wrytrguy3 -- Along the Fourth Coast: Jottings and Blatherings from Canada's Deep South

Hi, folks, Good to be back. I lead off with another gorgeous traditional sailing vessel -- this photo taken by my old friend Chris Howitt at the Bath Tall Ships Rendezvous ten days ago, of the SV Dennis Sullivan out of Milwaukee. This one is a 2000 replica Great Lakes Three-Masted Topsail Schooner -- nicknamed a "Three-n-After" by the old lake salts. They have all been gone since 1934, when the last working schooner, a 60-year-old wooden two-master (fore-n-after) named the Lyman M. Davis , was burned for spectator entertainment on the Toronto waterfront. A year or two before, the Davis had been hauling coal to Kingston and Napanee, reputed to have been the fastest schooner on the Lakes and her last owner was a Kingstonian. In typical Canaydjun fashion, that ephemeral beauty was willfully and deliberately destroyed. Hundreds of her kind had been built on the Great Lakes and many dozens in Kingston alone, but not one finger was lifted to save her. Simple vandalism. My s...

Hi, folks, I suppose it's a good way to start, with a photo of ephemeral history -- the rendezvous of the Three Sisters in 2017. Here they are, at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour. Pathfinder on the left, in white, Playfair in blue, and Kingston's own St. Lawrence II resplendent in black with the ochre "Nelson chequer"stripe. All were designed by noted Kingston Naval Architect Francis MacLachlan as vehicles for "Outward Bound" type youth leadership training, and very successful they have been, since the first was launched in 1953. http://www.brigantine.ca/ This will be a new blog, since I can't seem to get back into my old one, but you can still see those long-ago posts at http://wrytrguy.blogspot.ca/ A quick update -- much has happened since 2013 (go figure). Fireship Press has published my first three novels and has the manuscript for number four in hand ( The King's Salt ), which I hope will see the light of day this year. I have begun work...