Short stay on Big Tancook

Unsuccessful scavenging

In the morning we decided to try to find chanterelles on the southern part of Backmans island. Peter has had enough woody adventures, so he stayed on the boat and was rehearsing his role for the upcoming play in the camp. Going into the woods from the bar that separates the two halves was impossible, so we had to try to find an opening elsewhere. However, the western part of the island turned out to be very steep, so on we walked along the shoreline in hopes of finding a less steep part.

It was close to low tide, but there were no signs of eaten mussels nor were there any under the seaweeds. Ultimately we did find an opening on the eastern side, but after a pretty extensive sweep we didn’t find anything edible.

Big Tancook

Big Tancook is the biggest island in the Mahone Bay and the guide book mentioned a gallery. It is only 5 miles away from Backmans, and since it was lunch time, I proposed to motor while the crew were cooking lunch. By the time we were ready to drop the anchor, we had already eaten and were ready to go explore.

Dropping an anchor outside of the mooring balls was easy. It held right away. The dinghy was ready to go since we were towing it, so even though it was windy, the waves were all blocked by the island and all 6 of us could fit in to go ashore.

Before I finished tying the dinghy to a rock, a car stopped by and a local painter asked us whether we knew anything about the island and gave us tips of where to go and what to see. Our first destination was the rec center, where one can find food and a bathroom.

About a hundred meters later we saw a helpful reassuring sign that we were on the right path (there is only one).

And a in a short while we saw the school, a helicopter landing field and the center.

There we met a gregarious nice fellow named Mike with his teenage daughter. She was wearing black long stockings with ribbons on the back and periodically was making remarks about the things that her father had to say. He pointed us to the Wishing Stones gallery and said that the owner, Hillary, knew everything about the island. We asked if there were mushrooms on the island. He said that he didn’t think so. His daughter retorted, “there are plenty of mushrooms, you should just look in the woods. Hillary would know all about it.” To the question of “are there any shortcuts between the roads?”, Mike said “not really, just the roads that are on the map.” His daughter added, “there are no shortcuts, only longcuts.”

We took the “longcut” to the gallery, finding a post office and two cemeteries. Perhaps not surprisingly, many names on the gravestones were repeated multiple times.

Irina would not be in her element had she not found raspberries. Unlike the ones we found on Monhegan, these were ripe.

Following the shorter dirt road to the gallery we saw a small horse, who was very happy to come and be petted. We fed her an apple biting off a slice at a time, and the animal seemed to be very pleased.

We found Hillary at the gallery which also serves as a museum of the island. She had quite a few photos that she made for sale as well as works by local artists. Everything was very chill, simple and yet with a unique charm.

On the way back Irina wanted to feed the horse another apple. While they were doing it, I saw an old man suspiciously looking at us. The owner of Rain (named so because she was born during a rain storm) was not pleased that we fed her. We were also concerned because the horse started to cough. He told us of a sad story when someone gave a whole apple to a horse and it chocked. After we assured him that we were giving here slices, he became less suspicious and said that the grass in the pasture makes her cough sometimes.

To the question of where we are from we would typically give a long answer: Vermont, NYC, Switzerland. The old man thought about it and said that he was concerned about Trump. Well, so are we. His concluding remark was “I just don’t think he should be in charge.”

The heat wave continues

Back on Salty Ginger I called the marine in Mahone Bay (the town) and after getting a quote of 65 CAD for a spot at a mooring(!) we lifted the anchor, raised the main and pointed the bow west. The choice of the destination was to make it easy for Mark to catch the bus to Halifax to get his emergency passport replacement of the one that had expired.

The wind was brisk, the water cold, so not only did I have to put on a sweater, but also the foulie jacket. It was cold. The fog was a lot thinner than what we saw from the southern part of Tancook. This line of sight sailing is so much easier than spending hours in white soup.

Docked in Mahone Bay, we went for a stroll through the village and saw the first signs of the relentless heat wave on the window of an ice cream shop.

Yes, we were in shorts, and yes it was warm and not windy, but clearly heat tolerance in Nova Scotia is quite different from that further south! Peter’s disappointment about the closed shop turned to happiness when we bought some ice cream at a local supermarket.

Catch of the day

Back on Salty Ginger I started preparing the scallops that we bought in Lunenburg, David was grilling fish cakes while Irina and Peter started to fish. Irina pulled out a few mackerels, let out the two small ones which left us with a reasonably sized fish to be eaten as sashimi/ceviche. Alla was a bit suspicious about eating the raw freshly caught fish, but it was tasty. Some ate it with wasabi and soya, some with lemon juice. Excellent appetiser in any case!