TALLSHIP ADVENTURES

"Building Character through Adventure"

For nearly half a century Toronto Brigantine has provided one-of-a-kind summer adventures for youth aged 13 to 18 years, who live aboard tall ships and serve as trainee crew members under the watchful eye of highly trained skilled ship’s Captains.

The tall ship vessels, T.S. Playfair and S.T.V. Pathfinder, are 72 foot traditional brigantines that sail together on the Great Lakes during a variety of courses that last 9 to 14 days.

Tall Ship Adventures is a truly unique “wind and water” experience that teaches valuable life skills for generations of youth, including seamanship, self-reliance, leadership, marine navigation and piloting, dependability, and respect.

In the first summer youth trainees hoist the sails, stand watch, clean the deck, and cook all their own meals. Teens soon learn that sailing these square rigged vessels in fair and foul weather, is the ultimate test of teamwork. The officers on-board are fellow teenagers who have received extensive training for 1 to 3 years in navigational skills, safety measures, emergency preparedness and first aid.

Toronto Brigantine also offers a winter program where trainees learn basic seamanship, principles of sailing, anchoring, vessel rig and construction, maritime rules, principles of heavy weather sailing, and first aid.  Trainees who successfully complete these courses can progress to officers, starting at the level of Petty Officer.

Toronto Brigantine is a non-profit organization that has been operating from Toronto harbour for the past 46 years.  Our founding tenets continue to be the development of youth leadership and citizenship in a maritime environment.

For more information:

Toronto Brigantine Inc.
215 Spadina Ave., Suite 405
Toronto, Ontario M5T 2C7
Phone: 416-596-7117
Website: www.tallshipadventures.on.ca

HALIFAX TO ST. PIERRE
The Ultimate Sailor’s Race

PHILIPPE G. PATUREL*
ANN ACLAND

Not too often do you get a chance to create and participate in a new offshore race. Well, here is a new race that we will be talking about into the next Millennium! It is a sailor’s race – not yet tainted by protocol, politics, sponsorship requirements, club ties or big bucks of other more established events.

Born in 2002, Route Halifax St. Pierre is the emerging gem in the sailing season. Careful, this race is not for the faint of heart – covering 360 nautical miles of North Atlantic rollers, fog and untainted wind, to arrive in a foreign land full of the unknown. Maybe I am getting a little too fanciful, but not so very far from the truth.

The race starts in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) under the auspices of the oldest Yacht Club in North America - the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron (www.rnsys.com) - follows the coastline north east until it runs out and then its open ocean on to the Gulf of St. Lawrence’s unique, 100% territorial French archipelagos of St. Pierre et Miquelon.

I call this a “sailor’s race” for good reason. Sufficed to say that in some races, and you know the ones, the crews whom have given up their precious vacation times and invested their blood sweet and tears, sometimes feel forgotten, having to fend for themselves after the race itself is over. Not so here. This race has created a trophy for the most valued crew member and honors the youngest participant by having him or her present a Canadian Maple tree to the Island’s Mayor after a crew parade through the town center. The local populous holds a spectacular free sailor’s dinner dance that you would have to be a real wallflower not to enjoy. Each boat is assigned a local host whom invariably takes you home and shows you the subtleties of good French food and wine. If you play your cards right you might even get your laundry done…

Anyway I digress from the racing itself… This summer will be the fourth running of this biennial event. Traditionally a downwind race, it has all the surprises that the Atlantic can conjure. The cruising division (non spinnaker) starts a day before the spinnaker divisions, creating a more exciting finish with the majority of the yachts arriving within 24 hours of one another. The local TV station may be calling you on board, if you have a sat-phone, for a live televised update and everyone is glued to the Internet yacht tracking, following the yachts progress. Local boats come out to greet the yachts arriving between the two islands, which form a natural amphitheater.

A harbour race is also organized. The yachts show off their prowess to the crowds that gather along the St. Pierre shoreline to watch. This short race is considered more fun but remains serious, and inevitably the crews hide any possible hangovers and pull out all the stops for a good show.  Nova Scotia’s famous ambassador schooner, Bluenose II, will be following the fleet this year into St. Pierre (www.bluenose2.ns.ca). Also let them know if you need help booking flights or accommodation in Halifax or St. Pierre. They will also be able to provide information and a crew list for cruising back.  After the race you can cruise the spectacular waters of Nova Scotia and Saint Pierre.

Visit the historic seaports of Louisburg, Halifax and Lunenburg.  Stay and rest a while in the protected waters of the graceful Mahone Bay.  Stroll through the colorful town of Mahone Bay, and drop in on the classic boat festival.  Have lunch in the seaside village of Chester, have a corn boil on Beckman’s Island, flash up your BBQ in one of the many hidden treasure coves on the Bras d’or Lakes on Cape Breton Island and watch the American bald eagles soar.  Go back in time while visiting the rustic and rugged south west coast of Newfoundland.

From the beginning to end, this 360-mile ocean race from Halifax, Nova Scotia to the French island of Saint Pierre will be a challenge for the adventurous and a delight for the pleasure seekers!

* Philippe G. Paturel is the Co-Founder of the Route Halifax - St. Pierre Ocean Race

For more information and photographs visit www.routehsp.com.

BACK IN THE OLD ST. BARTS

BY: PETER RUDDLESDIN

No matter where you travel these days you will find someone will say "you should'a been there in the sixties"….or seventies or eighties or some other time, always previous to your visit. If you went to the moon, Neil Armstrong would probably call you up and tell you how much better it was in the sixties.

I realize for some it's a game of one-up-man-ship but others really mean it. It was better for them in the old days, perhaps they felt more like travelers and not tourists. In these days of package tours and all-inclusives, every place you go has a familiar look. The T-shirt stands, the hotel bands and the no obligation condo tours.

The past is often seen through rose coloured glasses though. I remember my first trip to the B.V.I.'s in the early eighties and how annoyed I was, at first, with the bad service and the indifferent staff. Everyone seems to have taken the "have a nice day" course these days, but which do you prefer, authenticity or your transom kissed?

Places do change, some times for the better, often for the worse, but maybe the real changes are in us. On his last CD Jimmy Buffet made it clear that he preferred the "Old St. Barts" saying "maybe we just all grew up, it never was the same".

If it's your first trip to the south seas, not having seen it in this mythical "dreamtime" when things were supposedly so much better, you have nothing to compare it to so if it looks like paradise to you, that's what it is.

Personally, I am not a fan of the "no surprise" tourism-marketing format. The real enjoyment of travel for me is not knowing what is around the corner. If this subjects me occasionally to some unfriendly natives, so be it, the trade off is adventure and the realization that most people in the world are friendly and will go out of their way to help you.

We are taught that the world is more dangerous these days, the paranoid "new normal" causes us to view our fellow humans with suspicion and fear. Sure, terrorists are out there, but the odds of you getting blown up by some lunatic are probably a lot less than getting hit by a lunatic in a car and meeting your end in one of the more mundane ways most of us depart this realm.

You may have to fight your way through a bit of bureaucracy and B.S. to find the real world, but it's worth it.

Things weren't better in the past, just different.

Change is inevitable – except, of course, from a vending machine…