Drum Head to Port Bickerton

Drum Head is one of those once active and busy fishing communities crushed by the collapse of the fishing industry in eastern Canada.  The harbour is absolutely amazing in terms of its beauty but the wharf is not in good shape.  Local fellows are maintaining it as best they can but there are few fishing boats left to help support that huge cost and of course the government pulled out years ago.  The long  breakwater remains fairly intact and still protects the L shaped wharf behind it.  There is no industry at all in this community so the population has diminished heavily but the character of those who have stuck it out is truly indicative of all those wonderfully helpful, strong, friendly, individuals who live along the shores of eastern NS. 

 I learned that the area does hold a piece of history however, that does gives it some notoriety, albeit gruesome fame, from Mike Cox in his book Cruising the Eastern Shore.  The point located on Harbour Island at the entrance to the mouth of Drum Head harbour has been named Saladin Point due to an incident that took place there.  In May 1844, the sailing vessel, Saladin, was wrecked off that point, after its crew mutinied and murdered all the ship’s officers.  The crew survived the wreck but were found guilty in Halifax courts and were hanged there. The skull of one of those scoundrels is displayed today at the Citadel Museum on Citadel Hill in the same city.

Drum Head was not an intended port of call for us but like many areas that we have visited on this voyage, we would have never been so fortunate to take in its beauty nor all it had to offer but for the sea’s fury and our position in or on it.  Again, ever the optimists, we prefer to see the positives to whatever comes to us.  We find it comforting to look to the balance of nature and work with whatever we have at our disposal to deal with the negatives and consider them as a learning experience that we needed to know.  I suppose we see them as part of our destiny - a piece of intelligence stored somewhere in the confines of our minds that will surface next when called upon or needed – and to  both of us that is also strangely comforting.  The captain and I are what may be what some call “soul mates.”  I am not sure even what that really is (I do know what a first mate is and I know I am that) but we have been entwined in each other’s life since we were teenagers and somehow we cannot imagine being anywhere else than there.  And that is comforting too. We are again, truly blessed (as I stated on the home page of this blog) to have made our way to this time and place in our lives, both remaining together, healthy and still excited by tomorrow.  I guess that sense of comfort may be why embracing our senior years to challenge ourselves to learn to sail the waters of the sea and our great nation (maybe even further) so utterly exciting, so exhilarating and so appealing.

We had been hoping that this return to the vessel would culminate in the termination of this particular voyage at Gold River, Mahone Bay.  But that was not to be the case.  It was getting late in the sailing season and we could in no way consider we were familiar with the eastern shore. So we were taking it wisely and slowly as we had been taught in all our sailing classes.  We knew the weather conditions were fine during the summer but we were approaching fall on the North Atlantic and that can pose some very difficult situations.   We were extremely saddened but very relieved for 3 Dutch sailors who were crossing the Atlantic in their sailboat.  We had heard their story in the news. They had left Port Hawkesbury just before we had but had been caught in the backlash of Hurricane Irene. They had been rescued by  a Canadian Coast Guard helicopter just days before as they battled the North Atlantic seas and the vicious storm off Sable Island. They had been lifted off the boat; the vessel had done a complete revolution, had righted herself but suffered a severed mast; she was left floating and when the interviewer asked questions related to their boat the captain could hardly speak but said he had no idea where she was. She was out there, lost.  The North Atlantic Ocean can be very brutal.  We also knew that predicting fine weather conditions for the same days that the captain had off from his work would be totally impossible. This would impede our ability to move swiftly forward as well.  A little pressure pulsated - which called for prudence, the re visitation of our plan and the research of alternatives.

