Restored Bluenose II scheduled for long-delayed launch on Sept. 29

Failure to launch is the last thing you want to see for a Canadian icon.

Well, it's a year behind schedule but excitement is building for the scheduled launch of the Bluenose II.

Or is it relaunch, because the replica of the immortal schooner Bluenose was actually launched in 1963. It's been fully rebuilt at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, home of the original sailing ship whose racing victories against American challengers earned it a spot on the Canadian dime.

Workers at Lunenburg Foundry are doing the final preparations to allow Bluenose II to slip into the water this Saturday, amid fireworks and other festivities.

"Every launch we have to look at safety.," president Peter Kinley told CBC News recently."We go through the various procedures and checklists."

"Here you are dealing with a vessel that has been so deeply reconstructed that there are a number of unknowns."

Kinley told the Halifax Chronicle Herald that divers will go into the water at dawn to pull locking pins out of steel tripods in the transfer carriage that holds the 258-tonne ship.

The cradle crew on the ship's deck then will use ropes and pulleys to pull out steel supports as the platform gradually enters the water from the slipway.

"It takes time to do that; it also takes time to check all of the through-hull fitting, the sea valves," Kinley said.

"This is a wooden boat. We do expect some weeping around the planks. It's a standard practice for a wooden vessel to experience that kind of thing."

The timing of the launch will be tight, the Chronicle Herald said. Normally, launches take place before high tide, which on Saturday takes place at 8 a.m., just a half hour after sunrise. So the ceremony will take place after the tide drops again.

Performers at the event include Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea, Laura Smith, Matt Mays, Catherine McKinnon and Michael Stanbury, who wrote the song The Bluenose and was at the ship's original launch on July 24, 1963.

Capt. Wayne Walters, director of operations for Bluenose II and the grandson of the original Bluenose's captain, Angus Walters, remembers attending that first launch.

"As a young kid, you want to get as close as possible, but there were so many people we actually ended up crawling up on the slipway and sitting out on the end and watching her slide into the water," Walters told the Chronicle Herald.

"I thought it was great. You could see all the action and it was a pretty exciting day."

The painstaking restoration of Bluenose II cost $15.9 million. It took two years and was plagued by cost overruns, safety concerns and bureaucratic headaches, CBC News noted.

The launch itself rescheduled from last July, missing the tourist season and a tall-ships festival.

"Of course we would like to have had it earlier in the summer, but what can you do? It was a disappointment," Kinley told CTV News. "The timeline is based on the tide basically. We wanted to make sure we had good water to do it. Each month you have spring tide around the full moon and new moon."

The original Bluenose, a Grand Banks fishing and racing schooner, was launched in 1921. Speed was crucial because the vessel that reached port first with its catch got the best prices.

Under Capt. Angus Walters, Bluenose held the Fishermen's Trophy for 17 years. Besides being immortalized on the Canadian dime, the famed ship was also featured on a postage stamp and Nova Scotia's licence plates.

But the legendary ship had an ignominious end. When motorized fishing boats replaced schooners in the 1930s, Bluenose was sold as a cargo ship. She ended her days on a coral reef off Haiti in 1946 while hauling bananas.

[ More Daily Brew: Sign refusing Japanese customers at Calgary karaoke bar prompts outrage ]