Covey Island Boatworks, Nova Scotia’s premier wooden boat builder, announced that it will be providing spars, standing and running rigging, mast hoops and rig metal work for the schooner Columbia, a replica of the 141-foot Gloucester fishing schooner designed by Starling Burgess and built by Arthur Dana Story in Essex, Mass., in 1923.
“We are delighted to be part of the new Columbia project,” John Steele, Covey Island Boatworks president said. “This vessel, and its historic connection to the Fishermen’s Cup Races, to the Bluenose and so to Lunenburg, makes it an honor for our company to have been chosen.”
The replica of the historic schooner is being built by Eastern Shipbuilding Group, of Panama City, Fla. Covey Island will be working with E.Y.E. Marine Consultants, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and Capt. Dan Moreland to engineer and design the rig. Michele Stevens Sailloft Ltd. will provide the sails.
A. Dauphinee & Sons, Ltd. of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, a company that has been producing traditional wooden blocks for more than 100 years will be providing blocks, deadeyes, belaying pins and other wooden rigging components. LaHave Marine Woodwork will provide the mast hoops and Standfast Fittings will fabricate the stainless steel mast fittings.
The original Columbia’s career was cut short when it was lost with all hands in a 1927 gale off Sable Island.
