We have been in Canso for three days waiting for a front to come through that will give us more favorable sailing conditions. We have made the best of our time here, working on projects and exploring town a little bit.
Canso was at one time a thriving fishing village, but when the stock of fish collapsed, folks needed to find something else to do or leave town. Many people left. Those that remain are hard workers who sometimes work two or three jobs to survive. A smaller fish processing plant has opened up and some find work there, but it is hard. Since we have been ,here we can see everyone laying in wood for the winter for their wood burning stoves.

The town grocery store is a cooperative, owned by the people of the town. This store has just about everything including many hardware items. We found everything on our shopping list and even something things that weren’t! When we are getting ready to make a passage, I spend as much time as possible preparing meals and storing them for when they are needed. Even under the best passage making conditions it is hard to cook fresh meals. So I make hearty meals like French toast and shepherd’s pie, put them in single serving microwavable containers and warm them up at meal time. There is nothing better than starting your watch with a piping hot beef stew or chili.

AJ’s pizza is the one restaurant in town and we had to try it! Stan Rogers, a famous Canadian folk singer spent his summers here for many years and there is a folk festival in his honor ever summer. AJ’s has lots of memorabilia from the festival as well as album covers from famous Nova Scotians like Ann Murray (I am Woman.) Here we discovered yet another delicious regional dish called “donair” in this case served on a what may be the most delicious pizza I have ever had. Donair is prepared in a similar way to gyro meat and shaved off a skewer. The sauce was AJ’s own donair sauce and the combo was amazing. As we sat enjoying our pizza, several townspeople stopped in to pick up a pie for dinner, each one with the same greeting, “Hi AJ!” AJ himself is a young hardworking man who knows how to make pizza dough like no other. He works every day through every season. When asks what he does in the winter if no one comes in, he replied simply, “bookwork.” His one vacation was to go to Toronto for a five game Blue Jay’s home stand, a trip of a lifetime.

While I was cooking and baking, Kurt went out for a little fishing, joining our Swiss friend Rico on the dock. Rico must have caught all the fish.

Our marina has a laundry, one washer, one dryer for $2 apiece so yesterday was laundry day. It was also pouring down rain and windy so I packed all our laundry in a waterproof duffle and carted it over to the laundry house. Right next door there was a room with a wood burning fireplace, a bunch of chairs, a dartboard and a table where we set up to play cribbage while waiting for the laundry to finish. Three hours later, I rolled the laundry into the dry bag and made the wet slog back to the boat in time to start my shepherd’s pie for dinner.

Now our time of waiting is over. We are well provisioned for whatever conditions we have and I expect they will be cold and rainy. Kurt has spent the morning plotting our course and reviewing weather files. We will be departing at 1pm on a high tide and making for Halifax.

If you want to see our progress, we have live tracking on board at: http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/BigFrisky. We will let you know when we get there.