Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
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Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 17 Aug 2007 04:17
44:22.335N 64:18.517W
From Halifax we sailed (ok we motored - no wind, or
wind on the nose the whole time) to Lunenburg and arrived Wednesday
(8/15). This was one of the harbors that came highly recommended
by just about all of the boaters we talked to about the Nova Scotia coast.
We can see why. What a place. It's like a step back in time.
Lunenburg used to be a major fishing town, but has reinvented itself into a very
well preserved historic site with good restaurants, a museum and a working
replica of the Bluenose sailboat (famous schooner fishing vessel that also won
many sailboat races back in the early 1900's) an image of which currently graces
the back of the Canadian dime.
We decided to take an extra day here to see the
sights. Here are a few:
The first picture below is Lunenburg's waterfront
taken as we motored up the harbor.
The second picture is taken from the balcony of a
restaurant overlooking the waterfront. The large sailboat is the Bluenose
replica, the Bluenose II. If you look close just left of center in the
picture, you'll see our boat at anchor in the harbor.
The third picture is the prettiest of the many
churches in town. This is the Anglican church, originally built in the
1800's. It's built in the gothic style usually reserved for churches
built of stone, but wood was used in this case. In the foreground you'll
see Don waiting patiently for me to take the picture. Patience.
Wow. Retirement is definitely a good thing.
We leave tomorrow (Friday, 8/17) to head further
west down the Nova Scotia coast. We plan to make two or three more stops
in Nova Scotia and then cross over to Maine somewhere near Bar
Harbor. The crossing should take us about 26 hours. We are thinking
we'll go sometime early next week if the weather cooperates.
Speaking of weather, after our day of sightseeing,
we came back to the boat and were enjoying a sunny happy hour when the fog
literally rolled in. It really does roll in. Like a
giant moving wall. Everything gets quiet (not so unlike the way sound
is muffled during a heavy snowfall), the sun disappears (as does just about
everything else around us) and it suddenly becomes damp like a somebody just
laid a huge wet blanket on top of the boat. Now it's nighttime and all I
can hear as I type this is the eerie sound of a fog horn sounding once
every 15 seconds for anyone unlucky enough to still be out there sailing or
motoring in the dark and fog. Yesterday when we left Halifax, we ran into
fog and although we had radar and GPS, it was really disconcerting to hear both
the land-based fog horn and the really loud fog horn of a passing freighter as
we did our best to stay out of its way. We saw the
freighter's blip on the radar, heard its horn, and felt its wake after
it passed, but never physically saw it. And I always thought fog was just
one of those weather things that the more salty sailors told
exaggerated stories about just to scare the less salty sailors like
us.
Anne
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