Hello everyone, and greetings from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada which is Picton Castle’s home base between voyages.
A number of people have reached out to ask how we fared here in Hurricane Lee, which transitioned into a post-tropical storm just before it approached our shores. Despite being post-tropical, Lee still packed hurricane-force winds and was a very wide system meaning that strong winds were felt hundreds of kilometres from the storm’s centre.
We experienced rain starting Friday evening with winds picking up throughout the night and into Saturday morning and afternoon. Lee’s centre made landfall in the late afternoon on Long Island, Nova Scotia. Through Saturday night the winds abated and on Sunday afternoon the sun finally poked through the clouds. Official reports show that the maximum sustained wind in Lunenburg was 81km/h and the maximum gust recorded was 107km/h.
Electricity in Lunenburg went out on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday afternoon at our warehouse, but is still out at our office on Monday morning. There were, at the peak of the storm, over 200,000 customers in the province of Nova Scotia without power, as of Sunday evening there were about 27,000 (including at least one of our shore crew at home).
Much of the wind on Saturday came from the southeast, which is the most problematic direction for Lunenburg Harbour as the wind sweeps up Lunenburg Bay. Waves were splashing up through the deck of Picton Castle’s wharf and pushing seaweed up onto the shoreline. The wind gusted strongly enough to lift one of the big barn doors off its track at the warehouse and blow it onto the ground.
We will have some cleanup and minor repairs to make, but made it through with no major damage. Hurricane season isn’t over yet so we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks, but for now all is well.
