As our season in New Brunswick comes to a close, and we start preparing to return to Cat Tales on November 22nd, it may be appropriate to write a few lines on how we fared during our northern stay, and provide some pictures as well. The weather in New Brunswick this spring and summer was particularly wet, with areas that used to grow grass often growing moss instead. The water levels at Grand Lake, where we spend our summers, actually broke records, with the result that there was precious little beach to be had. The rainy weather allowed for a June canoe trip down the Bartholomew River for Laurie and his brother Ken; however, the extra water in the river was offset by outrageous attacks by mosquitoes, black flies, moose flies, etc.
Laurie and brother Ken
A big project for Laurie (speaking) was to build a 4-season room on the side of our cottage. With the design help of my brother Mike, I settled on a thickened-edge slab for a foundation, and decided to see how much of the project I could do myself. I got the lumber for formwork from a demolitions landfill owned and managed by our neighbour, Dave Wasson, and did the picking and nail-pulling myself. There was significant work in preparing the ground and forming and compacting the soil under and around the slab to allow proper support and insulation against frost. I hired two labourers who helped me place the concrete, and with a little help from both those two and two of my neighbours, we survived the failure of the form, and got it acceptably braced. However, a laminated beam that was ordered for the roof never showed up, and the rest of the project was cancelled for the year.
Laurie paying off "Inspector Ron!"
It did allow me to spend a lot of time on the landscaping, and I can report that the yard never looked better. We’ll build a little frost protection for the slab before we leave it for the winter, and will start on the structure in earnest next May.
Laurie working on putting the yard back together.
All rocks were hand picked and brought back by trailer, trunk or rowboat!
Dawn’s father, who had been suffering with vascular dementia (making him much like an Alzheimer’s patient) died, ending two years of frustration for him. Dawn’s sisters joined us, her mother Jean, and the local relatives for the funeral and wake; and all had a nice visit.
Dawn and her sisters
Our crowd of “cove-dwellers” are still getting together regularly for a barbecue every Friday night. This was supplemented with many dinners shared during the week, and lots of visits from friends and family in town and out-of-town.
A special weekend in August, was the annual Pig Roast hosted by Hugh Whalen and Liz Abraham, was one of the blurriest yet; primarily as a result of attendance by Scott Kennah and Laurie’s brother Paul, unsupervised and uncontrolled.
Sailing our 21’ Hobie took a bit of a back seat to the construction of the sun-room foundation and the rainy weather; but we did get a couple of really nice sails in. The most enjoyable was after one of the rudder cams broke, and I took the opportunity to reconstruct both rudder assemblies - even redrilling the rudders. The boat, with almost no weather helm is now a dream to sail - and we're looking forward to sailing it next year.
All in all, the summer in New Brunswick has kept us quite busy. The fall brought unseasonably warmer and sunny weather, but of course could not revive beach activity.
The cottage, Hobie, and the construction project are all put to bed, and we're ready to start flapping our wings. We have flights for November 18th to Denver, where we’ll spend 3 days with Steve and Maria of s/v Aspen before continuing on to Trinidad. We’ll write more either from Denver or Chaguaramas.
