The Voyage of the Schooner Niska

For the last month or so I have been a crew member on the schooner Niska traveling from Georgian Bay to her new home in Twillingate NL. The boat was built 35 years ago by the skipper Heiko Bank and has plied the waters in and around Georgian Bay where he lived and chartered until his move to Newfoundland a few years ago. Now he’s come back to fetch his boat and take it to Twillingate where he owns a B&B called the Rumrunners Roost. She’s 60′ spar length, 13+ beam, 25 ton, fiberglass on wood, replica of east coast staysail schooners designed and built by the skipper. She has a very reliable 65 hp Perkins Deisel for power. This is not your turn on a dime space ship dinky toy power boat. No joystick operated, voice activated bow thrusters. It’s basically 1850’s tech with only a few modern additions.

We have managed to get the schooner from Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, St.Clair River, Lake St.Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, the Seaway system, the St.Lawrence River to Montreal where he is regrouping for the rest of the trip. She’s made it halfway and has another thousand miles to go. We’ve sailed and motored through, mishaps and misfortunes, trials and tribulations but surmounted all and sailed her gloriously through these magnificent Great Lakes and waterways covering a thousand miles. It’s a grand adventure in a seat of the pants old school way.

The skipper is in dire need of crew. Now.
He will be in the Montreal area for possibly a week or until he gets the crew he needs. I guess the price of admission is you pay your share for food and make your own way home. He could use crew for as short as a week or the remainder the voyage. He’ll go with as little as one but there is room for at least two or three more people for a total of four comfortably.

There are not many people that can drop everything and do something like this. It is an amazing opportunity. Some boat knowledge would be very helpful but a willing to learn crew is good.
If you are at all interested in this or know someone who might be, please contact me at this e-mail address: terrappin@sympatico.ca

The Voyage of the Niska Part One

“I have no regrets about this trip it was stunning and I would do it all
again”.
and
"the negative news always gets the press."
We did some amazing sailing and it was a good adventure. 

I am looking at a seventy year old man of slight, sinewy build, dressed in
jeans and running shoes. No shirt, grey hair, tanned, weathered, leathery.
He is sitting atop the rope locker on his east coast stay sail schooner he
built with his very own hands, thirty years ago. He and the ship have seen
better days. His head is in his hands, elbows on his knees. Tired and
haggard. He has lost his crew, has very few resources and he isn’t even half
way to where he wants to go.  It’s a sad state of affairs.

The crew are as of now....... off the boat.

Wednesday June 25 at mi 11 in the Welland Canal the Niska got swiped by the
monster Laker named Halifax.  We are all very lucky.  The dingy and the
davits were wiped clean off the back of the Niska and the mainsail boom
snapped.  It was a series of events including seaway dispatch, a strong wind
from behind and a loss of steerage at the most in-opportune time.  Scared
the shit outa' us. Way too close.  Too much adventure.
The idea of adventure should come with a scale attached.  An anxiety/stress
scale (A/S scale) of let’s say of one to one hundred.  Sign on for adventure
like we did and you automatically start at twenty five. Adventure, heart
going pitter patter. This is what it’s about isn’t it. So therefore twenty
five.
When Tom and I went to meet the skipper,Heiko it was getting real. Anxiety
was mounting.  We met him and the Niska and realized this was going to be
“seat of the pants”;  few amenities, not much in the way of electronics,
1850's replica ship with old school methods, kind of voyage.  At least
another ten on the A/S scale.  Yet with eyes wide open we willingly got on
board and she’s not even in the water.  We went to work on her and worked
hard to overcome a couple of years of dry dock hoarding and neglect.  Boats
need water for their well being and she was out of the water for three
years.
Marina dry-docks and putting a twenty five ton boat in and out of the water
is really expensive and even though it wasn’t our money, we were feeling the
success and failures of our attempts to make her ship shape.  I think that’s
another dime on the scale.
A trip like this on a sail boat means weather. On land when weather comes
you just get out of it. When you are on a sail boat twenty miles offshore
and it takes at least four hours to get to the shore, if you have a place
you can even go to.  You can’t just open a door and get out of it.  Going
sixty or seventy miles means ten hours. A lot can happen in ten hours
weather wise, so you are constantly appraising the weather.  Weather is
another twenty five on the A/S scale.  Two storms converged on us in Lake
St.Clair.  They beat the crap outa’ us but we handled it and made it
through.  Nevertheless, that specific weather event made us weather hyper
which easily adds another ten to the scale.
All the time we were navigating through the magnificent Great Lakes we were
running out of time.  The working boys, Tom and Don, had a month. So this
question of how far we could get, preyed upon us.  Time kept eroding.  We
had to stop for repairs and stop for weather.  That impending limit
constantly loomed larger on the horizon.  We weren’t gonna’ get there. We
didn’t wanna’ talk about it.  Ten more.  Our two weeks aboard and our
initial week getting her shipshape had led us to this point and you can see
where my graph has taken us. We are at one hundred. Maxed.
And then we had the incident with a ship the size of a small planet .
Forget the graph.  After the incident we stood by the Niska on a barren
cement wall at mile eleven on the canal and tried to get our minds and
bodies out of the red area of our personal tachometers.  We shook. Our
stomachs ached.  We were way over the top.
We were so stressed out we did not want to get back on right then and there,
but we couldn’t leave her there so we cleaned off the wreckage and after the
Seaway people took a million photos and a  report and the Ministry of
Transport took a million photos and a report and ok'd her, we got back on
and took her through the gargantuan alien environs of the seven remaining
locks.  It was like some sorta’ surreal hallway with an oversized stairway
in it. We parked her in the small boats jetty by the pilots boat and bunk
just outside Lock One of the Canal, Port Wellar (St.Catherines).  Spent.
Don and Heiko stayed on board that night and Tom and I went to a friends for
a shower and a sleep and to see if the next day would make us feel any
better.....it did not.  We took on a lot of responsibility that maybe we
shouldn't have.  We kept him and the Niska afloat, made things work and
went
along with makeshift and make do.  Maybe we should have said “get it all
together” before we even got aboard.  Maybe, we took him and the boat too
far.  He was ill prepared, not enough coin and still living in her hay days
and maybe his.
So there he sits alone on the deck of his ship with not much happening and I
don't know what resources he can call up.   We feel bad for him....really
bad. We are remorseful for the way things ended. We are moral people.  None
of us wanted to abandon him.  But it is not our responsibility and we had
collectively taken on too much already.  We burned out. He burned us out.
In hind site this could have worked had Heiko done things differently.  He
should have had the boat ready and the trip researched and planned better.
If he had of gotten the boat sea worthy and not delayed the time we had.  If
he had allotted two months and not so seat of the pants, two weeks on, one
week off and people to get on and off at different places.  This could have
worked even without a lot of money and seat of the pants.  We wouldn’t have
burned out if we could have gotten cleaned up every once in awhile and
detoxed from the weather and the breakdowns and repairs.

As it turns out:

The adventure is not over.  The Voyage of the Niska continues.  More things
and incidents have happened.  Heiko and the Niska made it to Belleville where
we did a lot of repairs the mainsail boom, the mainsail gaff and are working
on the stern steering station.  Tom and I got on for a few more days.
Tom got off and I continued to Montreal where i got off.
We got him more crew and he is now at Sept Iles waiting out weather and
looking for more crew.

~ by gwcollins on May 20, 2008.