Gale Force Sailing

I just finished another great week of sailing coaching in Chester, Nova Scotia.

My last full day in Chester I sailed aboard an International One Design - La Diva - in the Chester Classic cup.  We corrected to fourth and would have liked to have done better.  But we were certainly happy with the finish and we had the best time.

Before I left I took in some amazing local art including pieces by my friend Simon Copas and Dolly Hancock who have some REALLY beautiful cards for sale online.  You can check their amazing stuff, on their site, which will help you feel like you are closer to Chester.

Another artist of note, who wasn’t at the show, but who’s stuff is fun to look at is Jose Antonia Valverde-Alcalde.  This year’s Chester Race Week - probably the best race week in North America - promotional poster image was done by this man.  Check the site, I bet you’ll like the paintings.

Speaking of Chester Race Week, this event is a one in a million sort of thing.  Great sailing in my new favorite place against talented sailors.  How could you go wrong?  The event has some really interesting history as well.  Here’s what the Chester Yacht Club has to say about their event.

Before I left I came out of the woods and stayed at the Mecklenburg Inn - mostly because Suzi makes a breakfast that can’t be beat.  The only other spot in Chester that holds a candle is breakfast at the Kiwi Cafe - owned by Linda Flynn.  Both Lynda and Suzi can cook up a storm, but they both have sailing connections too.  Suzi is a top flight sailor and Lynda’s kids are romping and ruling in the Opti/420 scene.

The last thing to note is while I was in Chester I caught a play a the Chester Playhouse.  The show was a one man show that blew me away.  Here’s what another blogger said…

…and stockings for the ladies pulls a personal strand from the huge and hard to look at tapestry of world war 2 history and stitches together real letters into a series of vignettes about Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Amazingly it manages to be captivating, uplifting even in the trauma at what’s being witnessed and narrated, and quietly electric. A good one person show.

Brendan McMurtry-Howlett plays over 20 characters I’m sure in this 1 hour, as he tells the true story of the Canadian soldiers who avoided orders in order to bring some humanity and recovery to the ghosts and slips of humans found alive at Bergen-Belsen at the end of the war. And he does his countless changes with a slow fluid ease and a swively turn that’s not overwrought or cheezy, but feels likes a winding and setting of a clock. His performance across all the characters has a dearness and intensity that feels like it’s from another time, and when he looks around the stage he makes you see the beautiful countryside in Germany, the heather, and the children who had been hidden in the camp by the nurses and inmates playing on it during their stolen picnic hours.

He performs every character himself – everyone except for prisoners of the camp and one little girl. For these he twists behind a crate and twists back with a tiny fragile puppet. With their large eyes, bony features, papier mache skin, hanging cloth bodies and the actor’s one oversize hand in their sleeve, these puppets look hauntingly like the real and countless photographs of the survivors of genocide. McMurtry-Howlett is delicate and moving with their gestures and voices. If you hate delicate and moving, or history, or puppets, don’t go see this show.

Now, I don’t agree with the last sentiment.  I thought the story was OK - no, it was good - but the actor is incredible.  20 characters, near perfect transitions, 90 minutes at a frenetic pace and puppets that captivate rather than creep you out.  It was just amazing.

So that’s it.  Another trip to Chester.  You should call and we’ll talk about the opportunities to sail with Gale Force Sailing in Chester.  Until then…