12 January, 2017
It is an incredibly mild day here in Lunenburg today. It’s actually +12°c/54°f which is incredibly warm for us on a mid-January day in Nova Scotia. The harbour is almost perfectly calm; this morning as I was walking down Bluenose Drive is was a sheet of glass. Just perfect. You would never guess this is the same place that was mid-storm only one week ago.
We had an outrageous winter storm in Nova Scotia last week – as did much of the Eastern Provinces of Canada, and Eastern States of the USA. Truth be told, we fared far, far better than many other places. Even other places within Nova Scotia. This was partially due to good luck; partially to good management.
Late on Wednesday afternoon the Captain and Liam went down to the ship and, along with the few crew who remained on the ship over the Christmas holidays, they doubled up on the hawsers and lashed various rigging and things on the ship and the wharf. There were ropes everywhere: the storm was going to be a bad one, we had plenty of warnings about it. Winds up to 140k/hr. That’s massive. They were predicting snow, freezing rain, rain and a huge storm surge. We were worried.
When things started getting bad, Captain Moreland had the crew come set up sleeping bags at his house in his living room, and taking turns they made hourly treks down to the ship to check on things. It was a long, cold, windy, wet & powerless night. The rum seasoning barge that sits out in Lunenburg Harbour, ageing Ironworks’ next batch of extremely good rum, lost its anchors and ended up on the rocky beach next to Picton Castle. There are so many vastly worse places it could have ended up, but it wedged itself onto our beach and stayed there throughout the storm.
The storm raged all Thursday and through Thursday night, but when all was said and done, and the sun came up on Friday, we fared pretty well. There is an old trawler tied up opposite Picton Castle called Primo. The easterly winds pushed against Primo throughout the storm – pushing her away from the wharf in a way wharves are not used to. The winds were strong; so were the hawsers we set up. Something had to give way, and eventually, it was actually the wood of the wharf that gave way. The ship and hawsers were all fine; the wharf needs a bit of t.l.c.
The next few days we had temperatures of -12°c/10°f with a windchill of minus too cold to even think about. Everything iced up and we were in a deep chill. From unusually cold all the way up to unusually warm for this time of year. Something is going on with Mother Nature.