Dover West NS Canada

Leaving Halifax Northwest Arm

Monday 3 September dawned bright and sunny.  We had a plan to head south and west along the coast to join Russ (a friend from RAF days) and his family who were holidaying close to Peggy’s Cove.  But first we needed to pick the brains of Dave and Helen (Grace of Longstone) mercilessly for information on good places to visit in Maine.  They had spent much of summer 2017 in Maine and in general conversation had had nothing but good things to say of the place (excepting the number of lobster pot buoys), so we were keen to pin down a few details.  We spent a lovely couple of hours chatting to them and, as ever, time disappeared far too quickly.  We could have talked all day but we had to move on, we’d told Russ we were coming, so at 1200 we left them regretfully and half an hour later we were waving goodbye to all our friends and heading off downriver.

The Northwest Arm in the rear-view mirror…….but we will be back!

We motored initially to get clear of the Northwest Arm……

…..but once we were out in the entrance to Halifax harbour the wind was brisk and the sea flat and BV zipped along with 2 reefs in the main, the staysail and some rolls in the genoa.  It was a great sail along the coast with some good bashing into slightly lumpy seas.  Particularly pleasingly, the resealing work we had done on the dorade vents in Denys’ Bay a couple of weeks previously, appeared to have been successful: we had no leaks on the forward bulkhead as we would previously have had in those sort of sailing conditions with water across the deck.  [Ed:  Oh good! Now I need to get to work with the varnish brush, repairing the worn varnishwork.]

We planned to spend the night, and probably the next few days, in Dover West because we thought that it was the closest sheltered anchorage to where Russ and his family were staying.  As it turned out, it was also about as far as we could get in the time available and as we turned into the bay and stowed the sails the sun was low in the sky.

Approaching Dover West

Entering the harbour, it wasn’t quite what we had envisaged.  We had thought it a remote anchorage with some houses and a restaurant tucked in the corner.  In reality it is very much a natural working fishing harbour, with more buildings, wharfs, moorings and fishing boats than we had expected.  But it’s still hardly Harwich or Stornoway, or even Guernsey, in terms of activity.

As the light faded the fog came rolling in.  With a bit more detailed information on the location of Russ’ holiday cottage and a forecast of settled weather for the next couple of days we looked at moving closer to them.

Dover West – much more scenic when the fog had lifted

So, after perusing the pilot book and the charts, we made plans to move onto Indian Harbour, just a few miles up the coast, in the morning.

Dover West, NS, Canada