High Seas Rescue

The Jimtown Raft in more civilized weather.

The Jimtown Department of Public Works would like to thank our dear and fine public for their many texts, emails, calls and sundry other notes of alarm this afternoon.

We too were disturbed by the occurance on July 14.

Not that we should necessarily have been. At some point every season the Jimtown Raft takes itself on tour.

Boat shaped rafts can be important to the human spirit.

Watching the Jimtown Raft riding out whatever weather works its way down St. George’s Bay has a reassuring effect.

It’s one of those metaphors you can feel while watching it hold its bow into the wind as you sit in an idling car clutching a coffee and smoke before work.

We’re all just trying to hold our own questionable courses as life throws weather at us.

The problem with icons is that they’re as frail as those who erect them.

So with a nor-Easter just gearing up on Tuesday the mooring line holding the raft to Jim Larikas’ former flag pole base that we dumped in the bay for an anchor, snapped.

The cellphone of Alphonsus J. Sears lit up like a Christmas tree immediately.

It didn’t need to.

He was chatting with the crews of two Nova Scotia Power trucks who were eating their lunches in Jimtown while watching the raft.

For lack of any more competent help being available, the unelected mayor of a town that doesn’treally exist called the author of this article … who at the time was staring blankly at a screen unable to coax his unwilling brain to bash a few sentences together for his other reputable publication.

“The raft, of course, just let me put on some pants,” the writer muttered into the phone.

Raft rescues are the great calling of the Jimtown Department of Public Works.

We’re good at them.

Consider for yourself that they are inevitably precipitated by a northeast wind that builds swells that turn the bottom end of St. George’s Bay into a world of breaking water.

That the raft is huge and likely weighs as much as a K-car.

And that our inauspicious craft, The Jimtown Rescue Boat, is a dented 14 aluminum jobbie spray painted a mottled camouflage.

At various times it has boasted outboard motors of unsavory reputation, though not lately.

“You know I could spare you on the oars … I’m not trying to call you old or anything,” the writer said to the mayor.

On cue a breaker took us on the beam and sent us skittering along in front of it.

“Just warn me about the big ones,” admonished the mayor, who as rower had his back to the oncoming weather.

“For the record, I would like it noted that that was a scream of exhilaration,” the writer responded, for the record.

We worked out past the breakers and then turned and ran with the swell back in to the raft.

It was aground in shallow water.

A noble seagoing raft, she is a match for most weather.

However, she is not a match for being bashed for days on end on the beach in the breakers.

At least her predecessor wasn’t.

The Mayor and the writer got themselves to the raft’s leeward side.

They timed their great heaves to coincide with the waves that briefly lifted the raft off the cobbly foot scratching, presumably home to toe biting creepy crawlies, bottom.

With time we were able to work the raft around to the safe side of a large sandbar.

It was the best we could accomplish under the circumstances and with the equipment available.

Over at his family’s Mahoney’s Beach cottage, Gerry Doucette was a on a Zoom call with his boss.

He, like everyone else had texted A.J. when he saw the raft coming his way.

It had passed behind the grass topped sandbar that closes off the entrance to the estuary that is Antigonish Harbour.

Then Gerry saw the pirate flag working its way against the waves, the raft hidden behind the sandbar obstructing his view.

As it rounded the bend he saw two handsome devils pushing it.

“What are you watching,” his boss asked from the laptop.

“It’s too much to explain,” he responded.

Shortly thereafter he greeted us with towels as we rowed the half swamped Jimtown Rescue (which Gerry actually owns) to his front yard.

Later this week after the wind comes back round southerly he’ll be asked whether he and his pontoon boat with its 200 h.p. Mercury might be available to tow the raft back to Jimtown.

Then we can all go back to watching it.

Maybe we’ll even scavenge up a new mooring line.