Kate Knight, head of school for the Lunenburg-based institution says most of the students who were on board the ship will be returning to town next week to complete the final four months of the school year.

 School officials met February 24 with Mayor Laurence Mawhinney as well as Jane Ritcey-Moore and Roxie Smith of the Lunenburg Academy Foundation, and a plan is being developed to host a March 7 community event to celebrate the safe return of students, staff and crew following the mishap.

  "So often, I think communities like Lunenburg have had to come together because of tragedy, and for us, this is not a tragedy. This is an opportunity for once to be able to come together as a community to celebrate … all of our students and staff members' safe return," she explained. "We want to be able to facilitate the community being able to participate in that."

 In the meantime, staff have made arrangements for those students who have chosen to complete the semester to be accommodated at Concordia House, the Montague Street complex owned by Eva and Jurgen Zielger which housed many of the school's pupils in 2008-09 and a date for a return to land-based classes at the Academy has been set for March 9.

 They are also in negotiations with local suppliers to provide meals for the students once they return.

 "We've invited all of our students and all of our staff to come back here to Lunenburg to continue the school year, but we're certainly sensitive that for all of them, that might not be the best platform … so we're going to be flexible," Ms Knight explains. "We know that not everyone will likely join us here, but we wanted to provide the structure so that [a] sense of normalcy can start to be returned to the lives of these guys who have been through so much."

 As in previous years, classes will be offered to students in space leased by the school which is located on the third floor of Lunenburg's historic Academy.

 "And we'll simply continue the academic program we would have been offering at sea for high school and university students," Ms Knight explained. "We'll continue here with our staff members, our teaching faculty and we'll be working out … all the details over the next week prior to the students and families arriving on March 6."

 She said it is a great advantage having run a land-based school in Lunenburg the past two years as many of the required support systems are presently in place.

 "We already have many wonderful contacts as far as getting our volunteer program back up and running and getting students into the community, weekend activities and workshops and extra curriculars where students can become involved in," she said.

 Some assistance, Ms Knight hopes, will also come through contributions from the local community.

 "We obviously found ourselves in challenging circumstance in these days, but we're committed to offering a full-service, high-quality program to our students and to our staff. We're really just asking the community for any support they can offer with anything from in-kind donations of services [or] activities for our young people to take part in, in the coming months," she said.

 "If there are restaurants, who are interested, particularly the first week when we do get our food service up and running, that would be willing to host our group for a meal one evening to help that transitioning period that first week of having everybody back."

 Other support might include people volunteering to conduct workshops for the students, donations of gift certificates or vouchers to cover the cost of an activity, "any of those kinds of things that I think provide the opportunity for the community to feel they've been able to make a contribution.

 "We just know that the Lunenburg community and the South Shore community has always shown us great support, and we have no doubt that that will continue in the coming days," she said. "It's one of the reasons why we feel so happy about bringing people home and this is home for us."

 After the short-term arrangements of completing the current school year are in place, Ms Knight said attention will be turned to determining exactly what is to become of Class Afloat as an organization and a program in the future.

 "We intend to continue Class Afloat. Obviously, discussions are already in the works, particularly amongst our alumni community, for a fundraising campaign in order to be able to build a second vessel, a new vessel, the Concordia II, The Spirit of Concordia, whatever its name might be. But certainly that talk in our community has already started," she said, adding a decision on how to proceed with regard to a new ship will be finalized in the weeks and months ahead.

 "But in the shorter term, we are already looking at opportunities to lease a vessel beginning September this year, in order for our sea-based program to continue without interruption."

 While it is still enrolment dependent, Ms Knight said administration is hopeful they can return to having both the Academy and the shipboard portions of their program operational come this fall, a situation which was the case during the school's first two years in Lunenburg, but was adversely affected by the downturn in the economy last fall.

 "Certainly the messages we've been getting from our families and our alumni is that they don't want this to be the end of Class Afloat, and we certainly don't view it as being the end of Class Afloat either," she added.