Pictou will be a familiar port for the captain of the Picton Castle when he sails into the harbour on Tuesday.
Captain Daniel Moreland spent several months in Pictou in the summer and fall of 2002, helping to rig up the sails on the Ship Hector.
One of the most respected sailing ship masters at sea today, he's an internationally-recognized authority on square-rig and traditional sailing ships and was a natural choice for working on the Hector.
"We had a lot of fun getting the rigging up on the Hector," Moreland recalls. "I'm looking forward to coming back."
Now touring the province with the other tall ships, he believes Pictou County residents will love what they see during next week's stop in Pictou.
"Seeing ships like this strikes a primeval chord in people, which I think will be particularly the case in a place like Pictou, where you have such a heritage of immigrants coming to the area on sailing vessels," he said.
Of course, the Ship Hector and the Picton Castle are quite different. The 284-ton Picton Castle is a traditionally-rigged ship, one of five similar trawlers built in Selby in 1928 and named after British castles. The other castle ships have all be taken out of service.
"The Picton Castle is all wire rigging, while the Hector has rope rigging," added Moreland. "The Hector is an 18th century ship, while the Picton Castle is an early 20th century ship - and the ship is very historic itself."
Visitors will be given a true sense of the evolution of sailing, thanks to the ships visiting Pictou on Tuesday and Wednesday, Moreland added.
"They're all historic, they all have something you can learn about," he said. "You can really see the evolution of sailing vessels over the past few centuries in these ships. They're all very similar and different at the same time. Here you have the Hector, dating back to the 1700s, then you have this progression of other vessels."
Seeing that history up close is one of the things visitors can look forward to seeing when they tour the ships, along with seeing spots like the galley, walking the decks, meeting the crew and the Picton Castle's famous cat, Chibley, who has circumnavigated the globe onboard the ship four times. There are two books in print describing Chibley's adventures.
One of the largest of the small ships in the tall ships tour, Moreland says the Lunenburg-based vessel is popular with visitors. In Halifax, approximately 4,000 people toured the ship each day, while they averaged about 1,000 a day in their most recent visit to Port Hawkesbury. This weekend, the Picton Castle is in Sydney.
"I'm expecting about the same number of people in Sydney, although it really depends on the weather," he said. "But a little rain doesn't keep Nova Scotians from coming out."
An active sailing vessel, most recently the Picton Castle completed a 20,000-mile adventure under sail, touring Europe and West Africa, and next May, the ship will set sail with a new crew of trainees bound around the world on its fifth global circumnavigation.
