Good walk around the dock.
The boardwalk has many places to park a boat
Hammocks again!
Lots of wee chill out spaces - love the Adirondack chairs - another project when I get home is to make a few of these!
I come back to the dock here on my way back.
Nick hires a bike from one of these containers so we can visit a chandler. We did entertain segways but I reckon falling could wreck knees, all four of them.
Some nice old boats moored on the docks
Talking of old boats on the dock... here is Shadowmere, the marina staff is bending over worshipping her. Normally the HMCS Sackville would be moored to the right, but it is away getting refurbished. the last surviving flower class corvette. I am in good company - I picked this berth so that Nick Butler can find me. He does.
There is lots of on the water activity, including dumpy ferries
Which always appear at the worst time - here they are attempting a scissors maneuvere as I wanted to go between them
I visit the Museum of Immigration (before Nick arrives)
The old immigration had brilliant "suitcases"
A lot of ships arrived here carrying immigrants
And they brought more than clothes. By the way the book "Accordian Crimes" by Annie Proulx is a good read.
Whilst I found the immigration museum small - and not much detail prior to 1920, they did have an exhibition of refugees, timely. Below is a refugee tent, how would you like to live in this for 20 years in the cold and the hot, the dry and the wet.
When Nick arrives we visit the maritime museum, it had an interesting display on hurricanes, as I write this I have survived Hurricane Florence, It remains to be seen how the Intercoastal waterway in North Carolina has survived it.
I had also been told hurricanes were uncommon in Nova Scotia, my sense of security is somewhat affected by the poster below...
Gulp!
Other things in the museum are an innovative hydrofoil navy ship designed by Alexander Bell and friends - we visit his museum in Baddeck, Bras D'Or lakes in Cape Breton - see a later blog.
There are some beautiful things created by the first nation people on the area.
Maybe hard to see, but the workmanship is incredible.
And of course boats
An interesting version of our breeches buoy. I like the way they coil the line.
Mr Cunard came from Nova Scotia and there are some superb models of his ships
And a radio room which I love. The equipment on the table behind the chair is a modern rig - I have a similar one on Shadowmere.
It was alright when it left us...
And a model made of bones made by a POW
I love the passion that model makers possess.
And then I leave Halifax, the actual timeline of my visits to Halifax is complicated. I arrive in the estuary and swing right to a narrow channel that hosts Shearwater yacht club. I need a mooring as I am leaving the boat to visit Rachel in Montreal. Unfortunately they have none available, apart from two across the channel in a bay off an island - locals come across to the bay to picnic. I anchor there and use the Wifi in the Yacht Club.- their laundry room isn't working and there is no supermarket nearby. Shearwater give you two nights on their buoys free.
A nice Canadian on anchor visits - a Belgian who spent a long time in the Congo - he offers me his mooring up the sound but when I visit it the night before I am to leave I don't like the rope riser and decide to go further up the Bedford inlet, past Halifax to Dartmouth Yacht club, 4 miles "upriver".
This works out well, a lovely club new clubhouse, good facilities and a nearby food market "The Chop Shop" that sells most things as well as good pork chops. I leave Shadowmere on a buoy - I go ashore to get to the railway station - 5 or 6 miles away by road and Dan the YC manager very kindly runs me there by car. The kindness of strangers again.
I visit Montreal and the next blog covers that. I go by train - 18 hours overnight, comfortable seats... I arrive back by plane and get a taxi to the YC and have to ring Dan to get home to open the gates, luckily he can do this remotely. I get to the boat, rest a day, and then move to Halifax city Docks so Nick can more easily find me.
We spend a day in Halifax and then head up the coast to the Bras D'or Lakes via two remote anchorages to St Peter - the town, not the gates, although they are the gateway to the Lakes as you go through a lock there. We also visit Iona and Baddeck in the Lakes before returning to St Peter and back to Halifax, phew. I am now coming home.