But today we were headed into Drum Head harbour and we were in for more than we knew as we coursed up the channel.  We eased our way around the bell buoys, scouted for the ground light buoys heading into the mid channel and entered into the Sound. The captain was at the helm; he is always at the helm as we enter a harbour; I have yet to master that real feat of docking our vessel or reaching a mooring ball on first attempt and I am in no hurry. (I will manage it – I know I need to- but at this point all is well and the captain has it.)   Bridlewilde may be a small sailing vessel in the big picture of things but trying to maneuver her 33 feet of length and 18,000 pounds of steel hull between other vessels, markers, buoys or other obstacles as she sails forward in a tight space is daunting at the best of times let alone in heavy conditions.  So I was at my usual place upon entry, at the bow of the boat, my hands firmly gripped to the roller furler, as a watch. We knew there was a shoal in the north section of the harbour but there were good anchorages where we could drop the hook in the muddy bottom past the breakwater or go round it to tie to the wharf. 

The reason to go into this harbour was to get off the heavy water.  We had a head wind on our nose while we were heading along the coast but as we changed course to head back up into Drum Head the wind effect on the boat also changed.  It was now to our stern and as we rounded the breakwater on our approach into the harbour we could feel the strong starboard push.  We could see the  harbour side of the L shaped wharf, it was a clear sunny day, we were entering on the ebb tide, it was mid-afternoon, and we saw that there was availability to tie to the wharf rather than have to anchor.  We decided to tie on the protected inner side of the wharf, sheltered in the corner of the L from the wind that was pushing at us.  The captain chose his position to dock and brought the boat round the corner toward the inner side of the L.   It was then that we both saw for the first time that 2 small skiffs were tied to the inner side of the wharf that would hinder the approach to his chosen docking site.  As the tide was on its way out the skiffs had sunk below the wharf’s upper deck outline, making it impossible for them to be seen from further out in the harbour as we approached.  So the captain had to readjust the docking by completing a circle to reposition the boat at another location on the inner side.  That is when our problem began.  The circling was not the problem – the problem was that we were already only about 25 feet away from shore on the inner side of the wharf.  We had lots enough room to make the revolution but we didn’t have the depth beneath us to do so in low tide.

Now in a perfect world, or in sailing classes or when one has lots of time to make sound and well planned judgement calls this would or should never happen.  But we were not in the perfect sailing conditions and we had to adjust our plan accordingly.  We could have stayed out on the water and took the pounding but we may have caused damage to our vessel or ourselves. We may have been fine and continued on to Sheet Harbour, our next destination, with no problem or we may have ended up like the 3 Dutch sailors.  Who was to know?  We had made our choice and save those 2 unaccounted for little skiffs we would have been safely tied to the wharf.  But we were not, had taken our first corner in our revolution and before I could yell back to the captain that I could see the bottom looming ever so closely, we grounded in the soft mud on the inner side of the wharf with our nose pointed toward shore with the wind heaving heavily to starboard on a lowering tide.   What was worse than that was that I could see the remains of an old pier less 5 feet away from us.  And much worse yet, that derelict pier under the shallow water was encased with huge rocks.

The harbour was vacant.  There were houses around it and up on the bank surrounding the shore.  Some looked inhabited; some were vacant, almost abandoned.  There was no sign of anyone around.  The captain made a number of attempts to free Bridlewilde from the mud but we were there to stay. I  fretted, and stressed, and bantered about the rocks and the lowering tide and the distress and I am sure it may have been one of those times that the captain was quite glad to have the level of  hearing loss he does. But true to the captain’s form, again, instantaneously he had a plan and he put it into action immediately.

He sent me below to root out a large bag of older lines that Ellie had given us before we left Ontario that we had stowed in a compartment under the anchor locker. (We had kept them just in case.)  He gave me instructions to ready the boat hook, load the lines I had recovered into the dinghy, and to remain at the helm to try to keep the vessel steered away from the rock pile below as best I could.  He was in the process of releasing our dinghy from the davits so as to lower it to the water so he could board it from Bridlewilde’s port side. I was then to pass him its little 3.5 hp motor that we carry secured to the pushpit.  Once he was aboard the dinghy he would mount it to the dinghy stern plate.  While all this was going on and at a heightened level of intensity I might add, apparently our VHF radio was calling to us from the cabin below but in the commotion neither of us heard it ringing out.

