Gifford Island lies southwest off Indian Point, the eastern tip Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. No ferry services the island; the only transport to run regularly is the work boat for the Clarence R. Heisler boatyard, the island’s only commercial enterprise.
At 7:25 each morning a small group of men gathers at a dock on Indian Point, lunch boxes in hand. Their greetings and laughter ring out over the harbor as they discuss the weather, whatever happened in their homes the night before, the day’s work ahead. One laugh rises over the others, the one that belongs to Cecil Heisler. At 7:30 the engine growls, the men climb aboard and they cast off for the island, with Cecil at the helm. On a sunny day in November last year, my husband and I joined them to see how the work on our sailboat had progressed since August, when we left her at the yard.
The work boat is solid, utilitarian. She has an open cockpit, low sides and a partially enclosed cabin for the helm. Like most boats on the coast, she is named for a girl, Tara Lynne, a niece of Cecil and Marion Heisler. She is painted gray, white and green, simple colors made bold by the ocean’s blue. When she heads out in the summer, Tara Lynne weaves past wooden schooners and weekend fishing boats bobbing at their moorings. On this autumn day, she made a straight run through the empty harbor, ducked behind several small islands covered with trees and the occasional fishing shack, and on to Gifford Island.
The boatyard shares the island with a few seasonal cottages, empty for the winter. Next to the island’s dock run six or eight wooden sheds — white, gray, weathered, well-used. They are open to the sea — big yawning mouths ready to receive the boats hauled inside for winter storage. The short stretch of sand from each shed to the water is paved with wooden logs, each as long as the shed is wide. These are the rollers for hauling and launching the boats now inside their winter homes. Hauling a boat with any appreciable draft means the moon must be full, pulling the tide high up onto the shore. The boatyard has no motorized lift, and relies on the lunar cycle, a donkey winch and the crew’s ingenuity to move boats in and out of the water.
We tie up at the dock and the men hop off. We walk up to the largest shed, the one fully enclosed and set back from the water. One of the men flips the power switch to turn on the island’s electricity, signaling the start of another work day. They stow their lunches and collect their tools, and the crew fans out to the boat sheds to work, alone or in teams of two or three.
On the inside walls of the large shed hang three generations of tools, a collection built by Cecil, his father Clarence and his grandfather William starting in 1921 when William founded the yard on Gifford Island. Down the center of the shed runs a long workbench, its surface scratched and pitted from years of sawing, chiseling and sanding. At the far end of the room sits a pot-bellied stove. Off to the side of the main room is a small alcove with a stand up desk and a telephone, all the office Cecil needs or wants.
During the day, Cecil hustles from shed to shed. Lloyd, Rob, Terrence, Neil, Carl, Paul and Kevin are carpenter, welder, painter, plumber, and electrician — jacks of all trades and masters of most. When Cecil checks in with them, it is to discuss problems, lend a hand, and always to tease and joke. Cecil accepts the men’s teasing of him with hearty laughter and another story about himself, usually one told many times before. When the telephone rings, it rings loudly. Its sound is amplified on an outdoor speaker designed to reach all the sheds so that Cecil will not miss a call. He asks to be summoned from wherever he was so that he can talk to his customers, suppliers and tradesmen, no matter how small the inquiry.
At noon, the men gather in the large shed and cozy up to the pot-bellied stove for 30 minutes to discuss, debate, joke and eat. After lunch I walk into the shed where our boat is housed and hear Lloyd and Carl, their Nova Scotian accented voices raised to an uncustomary pitch. Back and forth they go, debating measurements with grand passion. I approach with trepidation, fearing to discover what could have riled these normally gentle souls. Seeing me, they turn and explain they are arguing about the contact properties of water, and how much overhang on the cockpit bench would be required to cause rain water to break contact and spill off the edge of the bench, without curving around the lip of the overhang and into the storage cutty underneath. They want to get the lip measurement just right, so that our gear stored under the bench will be dry, even when the cockpit is drenched with rain.
As the afternoon wears on toward 4 o’clock, the men begin to sweep the shavings and hang up the tools. Rob walks by, carrying a large mallet to the storage shed. “I’m going to fix the computer,” he says as he passes. At 4:25, the last man out of the shed flips the power switch off and heads for the dock, leaving the island dark and cold. Tara Lynne heads home to Indian Point, the men talking about what they would have for dinner and what the next day would bring.
Gifford Island is not a tourist destination, except for three days a year. For those days in August, the boat yard sets up a booth at the Mahone Bay Classic Boat Festival. The festival celebrates the local culture, primarily the boats that have been the economic backbone of the community for generations. The Heisler booth offers tours of the yard. Sometimes Cecil is at the booth, other times it is Terrence, acting as Cecil. As Terrence explained, it’s not hard to act like Cecil — “I just talk loudly and act bossy.” Cecil just chuckles at the characterization. A boatload comes to the island each of the festival days to see the yard practice a tradition of boat work that has mostly passed away.
Cecil is now in his 60s. He is the inheritor of the knowledge, the finesse and the spirit of the yard, and he is the last family member to run it. A few months ago, Cecil sold the yard to a local fellow who builds docks and has a barge. Cecil intends to stay on until retirement. The rest of the crew, too, will remain. But of course, things evolve, even old island boatyards.
I had a rare opportunity to spend a working day at the Heisler yard on Gifford Island, to see the magic the men can work on an old boat. I was privileged to share a sandwich with them, next to the pot-bellied stove. Next summer, my family and I will sail our boat back to the Maine coast. The boat’s structure, woodwork and systems will be finer for having been on Gifford Island, and so will we.