For the last month or so I have been a crew member on the schooner Niska traveling from Georgian Bay to her new home in Twillingate, NL. The boat was built 35 years ago by the skipper Heiko Bank and has plied the waters in and around Georgian Bay where he lived and chartered until his move to Newfoundland a few years ago. Now he’s come back to fetch his boat and take it to Twillingate where he owns a Bed and Breakfast called the Rumrunners Roost. She’s 60' spar length, 13+ beam, 25 ton, fibreglass on wood, replica of east coast staysail schooners designed and built by the skipper. She has a very reliable 65 hp Perkins Deisel for power. This is not your turn -on-a-dime, spaceship dinky-toy power boat. No joystick operated, voice-activated bow thrusters. It’s basically 1850's tech with only a few modern additions. We have managed to get the schooner from Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake Sat, Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, the Seaway system, the St. Lawrence River to Montreal where he is regrouping for the rest of the trip. She’s made it halfway and has another thousand miles to go. We’ve sailed and motored through, mishaps and misfortunes, trials and tribulations, but surmounted all and sailed her gloriously through these magnificent Great Lakes and waterways covering a thousand miles. It’s a grand adventure in a "seat of the pants" old-school way. The skipper is in dire need of crew. Now. He will be in the Montreal area for possibly a week or until he gets the crew he needs. I guess the price of admission is you pay your share for food and make your own way home. He could use crew for as short as a week or the remainder the voyage. He’ll go with as little as one but there is room for at least two or three more people for a total of four comfortably. There are not many people that can drop everything and do something like this. It is an amazing opportunity. Some boat knowledge would be very helpful but a willingness to learn is good. If you are at all interested in this or know someone who might be, please contact me at this e-mail address: terrappin@sympatico.ca GW Collins   Submitted By: George Collins