A quiet night spent rafted to Sir Tugely Blue due to Carrie Rose having to vacate the pier so as not to be burned to her waterline due to the Canada Day fireworks show, and due to the mornings subsequent cleaning of the pier by the St. Andrew’s fire department, and this was all due to the harbormaster having only one mooring available and due to me winning the coin toss but somehow ending up on the pier.
The sun came up clear and calm. The new inverter provided AC current to toast the bread, and a can of butane to boil water for tea and coffee. As the above was enjoyed, a small British racing green dinghy decisively rowed to a small sailboat of the same color.
I recognized the type of sailboat from a decades old article in WoodenBoat magazine. It is a Thunderbird made of plywood (a new material 60’s) in southern California, but don’t hold me to the particulars, you know how memory plays tricks.
The boat is distinctive because of its reverse shear: convex where most boats are concave. With the slight backward bow of the mast it looks tightly strung ready to spring off its mooring.
A middle aged man with some tawny hair intermix with grey, spent a long time futzing with the mainsail. He raised and lowered it. He flaked it on the boom and replaced the white sail cover with a green one. He was methodical.
In the mean time several whale watching boats came and went from “our pier”. The fire department drove down the quarter mile long pier and slowly hosed off the cinders left over from last nights (Canada Day) fireworks display. Fighter fighters seem to have all the time in the world until they have no time at all.
Carrie Rose and Sir Tugely Blue bobbed and spun around the mooring quietly apart even while connected by multiple ropes and separated by four large bulbous white fenders. My man on the green boat disappeared below only to throw up a sail bag and disappear below again.
It was a beautiful sight St. Andrew’s harbor that morning. The wind filled in robbing the morning of its calm warmth. I fetched my skull cape and flannel shirt, then blue jeans and a fleece vest. I stopped at the socks. It is July after all even if we are in the far Down East.
St. Andrews, Canada
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