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…
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Peggy’s Cove
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…
On Board a Canadian Scalloper
While we were in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, the crew of a 134-ft scalloper in port for maintenance work gave us a tour of their factory ship. (We were asked not to include boat, crew and company names.) The ship was built in 1997, but is well-maintained and is equipped with the latest scallop auto-shucking equipment….
Halifax Harbour
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…
Halifax Citadel and Mooseheads
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…
Replacing Engine Mounts: Take Two
As we completed our previous attempt at changing the engine mounts, we still had two major issues. The first was the front mount material seemed thicker than what originally was on the boat, and the second issue was we couldn’t jack the engine up far enough to remove the old rear mounts. We spoke with the…
Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
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 Pub Crawl
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….
Replacing Engine Mounts: Take One
In Boston we noticed that our forward engine mounts were starting to deteriorate. We purchased replacements but expected the current ones to last for months yet. While in Newfoundland, they suddenly started deteriorating badly and over two weeks the isolation material just crumbled away in a pile around the mount. One morning we picked up…
Halifax Arrival
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…
