After a nice time in La Have, we sailed a short distance around to Lunenburg.  Lunenburg is a fun town, a bit touristy but also a UN World Heritage site with a long nautical history.

Historic Lunenburg waterfront

It’s the home of the Bluenose II, a reconstructed fishing schooner from the 1800’s that is so famous in Canada that it’s on the back of their dime.  It went out sailing every day and was great to see. Nova Scotia has a long tradition of fast schooners, used for fishing the Grand Banks and elsewhere, and also smuggling liquor into the US during prohibition.  Besides Bluenose, there were a few other schooners and square-riggers in port.

Bluenose under sail, also see photo at the top of the post

We were a little concerned when we arrived, since they were havnig the Folk Harbor Festival that weekend, and space to moor or anchor was tight.  However, they found us a spot and we had a nice safe mooring the whole time there.  Although many cruising boats pass through, it’s still a working harbor with an active scallop fishery there and the Highliner Foods fish plant.  You Canadians will definitely know Captain Highliner! 

We met some interesing folks while there and made more friends, including a French Canadian couple who live in Lunenburg during the summers and rent their boat out as an AirBnB, then go to the Caribbean straight from Nova Scotia in the winter.

This summer, we were also sort of the WildHorse Towing Service – we seemed to be around when people had their dinghy motors conk out, so we would tow them back to their boats, and we did it again in Lunenburg.

While there, we finally got our folding bikes out and used them quite a bit for errands and even got in a 30-mile bike tour.

We had planned to stay there for 3 days or so, but there was a storm coming so we stayed.  We had 35-knot winds and heavy rain, but WildHorse was fine, although it was a lumpy bumpy night.  Lucie dreamt that she was walking and flying up in the air with every step, and when she woke up, realized that it was because she was almost becoming airborne in our bed.

Not everyone was lucky, this poor boat dragged ashore in the middle of the night.  Luckily, crew and boat were fine and got pulled off at high tide the next day.

Since we were already there after the storm, we decided to stay one more night and go to at least one day of the music festival.  It was great – Canada seems to have a really thriving art and music scene, which probably has something to do with the fact that they get support…. We had a blast, especially that evening dancing to a kickin’ Zydeco band from Montréal.  At one point, we got the whole place up line dancing up the aisles.

The next day, we finally got out of their after a fun and interesting stay, off to Halifax!