Miniature flotilla attention getter in Lockeport
From a sea kayak to the Edmund Fitzgerald, a miniature flotilla of more than 30 vessels in Lockeport’s Little Big Harbour attracts a lot of attention from passers-by.
“I meet people from all over the world,” says Floyd Stewart, who started making the tiny vessels about 25 years ago.
“I’ve probably made a couple of hundred over the years,” he says. “Over the years I’ve lost some. Last year I had around 56 or 57. This year I think there’s 33. The little Cape Islander, that’s the last I one made.”
The Little Cape Islander floats nearby Theodore Tugboat. The Beatles’ yellow submarine, freighters, fishing draggers, one named after an old girlfriend, sailboats, even an oil rig, float about in the tiny harbour.
Stewart makes the vessels out of Styrofoam.
“They’re easy to make but it takes a lot of time making them,” he says. “The Fitzgerald I was about a week making that. I try to get the details as much as I can to look realistic.”
A retired carpenter, Stewart tends to his tiny fleet every year, bringing them ashore in the fall.
“Whenever the tourists quit stopping by, I take them in,” he says.
“Sometimes I think about giving it up,” he says, but from the look of joy on his face as he watches the vessels gracefully float around that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.