Nautical misadventure
Where is the skipper who skipped town?
The skipper who skipped town after his sailboat ran aground off Gabarus seems to be no stranger to nautical misadventures.
Liberty, an 11-metre sailboat, was dashed against the rocky shores near the tiny fishing village last week. Multiple local residents reported seeing a man with a backpack and a dog wearing a red vest walking through Gabarus. While the man’s whereabouts since then remains a mystery, the man at the helm was likely Andrew Bunn, a retired nurse and Iraq War veteran who has been sailing around the world for the past several years with his bull mastiff-boxer mix Atticus.
Bunn and Atticus were towed into Sydney by a Canadian Coast Guard cutter on Sept. 24 after the Liberty was left crippled in the Cabot Strait about 20 nautical miles north of Sydney.
It wasn’t the first time Bunn has run into trouble at sea.
In 2016, he was shipwrecked on an island in Lake Ontario for two months after his 11-metre sailboat Allied Princess ran aground near Lyme, New York.
Residents there even started a Gofundme campaign that raised $5,010 to help Bunn, who the Watertown Daily Times reported served in the Marine Corps from 2002-2006 during the Iraq War.
The circumstances surrounding Bunn’s latest accident aren’t clear, but the forbidding coast has claimed many ships over the years, including the 1912 sinking of the schooner John Harvey, which was immortalized in a poem by Lillian Crewe Walsh, and later recorded by The Dorymen.
Canadian Coast Guard spokesman Steve Bornais said there is no record of a distress call being made before Liberty was tossed ashore near an isolated part of the Gabarus Wilderness Area.
Bornais told the Post search and rescue personnel investigated the wreck and confirmed that the owner is safely ashore, but said the coast guard won’t release personal information about the owner.
What happens to the Liberty now is also a bit unclear.
The coast guard conducted an inspection of the vessel and determined there is no fuel, engine oil or hydraulic oil onboard that would make it a threat to the environment.
Bornais said removing the vessel is now the responsibility of the owner.
That has Sydney River-MiraLouisbourg MLA Alfie MacLeod wondering about what will become of the wreck if the owner doesn’t remove it.
If the ship is considered a navigational hazard, it falls under the auspices of Transport Canada. Otherwise, he said, it may be open for salvage under maritime law, or simply stay where it is until the ocean reclaims it.
“If it’s not a threat to navigation, I’m not sure there’s anything that will be done,” said MacLeod, who recalled the years-long bureaucratic battle that ensued after the MV Miner ran aground off Scatarie Island in September of 2011. The 12,000-tonne, 223-metre bulk carrier was eventually removed at a cost of more than $18 million, with the provincial and federal governments left squabbling over how to split the bill.
“Going back to the adventures of the MV Miner where it wasn’t it a navigational problem, it wasn’t an issue, or that’s how they treated it.”