Posts In The “Nova Scotia” Category
From Lunenburg, Nova Scotia we made a 225-mile overnight run to Southwest Harbor, Maine. We initially were planning to stay at least another night in Lunenburg, but the weather models showed a storm system arriving earlier than previously indicated with several more following, so we decided to leave a day early. We timed our Southwest…
Historic Lunenburg was settled in 1753 and is home to the Bluenose II, a replica of the famous racing and fishing schooner Bluenose. The town has long had a major wooden-boat-building industry, particularly at the Smith & Rhuland Shipyard where hundreds of ships were launched between 1900 and 1970. The most famous include the Bluenose…
Peggy’s Cove is about 35nm by water and less than an hour’s drive from Halfiax. The lighthouse there is one of the most accessible, well-known and photographed in Canada. We spent two final days in Halifax and attended a Davis Cup tennis match, then stopped off at Peggys Cove en route to Lunenbug to add…
Halifax Harbour is one of several that claim to be the second largest natural harbors in the world. Other contenders include Port Jackson at Sydney in Australia, Cork Harbour in Ireland, and Poole Harbour in the UK. However, Halifax Harbor is most definitely home to Canada’s largest military base with respect to posted personnel, and…
As soon as we realized that we’d be in town when the Halifax Mooseheads Junior A ice hockey team was playing, we put it on our calendar. It’s been ages since we watched a live hockey game—probably not since the Seattle Thunderbirds Junior A team moved out of downtown Seattle in 2009. We started the…
We loved our Halifax berth at the Maritime Museum, right downtown within walking distance of the city’s many attractions. One of the most memorable exhibits at the museum covers the 1917 Halifax Explosion, the largest man-made detonation prior to the development of nuclear weapons. On December 6th, 1917 the explosives-laden SS Mont-Blanc collided with the…
Halifax proved to be a real challenge for us. The city has so many pubs and breweries that we couldn’t possibly get to them all, even limiting ourselves to the highest rated ones. But we gave it a strong effort. The pubs we visited from September 13th through 19th, 2016 in Halifax, Nova Scotia follow….
Halifax is the capital city of Nova Scotia, the economic center of Atlantic Canada and home to Canada’s Atlantic naval fleet. The city has done a wonderful job in rejuvinating its waterfront while keeping the flavor of its commercial and maritime heritage intact. After a run south from the Liscomb River, we passed through Halifax…
The Liscomb River Trail has two excellent features. The first is a suspension bridge overlooking a waterfall where you can cross the river and return on the other side, and the second is an excellent restaurant at the head to enjoy a drink or a meal after the hike. From Guysborough we passed through Canso…
One of our reasons for stopping at Guysborough was to visit the award-winning Rare Bird Pub, one of Nova Scotia’s many excellent craft breweries. After passing through the narrow entrance channel, we found good anchorage in Guysborough Harbour just off the pub and the public dock. We of course stopped in at the Rare Bird…
St. Peters Canal, built in 1869, connects the south end of Bras d’Or Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. In most locks, the water flow is unidirectional, with one side always being higher than the other. The typical doors close into the shape of a ‘V’, with the point of the ‘V’ oriented upstream. But Bras…
A marble quarry operated at Marble Mountain between 1888 and 1921. When the mine was in operation, several hundred people lived in the area and Marble Mountain was one of the most prosperous towns in Cape Breton. The old quarry dominates the scenery here and has several good viewpoints back into the bay. Trip highlights…
In the late 1800s, locals built a canal between Malagawatch Harbour to Denys Basin. Via a portage from Little Harbour into Malagawatch Harbour and then through the canal into Denys Basin this safer route took 20 miles off the trip between Marble Mountain and Orangedale. The canal was 1,000 ft long, 17 ft wide and…
From the Washabuck River we travelled south through the Barra Strait to spend a couple of days in and around Denys Basin. The current can reach several knots in the Barra Strait narrows, so we left the anchorage at Washabuck River to time our arrival for slack water mid-tide. The Grand Narrows Railway bridge in…
We’d never seen flocks of eagles before, but that was practically the scene at Indian Island at the head of Wyhcocomagh Bay. We anchored in the pristine Washabuck River and ran the tender twenty-five miles up Wyhcocomagh Bay. As we rounded the southwest point of Indian Island, we saw an eagle in a tree, then…
Despite 1) falling rain, 2) a forecast for thunderstorms, 3) an exposed run through the edge of the North Atlantic 4) uncertainty about anywhere to land the tender, and 5) a potentially difficult re-entry to Little Bras d’Or channel into a strong ebb current against a freshening northerly wind, the shorter and admittedly slightly more…
Baddeck is the largest town on the Bras d’Or Lakes and is famous for once being home to inventor Alexander Graham Bell. We very much enjoyed this traditional maritime town with its strong Scottish heritage and the excellent Alexander Graham Bell museum. Trip highlights from August 30th and 31st follow. Click any image for a…
From Newfoundland we made a 150-nm, 24-hour passage to Bras d’Or Lake in Nova Scotia. In addition to looking for a good weather forecast for the run across Laurentian Channel between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, we also needed to time our arrival at the entrance channel, Great Bras d’Or. The current at the narrow north…