Nova Scotia has been prime cruising ground for a long time - a lot longer than most people imagine. The province's original Micmac inhabitants built seagoing birchbark canoes up to 12 metres long, with high, rockered ends, hogged sheerlines, and relatively wide beam for stability. Without doubt, Micmacs were the first to "cruise Nova Scotia". Lief Ericsson probably stopped by here on his way to "Vinland" (likely Cape Cod, Mass.) around the year 1002, and the last documented timber-voyage to "Markland" by Greenland Vikings was in 1347, shortly before the Greenland colony collapsed. European fishermen probably crossed to the Grand Banks regularly by the mid-14th Century, although being illiterate, they didn't record these passages, which consequently went ignored by those who wrote history. But the first European to reach these shores who could be called a "cruising sailor" of sorts, may well have been Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. There is reason to speculate that Sinclair visited Nova Scotia in 1398 -- 94 years before Columbus' "voyage of discovery".