John Mahoney

Lost at sea

CALAIS, MAINE | We started our last day in Nova Scotia with the most incredible fresh peach crêpe and strong coffee at the Olde Port B&B.

Kudos to you, Christine. She and Jim and Winston Toad were most accommodating, and I was able to get on-line to bring you fresh drivel early in the morning.

We sailed from Digby, home of the famous Digby scallop fleet. A nice seashore village, but the shop owners don't open very early. Like all the folks we met in the Maritimes, the locals were friendly and helpful.

We've heard this in the past two weeks from a number of people involved in the tourist trade: there seem to have been fewer tourists this year -- despite the muscularity of the greenback dollar --- and Germans are buying up a lot of seashore property.

It finally began to rain while we waited to board the ferry to St. John, NB -- a three-hour sail across the Bay of Fundy. Nova Scotia has been without any serious rain for 81 days and we saw a lot of brown lawns.

Indeed, the last two B&Bs we stayed at were having water problems. I didn't shower Saturday morning to help them conserve a little water.

We ran into fog almost immediately -- it was like sailing into a serious pillow fight. So much for whale watching and dolphin spotting.

Fortunately for us -- we chose bad seats near the TV set -- it didn't work, much to the disappointment of the sports fans. Let them spend the voyage examining their lives, I say.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Hisself was lost at sea on the trip from Digby to St. John, across the Bay of Fundy. Well, not at sea but in port. In the hold, on the car deck.

I turned left when I should have turned right, lost my bearings, and wandered -- bag in hand -- through the hundreds of cars and trucks and busses and RVs, their motors running, their lights on, their drivers waiting to rush off the ferry and onwards into the sunny New Brunswick afternoon.

Resigned to a life at sea, I turned myself into a burly crewman, offered to work in the galley for scraps and a berth under the bar. Three trips a day for a week, then a week off for rest and carousing. And you get to wear a merchant seaman's uniform. Not a bad deal.

He suggested kindly that I go stand at the Assembly Point for Wayward Passengers and await my ride.

My ride came. Arthur stopped. I got into the Voyager. Arthur smiled broadly. The Silver Fox wanted to know just where in hell I had been, and why. They had told a crewman I was missing. He suggested perhaps I had jumped overboard. Or maybe I was hiding but they would find me and make me go home.

So, here we are -- back in the International motel, drinking hazelnut coffee and eating the last of Pat Matheson's bran muffins, waiting for the dawn and the long drive home through the vast wastelands of northern Maine.

I hope there will be ripe tomatoes in Fool's Hollow tonight.

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