39 Halifax and Bluenose II

Canada
Québec & New Brunswick
Nova Scotia & Newfoundland
Québec & Ontario
Manitoba to the Pacific

32 Off to Nova Scotia
33 Whales, Digby Neck
34 Yarmouth and beyond
35 Through to Lunenburg
36 Lunenburg
37 To Halifax
38 Halifax
39 Halifax and Bluenose II
40 Halifax
41 Halifax Citadel
42 Fixing Morty
43 Greenwich & Stanhope
44 Charlottetown
45 Canadian Confederation
46 Whisky and Ceilidh
47 On to Broad Cove
48 Glace Bay and Marconi
49 Arriving in Newfndlnd
50 To St John's
51 St John's
52 St John's
53 Avalon Peninsula
54 To Twillingate
55 Rain to Rocky Harbour
56 Gros Morne
57 Vikings up north
58 Wind and ferries
59 Labrador

Canada

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sunday 11 September 2005 (day 112)

Disco Lobster

Amazingly, Stef did not have a sore head today - he deserved one! Our little local bus doe not run on Sundays so we drove down into Central Halifax to get our tickets for Bluenose II. Knowing that numbers were limited we divided and conquered. Stef went to get the coffee while I watched the ticket booth and joined the queue early on so we would be sure to get tickets (i.e. we did a German). With time to kill, we ambled along the harbour front and into a little market. It had lots of gifty shops selling nick-knacky bits and pieces. Stef resisted the temptation to buy a giant Larry the Lobster! We were back in time for our trip on Bluenose II, a two house tour of the Halifax harbour and bay.

In total it has eight sails but only three were in use today. The masts are solid wood and polished and gleaming all the way. The main sails have booms on top and bottom, needed because they are too heavy for halyards and sheets alone (ropes to you and me). The fifteen year old main sail ripped a few weeks ago and its replacement, all 950lbs of it, has just arrived and is sitting on the deck waiting to be rigged, a process that will take a couple of days to complete. It will look out of place being so clean and white amongst the other sails that al have a well worn character.

The wind in the harbour was light so we made slow progress an much to Stef's disappointment it was horizontal sailing all the way. The crew were happy to chat to passengers along the way. There are sixteen crew in total, eleven deckhands, a chief cook, engineer, captain and two others. The deckhands were all young people, they looked like students. They work the full season from April to October and do not necessarily have any sailing experience. The only condition for them to work on Bluenose II is that they are from Nova Scotia. The first two months are spent rigging the ship, the last two weeks de-rigging and putting it into winter storage.

They certainly work hard. The main halyard and the mooring sheets were a good two inches thick. The foresail sheet (which is what is used to keep the boom in place) was even thicker. It makes the rigging on the (comparatively) little yachts Stef sails on look a bit poxy. It took three people to pull in the sail each time we tacked and four to adjust the foresail sheet for each jibe. As we turned back to harbour the sailing became more fun. "Oh the boat's leaning" said one American lady, obviously wanting it to level out again. When they get up a full "head of steam" it heels to about thirty degrees, far enough for water to come in over the gunwale.

It must be great fun to be on board with all the sails hoisted and cruising through the water. Health and safety regulations do not allow them to do this with passengers on board. Racing the original must also have been something quite special. Bluenose II is not allowed to race. Officially this is so that it does not detract away from the reputation of the original Bluenose but one of the crew joked that it was so that it could not lose.

After the cruise we stopped off at a Second Cup coffee shop where they have wireless internet access (£15 for 24 hours which is pretty cheap). We have decided to restructure our Canada section which has created some structural problems that Stef needed to sort out. It is all very technical and well and truly beyond my internet abilities.

Sailing on Bluenose II

In the evening we went to see a Harold Pinter play, The Dumb Waiter, shown as part of Halifax's Fringe Festival. It was at the Neptune Theatre Studio, a small auditorium that probably only seats a couple of hundred people. It was an ideal location for this two man play. The characters are waiting in a dark and dismal basement for their next assignment. It soon becomes clear that they are hit men waiting for their next kill. Events take a strange turn when a dumb waiter in the wall springs to life sending down orders from what must have been a cafe upstairs. Te characters were obviously from London, the play set in Birmingham. Not many in the audience laughed at the joke about the Villa.

We went to the Economy Shoe Store for dinner, another Irish pub come restaurant. The food was very good when it finally arrived - a bit of a cock up with the kitchen meant it took thirty minutes. Back at the campsite we watched some of the evening news. It must have been a slow news day as they were talking about The Ashes cricket competition between Britain and Australia. Cricket is not a very well known sport here so they gave a brief explanation of the rules. It went something along the lines of "the batsman hits the ball with a bat that looks like the end of a canoe paddle, hitting the ball before it can knock down a few sticks of wood known as stumps" From the way they talked about it I think they felt it was a pretty boring game (which, of course, it is ...)

Prev | Up | Next

Top

Visitors:
Home \| Info \| Blog \| Travel \| Pictures \| Site map \| Search \| Guestbook	Copyright © 2001-2007 Stefan and Vanessa Aalten-Voogd