Sailing to Halifax NS Canada

New Harbour Point (top L) Little Tanock island (Bottom L & R)

The glassy calm of Chester Back Harbour did not last but such wind as there was was too feeble to sail by.  So we motored across Mahone Bay towards New Harbour Point, passing close to the inhabited islands of Big and Little Tanock. Our chart shows roads reasonably close by but the headland areas looked to be miles from anywhere with just the odd isolated house or 2.

Seals on a ‘haul-out’.  It would have been nice to have seen them closer up but the rocky shallows shown on the chart were somewhat off-putting

With little wind we decided to gunk-hole amongst some of the many rock outcrops on this stretch of coast and were rewarded by a distant view of seals hauled out on one of them.  It took us a little while to spot them (“is that a seal or a rock?”) but the power of binos and a telephoto camera lens gave us that David Attenborough experience, though without the reverential explanatory tones.

Looking up the main line of Halifax Harbour, which is, according to our Canadian friends, one of the largest natural deep water harbours in the world

The wind eventually decided to play ball and picked up sufficiently for a nice broad reach up into Halifax harbour [Ed: though, inevitably, it did wait until we had put the sailcover on before piping up, so we went with genoa only].  We hadn’t realised it but Monday 6 August was Natal Day, a public holiday, which explained why there were so many people out and about in their yachts as we sailed in.

Views of Halifax harbour’s Northwest Arm

The tree houses were upmarket too!

The main part of Halifax harbour is large and commercial so we headed up the Northwest Arm towards the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron (RNSYS) and the Armdale Yacht Club.  The Northwest Arm lacks the yachting busy-ness of the Hamble River but many of the large houses on either shore would not look out of place there.

(Bottom) Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron

We have had good reports of the RNSYS and their welcome to visiting yachtsmen, but our friends from RAF days (Chris Hasler and Doug Gardener) are members of the Armdale Yacht Club, so we continued past the RNSYS and up to the very top of the Northwest Arm.

Here we found a comfortable space to anchor, close to a few other anchored yachts and a couple more on private moorings.  We had just settled down and were making arrangements to meet up with Chris and Doug when a lady on a SUP approached us.  Judy Robertson introduced herself as ‘a member of the same club as you – the OCC’. It turned out that one of the private moorings close by belongs to her and that her yacht is currently in the Azores. She said that we were welcome to use her mooring when the visitors currently using it headed off and we discussed our current cruising plans (“you must visit the 100 Islands’ Wilderness”) and her plans for the end of the year (Azores to Portugal and then into the Med). She also very kindly offered us the use of her washing machine and, with her house very convenient, right on the edge of the cove, that was an offer Nicky was delighted to take her up on a few days’ hence.

A little later that evening, Chris and Doug escaped from work and toddler bedtime duties respectively.  We all had a long catch-up over a few beers whilst the sun sank and the Northwest Arm went glassy calm and quiet…… and then the crackle and bang of the Natal Day fireworks disturbed the peace and we started plotting and scheming some equally explosive sailing escapades for the next few days.

Halifax, NS, Canada