After my lunch in Northwest Harbor, I toured around in the dinghy with a stop to turn her over on the beach for bottom scrubbing. It’s amazing how clean a bare fiberglass dingy bottom stays when it’s moving as much as this one is. I hardly had to scrub at all.
This was a spot worth lingering in but the weather report on my return to boat was promising for good conditions to cross the bay and poor for any touring of Grand Manan (calm, foggy, and rainy). I decided to go with the weather flow move over the Head Harbor on Campobello in order to cut the passage to Digby down to just 65 miles. On the way over, I stopped to watch a crew of men driving new piles into a fish weir. This ancient way of life still lingers.
Head Harbor utterly charmed me the first time I stopped there to clear customs and wait out a storm last year. On this gloomy day, it looked hard scrabble and uninviting. My fault primarily for stopping at the defunct marina because I knew I could get cell reception there (barely) but not up in the main part of the harbor. It is a horror. The docks are made of the kind of steel catwalk grading that has teeth like on a large saw, only sharper. You could never slip but the wounds if you tripped would be mortal. Even more amazing, someone thought that a marina had to have full height rails. These were to be pre-fabricated pipe rail sections set into pipe sockets welded to the OUTSIDE of the dock frame. They evidently figured out pretty quickly that this wouldn’t work and removed most of the rail sections but the left the sockets. Instead of a rubber or even wooden rub strip, there were these six inch, rusty, ragged edged pipes every six to eight feet to serve as fenders. There were also no cleats. The only provision for tying docklines were loops of pot warp run through the grating and chafing on the saw teeth. I took pictures because only photos could be believed you’ll have to wait for the publication of my book, “WHAT were they thinking?” This will be the cover photo.
Once I got the boat tied up, and without a single scratch, I had a pleasant enough time. There was a live water hose so I filled the tank and the price was right because no one came around to collect a dockage fee as a couple of fishermen stopped for a beer said someone might. I think it would take some nerve to ask for money to dock at this place.
This was a spot worth lingering in but the weather report on my return to boat was promising for good conditions to cross the bay and poor for any touring of Grand Manan (calm, foggy, and rainy). I decided to go with the weather flow move over the Head Harbor on Campobello in order to cut the passage to Digby down to just 65 miles. On the way over, I stopped to watch a crew of men driving new piles into a fish weir. This ancient way of life still lingers.
Head Harbor utterly charmed me the first time I stopped there to clear customs and wait out a storm last year. On this gloomy day, it looked hard scrabble and uninviting. My fault primarily for stopping at the defunct marina because I knew I could get cell reception there (barely) but not up in the main part of the harbor. It is a horror. The docks are made of the kind of steel catwalk grading that has teeth like on a large saw, only sharper. You could never slip but the wounds if you tripped would be mortal. Even more amazing, someone thought that a marina had to have full height rails. These were to be pre-fabricated pipe rail sections set into pipe sockets welded to the OUTSIDE of the dock frame. They evidently figured out pretty quickly that this wouldn’t work and removed most of the rail sections but the left the sockets. Instead of a rubber or even wooden rub strip, there were these six inch, rusty, ragged edged pipes every six to eight feet to serve as fenders. There were also no cleats. The only provision for tying docklines were loops of pot warp run through the grating and chafing on the saw teeth. I took pictures because only photos could be believed you’ll have to wait for the publication of my book, “WHAT were they thinking?” This will be the cover photo.
Once I got the boat tied up, and without a single scratch, I had a pleasant enough time. There was a live water hose so I filled the tank and the price was right because no one came around to collect a dockage fee as a couple of fishermen stopped for a beer said someone might. I think it would take some nerve to ask for money to dock at this place.
