Halifax and onwards
Catacaos
Graham Shaw
Tue 3 Aug 2010 15:27
for a couple of days, and then all of a sudden realised that a week had gone
by. This seems to happen quite often. It's quite a small town and I think
we got to know half the population in the time we were there, as well as
meeting several other cruising yachts. There is a very active yacht club
which is also very sociable. We arrived there during Shelburne's "Founder's
Day" weekend celebrations, as mentioned in the previous blog, so a good time
was had by all. Particularly by Lucas on the bouncy castles. After the
weekend we got the bikes out again, and went cycling on some of the trails
through national park areas with lovely countryside and scenery.
Eventually it was time to prise ourselves away from Shelburne and carry on
north and east towards Halifax. We made two overnight stops, at Port
Mouton, where there was a beach with very chilly water, and at Lunenburg,
with a lovely waterfront area and a supermarket very convenient to the
dinghy dock. Then onwards to Halifax, where we picked up a mooring
belonging to Rick and Shirley, some cruisers we had met in Lunenburg, who
were not going to be back for a while. People up here are very generous
with such things. The mooring was about halfway between a park with
excellent swings and slides, etc. and the Armdale Yacht Club, so our time
seemed to be divided equally in one direction or the other. Halifax is
obviously the biggest place in Nova Scotia, so has everything you would
expect from a big city (including Walmart!) A couple of times we took the
bus to the downtown area and the waterfront, and to do some shopping. Last
Friday was Lorraine's birthday, which was celebrated with a meal at the
yacht club. Presents included an iTouch, and many hours have been spent
since trying to figure it out!
After a week in Halifax we are now on our way up the Bras d'Or lakes on Cape
Breton Island, which is the easternmost part of Nova Scotia. This is likely
to be the furthest point we get to in Canada, before turning round and
starting to retrace our steps southwards, eventually towards the Caribbean
again for winter. We have stopped twice so far since Halifax, the first
night at Ecum Secum (what a great name for a place!) and last night at
Glasgow Harbour. We are currently under way, and will be at the canal
entrance to the lakes in about an hour. Hopefully we will make it up to the
town of Baddeck today, which is the largest bit of civilisation on the
lakes. Also Tamsin and David on Twice Eleven who we met in Shelburne are
there, so it will be nice to catch up with them again.