 And then I saw the man on the wharf.  He had his hands cupped around his mouth and he was calling out.  Although we were within shouting distance, I could barely hear him over the wind.  Once I was able to put my attention to him, I realized he was asking why we were not answering the radio as he was trying to contact us.  I thought it an odd question at the time but in hindsight I understand that he was only trying to help in any way he could.  He yelled across to me that he had contacted a lobster boat that made its home in this harbour on his VHF.  He explained that it was out on a pleasure trip and would be returning in another 2 to 3 hours. He said its captain had agreed to pull us off the mud.  I relayed this information to the captain who was busily securing all the lines I had recovered for him, together.  He had some relief and appreciation but told me that he could not wait that something must be done immediately as the lowering tide would be a detriment in terms of the boat sinking deeper into the mud thereby making it that much more difficult to pull it off later.

So as I remained at the helm trying to hold the boat away from the rock pile, the captain headed to the wharf in the dinghy.  I watched while he quickly scaled the rough wharf wall with the coiled line over his shoulder.  He secured one end of the line tightly around the huge rusty iron cleat on the wharf.  He dropped quickly back down into the dinghy and began letting the line out as he drove the dinghy back toward Bridlewilde.  But because of the heavy wind and the fact that the lines were made of gauge nylon they floated and became entangled in the outboard engine of one of the skiffs that was secured to the wharf.  It took him a few minutes to disentangle and straighten out the 70 feet of line he had out in the water.  Once that was clean he pulled the line from the wharf back to our boat using the dinghy as the guide.  He yelled for me to have the winch handle secured and locked to our  big Lewmar 43 winch that is mounted close to the stern. He returned, had all the line stretched between the wharf and our vessel, and quickly scrambled back into the cockpit. He instructed me to winch the handle as quickly as I could while he tailed the line.  We worked at it as hard as we could and it was not too long before we could feel the release of the boat from the mud and we could tell she was floating again.  It was at this time that I looked toward the wharf to see what would happen next and I could see that a crowd of people had gathered there.  The captain told me that we would continue the process until we winched the boat completely into the wharf. And it worked!  Again the captain had come so aptly through for us and for the boat. He had pulled our 9 ton vessel out of the mud himself and within minutes he had it secured to the wharf with no real damage done.  We were relieved to be at the wharf and one of the people who had gathered there related that they had come to see what they could do to help us and we were very thankful just to have other bodies about just in case.  One person said to the captain, “we came to help but it looks like you two don’t need any help - looks like you know exactly what to do!”  And you know what? He does.

We spent the night safely at the wharf.  I went for a walk about the community. I talked to a retired gal who was walking her dog. She was from Virginia but was up to her childhood home in Drum Head with her husband for the month. It was another gem of a property looking out over the harbour and the sea beyond. She said they return every year and I could clearly understand why.  We talked for quite a while about many things. She told me of her brother who was in the process presently of building a 65 foot wooden sailing vessel for him and his family.  It seemed that she loved boats too and asked many questions about ours. The evening began to cool so we wished each other the best and I walked on thinking about how lucky the captain and I were to be here in this unusual place.  I walked back to the boat just in time to see the sun slip over the horizon and the day slip into night.

The captain was due back to work the day after the next and we decided that we would take the boat to Port Bickerton just 5 nautical miles further along the coast. We chose this spot because we knew we would be leaving it for another couple of weeks until the captain has more time off to come back so we could continue on.  The wharf here was in poor condition and we were afraid that a storm could erupt in a moment’s notice and left alone in this harbour she would not have adequate protection from the elements.  Port Bickerton was another harbour decimated by the loss of the fishing industry.  It once had a huge active cannery and although the building remained on the harbour, it was vacant and unused and looked very ominous. But the port did have a Canadian Coast Guard base that operated 24/7 located right on the wharf where we knew our vessel would be secure. So we would head there in the morning. 

Our friends Bruce and Belinda were picking us up there the following day to transport us back to the valley. We departed Drum Head   and arrived in Port Bickerton  the following morning where we made arrangements to leave the boat for the 2 weeks and headed back to our valley home and reality again.