They always said, "The Spray will come back." Of course, they were referring to the 36-foot sloop Spray that Joshua Slocum sailed around the world in the late 1800s. They were not talking about a replica Spray sailing into Westport, Brier Island, Nova Scotia in 2003.

	Photo by Caroline Norwood
	The Moore family's Spray replica has been modified for family living, but still earns a double-take from Slocum fans.

Slocum actually did return to his native Nova Scotia in 1901, three years after completing his round-the-world, single-handed sailing trip. He stopped at Westport for two months, where he gave a lantern slide show illustrating his trip and did final editing of his now classic book, "Sailing Alone Around the World."

But it was another Spray that arrived in Westport Harbor early last October, an exact copy of Slocum's sloop, at least as far as the hull goes. Above the waterline there have been a few changes — the cabin configuration is different and there are two masts instead of one, making this Spray a schooner rather than a sloop. The changes were made to accommodate the Moore family, who lives aboard their 36-foot wooden boat most of the time. It's different, but it's still called Spray and last October it came home.

The family, including Jon, Christine, their son, Lewes, 13, and dog, Jim stopped at Westport on their way from Lunenburg to Grand Manan, New Brunswick, and points south last fall. They intended to stay for a night, grab a favorable tide the next day and be on their way.

But they hesitated. They met some friendly Westport folks, including fisherman Eldridge "Squid" Garron, who was working on his lobster boat at the Fishermen's Wharf. Eldridge invited the Moores to bring their schooner in from an outside mooring to the shelter of the floating docks.

So they did. Then the family started out for a walk around the village, perhaps a visit to the only store on the island, R. E. Robicheau's Ltd. Before long, word had gotten around this tiny community of 250 people. "There's a replica of Slocum's boat at the wharf," they said. "There's a family living aboard."

One of those who heard this news was Raymond Robicheau, whose daughter just happened to be looking for someone to live in her house for the winter. "I was just walking back to my boat," said Jon, "when this man stopped me on the street and offered us a free house for the winter."

Suddenly, the trip to Grand Manan on a favorable tide was pushed back a day or two. Jon recalls the strange but positive feeling he had had as he sailed along the southern shore of Brier Island the day before.

Coming in from Yarmouth, one passes the famed Green Head, a series of 125-foot-high columnar basalt cliffs. The entire rugged shoreline is dramatic. Jon passed picturesque Peter's Island, with its welcoming lighthouse, then rounded Southern Point on Brier Island, just as Slocum would have done 102 years earlier. He picked up a mooring and got things squared away below. When he came back up on deck he was astounded to find about 35 people with cameras pointing at him. An incoming whale watch boat was passing a few feet away. The captain had alerted the tourists to the significance of the visitor. They were frantically taking photos, and having Jon appear from down below was icing on the cake. He has that Slocum look — he's lean, wears a slouch hat and has a gray beard and mustache.

Spray had come home.

The Moore family held a quick conference at the table inside Spray's small cabin. Do we stay and try to find enough work to get us through the winter, or do we carry on toward the southern United States? It didn't take long for them to decide Westport would be a great place to spend the winter.

Westport didn't disappoint. Someone loaned the family the use of a truck. Clothing, food and books were unloaded from Spray and taken to their new home. Raymond Robicheau, now their neighbor, told Christine where she could pick blackberries and blueberries. He pointed to an apple tree in the backyard. "Help yourself," he said. "No one else wants them."

This industrious family picked berries and apples and later Christine shared the largesse with neighbors on both sides, offering apple pie to her guests. When Thanksgiving arrived, the bachelor neighbor living on their other side was invited for turkey dinner.

Slocum once said that to be self-contained on a small voyage one must have "thoughts beyond the limits of a single day." As Jon recounts his adventurous life, it is clear he has always had thoughts beyond the limits of a single day. He started life in the Boston area. He spent his early years in the American Midwest. He left home at 17, found his way to Montreal, where he became a Canadian Landed Immigrant. Soon he became involved in the first progressive free-form alternative FM station in Canada.

