The Tall Ship Playfair

Summer. The Brigantine Playfair at Parry Sound. Cap'n Weed, if you please, har harr. If'n the Black Pearl be lost at sea, there's a berth or twenty down below, for the likes of your wee teens, wantin' adventure on Georgian Bay. It's the real deal. Toronto Brigantine runs two training ships for high school kids, who'd rather pass on the video arcades and shopping malls for a week or two. For about a $100 a day, all inclusive, you might talk your kids into a working vacation, where they can learn to rig and sail a Brigantine, cook in the cubbyhole galley, and barbecue on a deserted island beach. And meet some other kids. It's character building says our Captain Weed, seconded by his First Mate, Jojo, and it works. It's turned around bored and troubled kids, and polished the rest with a sense of accomplishment, fostering in some a life long passion for sailing. The professional crew of nine, are all alumni of the program, regulars that kept coming back for years, and now training a new batch of kids, 16 on this 11 day leg out from Parry Sound to Midland. The Playfair is a happy ship. Rare for any kid to go home unhappy, even if he or she (it's co-ed) didn't really want to go in the first place. As a registered charity, Toronto Brigantine is doing this for love, not money. Costs are further kept down by sponsors, alumni and volunteers who donate equipment, supplies, and time for maintenance, when their ships winter over in Toronto. Bursaries for some students, are available too. And what's it like? I wandered around on deck and below, talking to the kids and crew. No complaints. But it is so cramped below deck, sardines might be more
comfortable in a can. The mess is really on deck. The galley would fit into your hall closet, berths stacked 3 high, upholstered but hard and narrow. The Playfair was built in 1972, In Kingston, Ontario. It's a Brigantine, a pirate ship in miniature, designed to be maneuvered by a young crew, with a sleek hull, sleeker than than her older cousins, and steel, for easier maintenance and without the timbers creaking and leaking. There's a diesel engine, not much used, but available for dead calms and tricky navigation through narrow or shallow channels and locks. Georgian Bay is mostly where she sails. It's the 30,000 Islands and the rugged coastline that makes her feel at home. Though she sails to and from Georgian Bay, via Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, occasionally venturing to join other tall ships at the festival in Halifax. She might go out more on the high seas, but there are maintenance issues with salt water. Strolling on the big dock to stretch his legs, the Captain pauses by one of the big yachts berthed nearby, wondering what all the fuss is all about. A quarter million dollars for a car on water, with baby buggy plastic canopies. "Usually poorly constructed. You wonder why
they're doing this? The Playfair is overbuilt, so we can push her hard." Of course if you're retired and you've got the dough, you can't push yourself that hard either, though there are plenty of small sailboats that would give you the feel of sailing without the hard work, and the need for deckhands, say your grown-up kids who probably wouldn't show up unless the destination was some Club Med in the Caribbean. But if you feel the urge for more than an adventure out of a DVD box, sailing is still one of the things you can do, even on a budget. It's making a comeback if you read the yachting magazines.
There's skill, of course, even with all the modern navigational aids. And any trip can have an unpredictable factor, usually the weather, that can catch you off guard, like in Lake Erie, a hassle for weekend boaters who have to be at work Monday. Last year Labour Day, says Captain Weed, she was going through the west channel of Lake Erie, very shallow, only 12 feet deep. With shallow water, waves can get whipped up high, and there was a whopping storm. We were stranded for 3 or 4 days. When the coast guard came to check on us, you know these fully enclosed rescue craft, they radioed back, they were turning back. Not going out in that gale, since we didn't really need them. Of course they would have risked it, if we were in trouble. Otherwise the sailing is great,
the best there is in inland waters right around here, all through Georgian Bay. Might be a half million islands. Depends what you call an island. We get a chance to explore some with our students. We've got two big dories for that, plus inflatable lifeboats packed in big drums, if we have to abandon ship. Overcapacity too, it's safety first. Though we let the kids do just about anything you can do onboard, including handling the wheel. Mind you the crew supervises everything closely, so they don't make mistakes or get into trouble. Most of the time we're on the water, only going into port for supplies. So the kids share in the watches 24 hours a day. We hug the shore or sail right across the bay. On this leg we'll be going up to Manitoulin Island, before heading south for Midland. It's a great experience for everyone, the crew and the kids. If you're not a kid anymore, Brigantine does allow for charters and alumni sailings, so you could join them. See http://www.tallshipadventures.on.ca/


2010 Update

For more great pictures of the Playfair sailing, see Yvonne Berg's Tall Ship Adventure.

Climb aboard the Playfair and the Pathfinder in Toronto for the Toronto Waterfront Festival, June 30-July 4, 2010. Sail training 4 hour cruises for groups up to 20 will be available for charter during the Festival from Toronto Brigantine, a not for profit registered charity.

Playfair and Pathfinder 2010 Summer Schedule. Book your kids (13-18) a berth on one to two week sailings through the Great Lakes, part of the Great Lakes United Tall Ships Challenge.

Follow Toronto Brigantine's Playfair and Pathfinder Tall Ship Adventures on Facebook.

Become a Member of Toronto Brigantine and help support 48 years of service to kids.

