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That was late March, and I was on my way to Lunenburg to begin repairing the extensive rot I discovered last autumn in her bow. I was determined to get this major work out of the way and get an early start on the sailing season. As it turned out, what I had intended to be one month of refit became 3 months, and I didn't get her home to Halifax until the first week of June.
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For the work to be done, she had to be hauled out of the water. I had been so anxious to get her to her to Lunenburg to get the work started, I hadn't even considered that the tides might not be full enough to float her onto the cradle. "Hurry up and wait!" Mike G. would say. One week and a dozen attempts later, she was finally up on dry land.
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I would be harboring some regrets right now had I not had the ambition to get the repairs done sooner rather than later; she would not have been seaworthy for my planned voyage. I learned a great deal about her construction through the process of her deconstruction, as Mike and I hacked away at her rotten stem. Over the following months the restoration ensued; the new stem, composed of oak originally intended for Pictou's tall ship Hector, and 15 planks, cut from a length of Angelique (a very hard wood) imported from South America. Mike has assured me I could t-bone any dock in the harbor and come out relatively unscathed, though I don't think I'll test that theory.
Those days were often long and hard, and sometimes frustrating when things didn't go as planned. I will admit I was sometimes reduced to tears when I looked at her, bow-less and mast-less, and hundreds of hours of hard work ahead of me. But now that I'm sitting here in Lunenburg, the memories of a wonderful summer behind me, and all the hopes and excitement of what is to come, she's been well worth every moment of misery I've endured.