Later, he traveled via motorcycle in February to Newfoundland and ended up buying a house on Exploits Island, some 20 miles off the coast in Notre Dame Bay. His Newfoundland years were full of dramatic incidents and heartwarming stories. He jigged cod, pulled trees off the beach in one of his many wooden vessels, and owned the Eugene and Irene, one of the last Jack schooners in Newfoundland.

While in St. Johns for supplies, he met Christine, whom he describes as a "fellow wanderer." She grew up in Jamaica but was born in Ottawa and was in St. Johns attending university. After their marriage, the couple began their travels up and down the Atlantic seaboard. They were in Beaufort, N.C., shortly before their son was to be born, but they wanted their child to be born in Canada so Jon headed their boat toward the north and, just like the salmon, they made their way up rivers and through canals until they reached Belleville, Ontario, where Lewes was born.

The Moores have owned Spray for the past five years. Jon uses words like "karma" and "serendipity" often as he talks about how he came to own the vessel.

For many years he had planned to build his own Spray replica.

"My own Newfie schooner was a very similar type of craft," he says. "After that schooner, I had other boats but I wanted my old schooner. I had planned to build my own Spray but because of family obligations I had to go to Indiana. I decided I could not build the boat.

"Then I saw an ad. It was for this boat, the Spray. Larch on larch, Ford diesel engine. And this boat was built during the exact time I had been planning to build my replica of the Spray. I looked on that as good karma."

Ed Davis of Maine built the boat on Mt. Desert Island in Maine in 1982. It is powered by a six-cylinder diesel. She's a tough wooden boat, not expensive, a workboat. "I can fix this boat in a horizontal snow storm on a beach in Labrador," Jon says. "I like the self-sufficiency." He sails with few electronics — a depth sounder, hand-held GPS and VHF radio.

His boat may be a replica, but Jon makes it clear that he is no Joshua. He has no intention of going around the world, but he does say he has always thought of himself as a single-handed sailor. Now, with the family aboard, "food appears and courses get plotted on the chart." Christine and Lewes enjoy the live-aboard life and all the traveling. Lewes is home-schooled while on the boat but did attend public school while the family was in Lunenburg for two years, and has attended school at Islands Consolidated School in nearby Freeport since the family arrived in Westport.

And what's next for Spray? Jon has decided it's time to write a book about some of his experiences. He has a plan for a book about Newfoundland wooden boats of the past, "A look at the evolution of watercraft down through the years." From his own conversations dating back to the 70s, Jon has information about who built these boats, their designs, their strengths and weaknesses.

"There was a time past when one could recognize a person by the way his boat was built," he says. "The boats were very distinct to each area." He has been invited to use the archives at Memorial University in St. Johns for more research and photos.

"The format of the book will be a voyage along the coast of Newfoundland," he says. "We will be sailing our boat from place to place and interviewing the old-timers and taking photos, getting drawings, technical information. The book will be formatted like a ship's log."

With the nucleus of the book on the tip of his fingers, Jon staked out his writing area in the porch of their winter home. The room overlooks Westport Harbor, that same harbor another captain of another Spray visited so many years ago when he came to Westport to tell people about his wondrous sailing journey.

Christine has found work tutoring children in academic subjects and doing upholstery work for local residents. Jon has kept busy doing carpentry in the village and working on Spray. He is making a new bowsprit and enlarging a room on the boat to give Lewes his own quarters.

Meanwhile, the family has become friends with many islanders. But the pull of the sea got stronger as the days got longer. At the end of June, the family moved back aboard their boat and set sail for Southwest Harbor, Maine where Jon is working as they live aboard their boat.

Will Spray come home to Brier Island again? She has had a good safe home on the island, protected from fierce winter storms. She'll probably head this way again.

Caroline Norwood lives in Westport, Brier Island, Nova Scotia. She is the author of "Life on Brier Island, Nova Scotia."