Sentimental Places

Summer. Dillon, near Killbear. Cottage vacations always remind me of other cottage vacations. When I was growing up it was either that or playing ball during the long hot city summers. The rich kids flew somewhere with their parents. Getting in the car a few hours out of town was a big enough adventure. The air was sweeter. It made you eat a lot or sleep a lot or play a lot of cards at night on the porch. We didn't have our own cottage, so we rented this and that. Every day was great when it wasn't a drag or raining and boring. Odd things left behind in the cupboards, a Playboy Magazine found under the mattress, no hot water or no running water, just a kitchen hand pump and the outhouse outside. Poison ivy, mosquitoes and ticks. A local general store in the nearest small town or at the gas station for something to do, some still surviving like this one, nothing trendy and expensive, dropping in for a Coke, some candy and other junk for kids, plastic rafts that took dad a half hour to blow up, board games and jigsaw puzzles and comic books. Lazing on the beach with a transistor radio. Sunburn and Noxzema, and sand between your toes.

Nature Calls

Summer. Georgian Bay. In the country you have a better relationship with trees. Cities crowd them out or dwarf them with big buildings and concrete. Here they confer a feeling of peace and shelter. The painters of the Age of Romance liked to parachute them into the midst of ruins or over the heads of lovers. Nature settling back into place after people built and smashed their cities. Now it looks like big cities are here to stay, though given our history, I'm inclined to doubt it. The country always lures us back to a simpler life. People get dissatisfied and exhausted with a complicated world that robs them of their individuality and their tranquility. Suddenly they're ready to burn their prison camps and there's another war or revolution. If cities were more on the human scale they might have weathered these storms. Some old ones have. Though there's a new war-like mania in dealing with cities that don't suit us. They rot in places and then the developers come in, forever tinkering with them, to the point where it all gets out of hand and the city becomes a mish-mash of contrary impulses. The better parts that survive get knocked down to modernize everything, like the old buildings are out of place, or more like a reminder of how people used to live. As though no one should live like this anymore, knock these dissenters down to be democratic. No more privileged buildings or people, no more Old World. The war in the Middle East is about these things too, a clash of Ancient and Modern. And the West's longstanding intolerance of what is old and out of fashion has erupted from the smoldering Twin Towers to rain fire and punish these Medieval Arabs so they can have what we want for them, democracy, money instead of family, and religion on the back burner. The Arabs started it, but the West has been busy eroding their lives and culture for a century. Perhaps a rebalancing is going on between these two extremes, but it's a bloody one and could ultimately wipe out both civilizations. Back to the Stone Age. Hopefully the trees will still be waiting for us.

A Rock Is Always A Rock

Summer. I won't tell you where this rock is in case some idiot tries to steal it. It's a grandaddy granite rock from way way back, friendly and wise. Tumbled a bit, roughly smoothed and polished. Always happier than these broken or dynamited rocks. Indians used to talk to them and they still do. We're the idiots for thinking this stupid or pagan or unscientific. If you're wise and good as some Indians say, you might turn into a rock one day. OK, part of you, the part that goes to work everyday. Here in the Muskokas, rocks do mean something, even to us modern people. They go out everyday collecting small ones and big ones for their gardens or the kids skip some back into the waters. Remember the Pet Rock craze of the late 60's? Not a bad idea.

A Boston Fern Escapes

Summer. Wild Plants by Georgian Bay near Killbear. Refreshing to see houseplants in their native setting. A long time ago, like 300 million years before people started potting them, giant ferns grew like forests in these parts, and conifers too. A Boston fern a long way from home.

A Miniature Garden

Summer. Wildflowers by Georgian Bay near Killbear. In miniature these plants are a children's dream. Walking through woods, breathing air so clean and pungent with the heady tonic aromas of an ancient earth, is perhaps the best antidote to modern life. You wonder why architects and builders, bankers and businessmen, have turned their backs on all this for concrete and cash. Well, they haven't entirely. A lot of them have 3-4-5-10 million dollar cottages around here, going on their nature walks in ATV's and golf carts.

Pockets Of Light

Summer. Wildflowers by Georgian Bay near Killbear. Tiny flowers and ferns poke up out of pockets of light in the deep woods. Killbear as a Provincial Park and campground, protects its wildlife. You might see bears or moose, certainly deer, rabbits and other small friends. If the name puts you off, don't worry. It was never about killing bears. An Indian name for the place, rendered phonetically into English, probably not very well.

A Wild Marigold

Summer. Wildflowers by Georgian Bay in Killbear. If you want the super camping experience, this is it. The peninsula juts out into the bay with rock and beaches on all sides. The rich and eerie forest is what the Huron Indians knew in the days of Samuel de Champlain.

Tickle Me

Summer. Wildflowers and bug by Georgian Bay in Killbear. The park deserves a special star. It's the only old growth forest in the region, saved from logging and redevelopment by a kind-hearted and dedicated forest ranger who persuaded the Ontario Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources to buy the land. The luxury of a million tons of big old trees. And you can camp there. Book early.

New Arrivals By Georgian Bay

Summer. The new growth rushes in along the shores of Georgian Bay. Nature's always in a hurry before autumn runs her into the ground. Most trees aren't as young as this, but as you walk around, you can't help noticing the old ones are missing. They'll be back, but what's taking them so long? During winter they aren't doing much, but when they could be at their busiest in summer, the lack of rain and thin dry soils slows them right down.

The Last Day Of Spring

Spring. Thunder Creek on Georgian Bay, near Parry Sound. The nice thing about small towns is the country's never far away. In this case an easy 20 minutes on foot from downtown to the beach and another 20 along the jagged shores of Georgian Bay. You can't drive there either. One day you take your jacket off and before you know it, the fresh cool spring blasts away into the mighty heat of summer.

Aren't You Glad

Spring. Big Sound on Georgian Bay, near Parry Sound. The snow's finally gone.