Follow-up Plan

 Hi all.  I’ve had a few enquires about our safety and Hurricane Lee… so here’s the plan. We leave Mabou tomorrow morning to head up and into Cape Breton. We’ve been looking forward to doing some beach combing and hiking along the Cabot Trail. The good news is we could do the whole drive in a day but have chosen to slow that down and take a few days. We will, of course be monitoring Lee and have made plans A and B depending on whether or not he makes land fall.  Plan B (that would be the plan for IF he arrives) includes getting ourselves back to this lovely old family home that has withstood decades of hurricanes and is fairly protected. We will be safe here and, if need be, we can hang out here for several days while things calm down.  So, there you have it. With or without Hurricane Lee we will be safe and continuing along the plans for our east coast experience. I hope all of you are tucked in and enjoying fall.  TTFN. CJ

Thursday, Sept. 7th. Lunenburg

Beautiful flowers, busy bees doing their job

More wonderful 'sea time' on the shore and on the water. We are quite smitten with the vibrant colours and traditional housing architecture everywhere we go. Both were very evident along the shores of Lunenburg Harbour… and best viewed from the water. We were lucky to secure a room with an (almost) front row seat to the bustling and touristy harbour docks; and we spent most of our time exploring said docks and nearby shops. 

Kathy had kindly arranged for us and an old friend (well, she's not that old but we've known her for ages :-) to experience a harbour sail on board a sea-going schooner. Several ships were secured along the docks and we thought we'd spied our 'ride' only to discover a much different craft was indeed our destination (photos of both). We had a blast nonetheless and Trish even took a turn on the helm. We had a great day visiting and enjoyed the sun setting over Lunenburg Harbour, as viewed from our personal balcony :-) 

Today is now Friday the 8th and we are overnighting at Berry's Motel. It's quite something (not) when viewed from the street but, true to the telling, reviews on Google confirmed it a worthy stop and so we did. Our room is freshly renovated and clean as a whistle. We are content. Tomorrow we press on to our destination (Mabou) and a meet up with Kathy's relatives. Thus will begin a 'gathering of the clan' and several days exploring Cape Breton and more. I'm not sure how much connectivity there will be in Mabou so no worries if no posts for the next several days…. Until I write again… CJ

SV Eastern Star - the ship we sailed on

The SV Theresa E. Connor - not the ship we sailed on, but the last Bluenose Grand Banks fishing schooner, now employed as park of the Lunenburg Fisheries Museum 

 

Trish (on her first ever sail) and Kathy

Colourful buildings along the Lunenburg shore

Another beautiful piece of maritime history

Kathy enjoying the ride

CJ likes it

Captain Trish at the helm

Our view from our balcony at the Rum Runner

A better view … sunset.

Colourful street-side in front of our hotel

Tasting the local brew

We spent several hours in the wonderful Fisheries Museum

One of many of Lunenburg’s landmark historic churches

Sight seeing and sea food…



Sept 5 and 6 have been sight seeing days for us. First, a road trip northish to Liscomb Lodge and Sherbrooke. Both locations offered up pleasant walking trails and lots of water views including a 'river running backwards', at least it one point where the waterfall top ran over the waters below that were coming back up…true story.

We also met a fellow who had sailed north from Massachusetts all the way up to play hide snd seek with icebergs. He showed us some photos taken of his boat sailing (very close) to a large berg.., the photo taken by his crew in their inflatable some distance away. Gutsy move me thinks! But the photo was stunning.

The next day (today) had us packing up (in the rain) and heading southish towards Halifax. Turns out tomorrow is the first day for the university students and the morning rush hour in Halifax will be nothing less than terrifying and treacherous. So here's what we did.

We boogied on down to Dartmouth for a yacht club crawl and overnight in a B&B much closer to Lunenburg our destination for Thursday morning.

Now I'm happy to give folks some space when I ask a challenging question but I ran a little short of that magnanimous feeling when I asked the office manager of the Dartmouth Yacht Club if, as we were members of a similar yacht club in B.C., we might avail ourselves of a snack in their cafe. Her response was not what I expected given our open arms welcome to yacht club members from other yacht clubs dropping by our clubhouse on foot/by car. She was happy to take our money if we wanted to purchase a t-shirt but we could only use the cafe if we came by boat and anchored off. Needless to say we moved on and we're very glad we did.

We headed over to the Armdale Yacht Club who were happy to have us and fed us a fantastic lunch of seafood chowder, fish and chips and mussels. They even shared their nickname for the other club with us (I ll tell you that later).

And finally we walked about York Redoubt, the historic national monument over-looking the entrance to Halifax Harbour and an extremely important location during WWII.

We are now tucked in for an early evening. Tomorrow promises to be an amazing day, complete with sailing on the SV Eastern Star in Lunenburg Harbour.
Hoping all is well with each of you. CJ

East Coast Water Sports

What a treat. First a day sail (complete with lunch) and then today (Monday) Kathy and Marike are off in the kayaks. Spoiled? Yup.

Nova Scotia’s Finest


>
> What a welcome! Our first Nova Scotian dinner was one for the record! Good friends, lovely setting and oh what a feast.

Just cuz..

Who knew, just looking over your shoulder could be so beautiful? The view from our window as the sun was setting behind us.

Distant shores are calling...

Sometime, about three years ago, we planned a wonderful adventure and journey to the far eastern shores of this great land Canada. Neither of us had been, Kathy has relatives there, we love shorelines and what lies beyond... oh, and we kinda like lobster and other seafoods (and maybe a little beer). Well, COVID 19 beat us to the draw and all plans were cancelled as most of us packed up our tents and headed deep into our caves.

It's late 2023 and, you guessed it, the plan has been revived and even includes some exciting mini-adventures once we're there. We leave tonight, on a flight path that will take us from Nanaimo to Calgary and then a red-eye to Halifax.  We arrive at 0702 hrs. and have a rental car booked for pick up at the airport.

Harried and rushed off our feet to get ready... yup.  Excited as all heck; absolutely!  This is one of a few items on our Bucket List and it feels pretty good to be able to actually 'actualize' it (is that really a word?  I've never 'actually' used it before  :-)  Anyway, we're going, we're looking forward to it and it includes at least three times on the water (in a boat of course; two sailing and one lobster).  We will also be walking/hiking, seeing dear friends and meeting some family for the first time.  It's all good.

I'll be blogging as we travel (hopefully with good stories and photos) and will post as long as we have connectivity.  I've been told there will be times we don't have any and so, posting will just have to wait.

We'll be back at the end of September and look forward to a couple more sailing trips before the cold weather sets in.

Kathy and I send our best wishes to all of you .. and especially to dear friends of ours who have just lost loved ones... too many... too soon.  You are in our thoughts and hearts, as always.

Stay well everyone and thanks for joining us on our continuing journey through life.  CJ and Kathy (and wee Maddie who is already enjoying her stay at her favourite 'camp'.  Hopefully she'll agree to come home with us when we get back. )

View from our favourite pub, looking over Maple Bay

Sent from my iPhone