Friday, August 07, 2009

Some summer like squally showers while on our walk yesterday, nice to feel the warmth of rain instead of bone chilling.

The wind seems to have kept the Aston from berthing; she made an attempt but ended up anchored off.
Modern ships have bow and stern thrusters I believe.




This little number motored into town on Wednesday; she is on her way to Nunavik. A crew of three has motored up from Montreal; the boat is originally from the US of A.
A 2003 model she has twin 55 hp Yamaha stern drives suped up to 75 hp. Not a lot of power for the size but she only draws 21/2 feet and is easy on gas.

I have always been skeptical about twin hull boats vis a vis interior space, these 34 ft Passagemakers seems to be quite roomy and comfortable.
This one is a first of its type for the region I believe.




4 comments:

dannytoro1 said...

"Modern ships have bow and stern thrusters I believe."

Rimshot please!

That does seem odd the Aston would lack thrusters, especially on the bow. It seems like any boat plying northern shipping areas would have them by default. Just curious, there used to be boat builders on the coast. Are there any left? I know some longliner building was done in Catwright.

Wejitu said...

http://ernestina.org/history/Mgblog1927.html

Check out June 30, 1927

Brian said...

I am not aware of any ‘ship building’ on the coast Pathfinder. Could be some small ops. Some folks here still build flats and small row boats from scratch. Chesley Flowers [now deceased] built his own long liner in Hopedale. He cut all his own lumber on a mill behind the shed the boat was built in.

Nice link to some interesting history there Wejitu. I believe modern times have seen some further exploratory digging at that Island.

dannytoro1 said...

Fascinating link Wejitu, I really enjoyed that. It's a bit odd reading some history like that though. Where you realize those referred to as "Eskimo" so detached like, where possibly not so distant kin folk. But that was fairly common back in those times. It's great to see the boat so well preserved though. A living treasure to all involved.

Brian, I'm not fully clear on it. But on my father's side of the family, some of them operated a small boat building business. My cousin has the former shop, more or less as they left it. They actually won a speed record with a boat back in the 1950's sometime. But they went out of business with the advent of fiberglass hulls. I really am looking forward to seeing the shop. But according to the cousin, there were a lot of boat builders back then. Even in Cartwright, most of the boats were locally made.