Shelter Bay NS Canada

(Left) looking back up the Northwest Arm.  (Right) the main body of Halifax harbour, with the commercial docks to the left and a cruise liner, on the right, making its way in

We left our borrowed mooring (many thanks to Judy Robertson a fellow OCC member who introduced herself to us when we arrived in Halifax, having seen our OCC burgee flying) at 0800 on Monday 13 August. We’d had a fun stay in Halifax but it was nice to be moving on again even that move on came at the cost of vast expenditure of diesel fuel – the sea was glassy and there wasn’t a breath of wind.

Just outside the harbour we spotted a large group of seals.  Judging by the number of seabirds as well there was a large school of tasty fish in the area.  I hope that our motoring through the dining room didn’t result in cancelled breakfast orders!

The glassy seas continued almost all the way to our destination – Shelter Bay.

Sadly, the point at which the wind did deign to make a delayed entrance was just the point at which we would have been taking the sails down had we been able to sail from Haifax.

So we continued under engine around the various rocky outcrops and areas of shallows in Pope Harbour and turned into Shelter Bay.  The Canadian Hydrographic Service charts show that there is insufficient water in this bay for the average cruising yacht.  In reality there is actually well over 5m at chart datum over much of the bay, the only important exceptions seeming to be a shallow rocky ledge in a cove to port just after the entrance to the bay and an isolated rock on the starboard side of the entrance.  We knew that the depths in the bay were good because the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron made Shelter Bay the first stop on the Squadron’s cruise to Cape Breton this year. There is also comment about depths etc in the Cruising Guide to the Nova Scotia Coast (Cruising Club of America and RNSYS) – an invaluable guide for getting the best out of Nova Scotia cruising we have found.

When we arrived there was one other yacht in the bay, anchored exactly where we would have wanted to have stopped had we had the choice.  So we anchored a good bit further back to give them some space and privacy….

….and, having sorted out BV for the night, settled down to enjoying the view and catching up with writing emails etc. Not, that it, that we were able to send the emails.  For the first time up this coast, we had no mobile data signal – but that’s no bad thing.

As the very last of the light disappeared from the sky, and the squadrons of enormous mosquitoes started to make their presence felt, the fog began to build, creeping up the inlets between the islands in the same way that it slinks up low-lying damp fields on an autumn evening.  It was set to be a very quiet night.

Shelter Bay, NS, Canada