their categories of perspective have us in limbo.  Are we today a “dreamer”, a “doer”, or a “doner”?

Perspective: appearance of distant objects to observer; the appearance of objects to an observer, allowing for the effect of their distance from the observer

As a cruiser who currently cruises year round in a 4 metre Achilles dinghy, 5 km to town across Salem Sound and the Atlantic Ocean, I would fit in as a little dopey.  Our major Tillicum cruising years of 2009-2011 seem a very distant past and fading day by day.  I am more of a dreamer of past voyages and dreamer of days ahead in Nova Scotia, these dark, dreary winter days.

Perspective – Tillicum as a dreamer of past voyages and dreamer of days ahead.

True, we still live on the ocean and no doubt our trip has led us here and keeping us in a new version of cruising mode.  We are employed as caretakers for 10 months on a 60-acre island just off the mainland, and have access by our dinghy to the historic towns of Salem, Marblehead, Beverly and Manchester by the Sea.  Just to the west of the island is Bowditch Ledge, a stone cairn announcing “beware of navigation dangers”!  For those historically inclined, Nathaniel Bowditch (born in Salem) is credited as the founder of modern maritime navigation; his book, “The New American Practical Navigator” was first published in 1802.

Back to perspective!   Reflecting from afar on our “trip”, I have to relate three distinct sayings, phrases, and a poem that stick out in my memory.

First, a little saying on a card in a shop in Beaufort, North Carolina goes like this:

The little boat of you and me

Went sailing on the deep blue sea

We weather the winds and crashing waves

And we were strong

And true and brave

We were still in love

We kept sailing on the deep blue sea

The little boat of you and me

Definitely in the Dreamer-Doer stage here! The second was printed on a T-shirt found in Isla Mujeres, Mexico and goes like this:

 Face your fears and live your dreams!

Certainly a “Doing” type of saying! Finally, the last was found in 2011, when we first took up our post on Bakers Island and hit home:

The Ship of Life, by John T. Baker

 Along the shore I spy a ship

As she sets out to sea:

She spreads her sails and sniffs the breeze

And slips away from me

I watch her fading image shrink

As she moves on and on,

Until at last she’s but a speck,

Then someone says, “She’s gone.”

Gone where? Gone only from our sight

And from our farewell cries:

That ship will somewhere reappear

To other eager eyes.

Beyond the dim horizon’s rim

Resound the welcome drums,

And we’re crying, “There she goes!”

They’re shouting, “Here she comes!”

We’re built to cruise for but a while

Upon this trackless sea

Until one day we sail away

Into infinity.

In hindsight, our distant memories of this cruising lifestyle have led us to some major modifications. We no longer pine for long voyages and interesting cultures to experience; but realistically yearn for a return to civilization, access to the car, shopping, and the trappings that might be categorized as the dreaded “L” word – landlubbers.

It would not be fair to have only expounded on philosophical musings, without being practical and passing on some cruising tales for this interesting area.

New England has plenty of sailing! There are plenty of sailboats – 1,000 just in Marblehead harbour, all at moorings.  Our first foray north of here was in 2013, to the highly-anticipated cruising waters of Maine.  Our final destination was to reach Nova Scotia and finalize our “smiley face” sailing trip, after leaving Vancouver in June of 2009.

Maine is, well, interesting.   Personally, I would have liked to have sailed there 40 years ago; it might have somewhat resembled Nova Scotia nowadays.  It seems over developed – the beauty still exists, but your perspective is to maybe stay on the water and see it from afar.  The capes are the same as eternally viewed. The currents, fog and wild weather have not changed.  The lobster pots!  Heidi says it is like they sprinkled Skittles over the water.  We did not venture farther east than Mount Desert, Camden area and truthfully, the pull to Canada overshadowed the enjoyment of the area.  The small outposts and gunk-holing east of this area would be a good alternative to crowded harbours and dodging 3 million pots.

Off to Canada! We left Long Island, Maine and crossed the Bay of Fundy, leaving at daybreak and arriving at Brier Island (home of Joshua Slocum) at dusk.  Along the route, we were treated to a fantastic display of humpback whale-antics for about two hours as we neared the Nova Scotia shores.

Later, we landed in Yarmouth, called Canpass to get checked in by Canada Customs, and celebrated the return to our homeland!

Our crazy plan, once we arrived, was to go house hunting with a twist. We would be arriving port to port via our Tillicum boat.  All in all, we explored this area of Nova Scotia from our boat and via auto with our real estate agents.  Living and travelling by boat dictated modification of this activity.  We visited Yarmouth, travelled further east (never got used to this idea, it always seemed like we were going north!) past the dreaded Cape Sable (watch the tides) to Shelburne.  We checked out real estate here.  Our land criterion was to have an eye for where to keep Tillicum and how the cruising-sailing aspect of the area would suit us.  Amazingly, we discovered many cruisers do the very same thing here.  It is convenient, safe, and quite lovely, if you like old towns with lots of history and fog.

From here, we worked our way up the coast and the next port of call was the LaHave River area.  Our cruising guide led us to the “famous” LaHave bakery, which we found easily.  It became our Nirvana!   We dropped the anchor just above the cable ferry crossing, and Tillicum took it in one try and didn’t want to budge.  A miracle!  Actually, we were just glad to be holed up, with an interesting area to explore, with a shore on the port side and a shore on the starboard side.

Next stop was just across the way to Riverport.  Lo and behold, we arrived just in time to join in the Nova Scotia Schooner Association annual race week!  This truly fit in with why we sailed in a schooner; instant camaraderie, challenges, food, rum, music, and stories.  Needless to say we had an intense week racing for our handicap, with crew from the infamous Bluenose crewing, and learning about the big schooner heritage and beautiful, well-sailed schooners of all types.

We took Tillicum up the river to Bridgeport, about 15km inland.  The fog lifted and we finally felt the warmth of the sun, something we had not had since leaving Massachusetts four weeks earlier.

Horizons still beckoning, we were off to that famous of all ports, Lunenburg.  We had been to Lunenburg by car in years previous.  Sailing here was the perspective to arrive properly – by sea!   We eagerly shopped, played tennis (a pastime throughout our trip) and soaked up the historic ambiance.  We were not yet finished house shopping and took in many homes, bays and possibilities, all with the eye and question in our boat-brain heads, what about Tillicum?

We are keeping our perspective while Tillicum watches over us in the bay

Well, enough rambling…I will cut to the chase and say we did in fact “settle” in this fair, far land.  Once again, Tillicum told us exactly where to plant ourselves.  Early in 2014, after an exhaustive search, we found what might be that perfect place to play out our cruising/sailing days. The LaHave River, in Burn’s Cove, quite near Bridgewater, became our way-point.   This spot is the sunny side of the river, with roads suitable to biking. Quite incidentally, our two-level house is very sunny and the closest building replica of a boat we could find, with dimensions of 26 feet by 50 feet!   This year, 2015, we will pretend to be landlubbers and enter back into the rat race and keep our perspective, while Tillicum watches out over us out in the bay.  We intend to keep sailing, racing and make our living with a small business called “Tillicum Adventure Tours”.  Our goal is to share our cruising trip experience with others, thus keeping alive the perspective of doing, yet always dreaming, while travelling along that elusive water path.  We hope to never be done until we’ve sailed past the horizon and sailed through the green flash!  And even then we will gain a new perspective.