TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

So we set off again on Friday afternoon (meeting a CAT ferry as we departed) and in more fog and 15 -20 knot winds we motored that night around the southwest point of Nova Scotia, Cape Sable. It was actually not quite as rough as we had anticipated (it is a rather notorious passage) and our passive bird-watching of many sea-birds (particularly several puffins, gannets at various stages of maturity, many Wilson’s storm petrels, and some other petrels that I still need to identify) was an extra benefit. After many hours depending upon the radar in the low visibility, we left the fog bank quite suddenly around noon on Saturday and the sunny seascape had a particularly vibrant clarity.

The overnight passage had been cold and if we kept going straight for Halifax we risked arriving before dawn which would not be desirable for such a busy, fog-prone port. So we turned into Lunenburg to catch up on our sleep on a mooring ball for the night, having read that it was a must-see place but not really knowing why. How lucky we were to make that decision! In 1995 Lunenburg was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because it is an "outstanding example of planned European colonial settlement" settled in the mid 1700s by German immigrants. Without even going ashore (the dinghy was comfortably ensconced on the deck) the view of the town from our mooring ball was most impressive with a busy waterfront, numerous churches, and many attractive buildings in a multitude of colors. A busy fishing town and an historic center of shipbuilding, there were several large, interesting boats near the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic including Bluenose II. This is an exact replica of the famous ocean racing schooner, Bluenose, that was built in Lunenburg in 1921 and raced undefeated for 18 years, and which is the image on the Canadian ten-cent coin.

Promising ourselves to return when we had time to go ashore, we departed Lunenburg early on Sunday morning and had the most glorious, sunny, calm run to Halifax. The lack of wind necessitated further motoring but the glassy sea made for unforgettable wildlife viewing. We saw many birds, both harbor and grey seals, porpoises and Atlantic white-sided dolphins, one distant, cruising whale and four very active whales that mesmerized us for about 15 minutes before one swam right under our bow and the group moved on. Considering that we saw them blow many times, clearly saw their ridged rostrums (front part of the head) and their dorsal fins (falcate to hooked) and even saw the tail fluke of one and a pectoral fin of another, it was frustrating not to be familiar enough with whale characteristics to be able to clearly identify these beautiful giants despite our excellent guidebooks. From above they appeared to be a fairly uniform dark grey, were very smooth skinned, and were at least the size of our boat, 40 ft. Undoubtedly baleen whales in the Rorqual family, we were pretty sure that they were not the giant blue whales or the frequently seen humpbacks. Appropriate to the area, the likely candidates are: Fin, Sei, and Minke whales. Whatever they were, we felt honored to share a brief part of the morning with them with no one else around.

Our wildlife encounters and the sunshine having put us in exceptionally good moods, we motored into Halifax harbour past the numerous fortifications along the coast and on McNab’s Island. Being a Sunday afternoon, the harbour was full of pleasure boats including many sailing boats participating in club races. We refueled at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron near the mouth of the attractive and narrow but deep Northwest Arm of the harbour and then headed back out to Purcell’s Cove where we had been offered the use of a mooring by Eric and Ellen Haynes. By phone they had told us to look out for them in a dinghy near the island in the cove so we looked for them as we started to head directly in towards the island. We had just decided from the charts that it was going to be too shallow on our current course when we spotted them frantically waving to us to come around where they were in the deeper channel. We apparently did not hear our cell phone on which they were trying to call us to prevent the seemingly imminent grounding! Once in the right channel we made quite a procession as we, motoring in our large boat, followed them in their little row-boat with their black Labrador, Hooch, swimming behind them, to the mooring. What a delightful place! We were sheltered behind Spectacle Island in a beautiful cove with views to the Northwest Arm, Point Pleasant Park, and toward Halifax Harbour.

After the rather lengthy process of unloading the dinghy and outboard, we meet Eric and Ellen on shore and they generously offered use of their house while they headed off to work a night shift. We had briefly met them previously at the boatyard in Fernandina Beach when they were leaving for the Bahamas in November 2007. After discussing where they lived and our travel plans, they had unsuspectingly offered us the use of a mooring if we really did make it to Halifax. The mooring ball actually belonged to their neighbors, Vince and Diane Purcell (yes, of the cove’s name) and the hospitality of these two couples was amazing. We learned much about the cove from Vince and from a book that he kindly signed and gave us, written by his aunt. A popular fishing area, it was known as Mackerel Cove by the First Nations people until in 1752, when the cove and island was granted by Lord Cornwallis (who founded Halifax for the British in 1749) to William Russell. In 1828, Samuel Purcell purchased the grant and renamed the cove, and Vince is a sixth generation member of this family.

That evening we buzzed over to downtown Halifax in the inflatable dinghy and enjoyed looking at the excellent waterfront facilities stretching 1 km (0.6 mile) from the cruise-ship docks and Pier 21 National Historic Site (which has an immigration exhibit like Ellis Island in New York, NY) to Casino Nova Scotia. With the kind help of Eric and Ellen (particularly driving me to a supermarket) most of Monday was spent cleaning-up and getting things ready for the arrival of my nephews. That evening, we celebrated our on-time arrival in Halifax and the hospitality of our hosts by enjoying the wonderful bottle of champagne that had been presented to us the previous July by our friends in the national Aquatic Plant Management Society. Along with a fine dinner and bonfire marshmallow-roast with Vince and family, we were thoroughly welcomed to Purcell’s Cove…an event made all the more memorable by watching the space station pass overhead and seeing Hooch polish off the last of our cream-cheese appetizer that had been momentarily left unattended on a table at a convenient dog height!