Those of you that are desperate enough for friends that you've added me on Facebook have already seen these. For the rest of you,
this is a trip I took last year for the first time, and enjoyed immensely, so I did it again. Sort of.
I only live a block or so from the shore, so rather than drive down like I did last year I decided to load my boat on the cart and walk it down. Because a 13 foot kayak on a cart isn't the best thing on a trail I ended up having to take a longer trail, which meant about a 5km hike to get to the water. Dragging a boat.
Finally I made it to the boat launch, disassembled my cart, strapped it to the boat and got everything else situated to go for a nice paddle. Last year it took Frank and I about 4 and a half hours to make it around. Frank's boat isn't all that fast, made specifically for flat water and he insisted on fishing, so I figured this year I'd be able to make better time, even if I was in my slower 13 foot boat rather than my bigger 17 foot one.
This is me just north of George's Island, a small island in the middle of Halifax Harbour. I suppose this is as good a time as any to post the map to show you where I went and what I'm talking about!
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BygxUHLkg5hKY3NaNWp0a0ktdVE/edit?usp=sharing
Since cruise ships are a bit topical at the moment I snapped some pics of the two cruise ships that were in the harbour, and I thought it made a neat picture since that glass building next to them is eight or nine stories tall. That shows people who have never seen one of these ships up close just how big they are in real life, and these ones are only about average- there are much bigger ones out there.
This is one of the dockyards I work at- a place called Halterm, and quite honestly, I loathe this place. The idiots here don't have too much business yet, have no prospects of getting more business and still decided to buy the two cranes on the right that were installed last month. They cost millions of dollars each, for a terminal that only services one main line and a couple of small feeder lines.
This is the Halifax skyline. It may not be a big city, but it certainly is a pretty one in the right light!
Note the absence of really large buildings- because one of the city's main attractions is an old fort on Citadel Hill (that bit of greenery on the right above the other stuff), the city doesn't allow tall buildings downtown to spoil the view. After all, you never know when the Spanish or the French are going to sneak in!
Speaking of touristy stuff, this is a tall ship that does harbour tours. I can't recall the name of it, but it's one of many different tours you can take in Halifax, and one of the less humiliating ones too. There's a walking tour of Halifax where they make the tourists wear Sou'Westers, which is just kind of silly. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's a traditional rain hat:
But, back to the main story. This next photo is where things got a bit interesting, and the photos died off for a bit. You see, if you look closely in this next photo you'll see a small lighthouse off the distance on the left. From the end of the point to the land on the right is open ocean, and if I went straight out on the angle I took this photo, I'd end up (eventually) in Africa.
The ocean is no place for a 13 foot chunk of plastic, and the swells got quite large at this point. While they were much higher than my boat, they were also significantly larger, so I wasn't likely to be swamped. What did happen was the scenery in the distance started to disappear as the "landscape" rose up to about eye level around me, then lifted me up with much the same feeling you get going up in an elevator. I only rose a couple of feet, but when you are sitting right at water level it seems HUGE. And terrifying. Especially for me, who has a major phobia about the ocean, and the fact that I was alone, so if I went in, I could have been there for a while before help came, even though the harbour has a fair bit of traffic.
The worst part was when I got past Halterm (yes the photos aren't in order!) and out past Point Pleasant Park at the very tip of the city. The swells became actual waves at that point and crashed every way but gentle onto the stony point of the park. If it had been a soft beach I'd have taken the opportunity to surf them in the boat, but then, if it was a soft beach it would have been worn away years ago. And, the current was driving me at the rocks, so I didn't get any photos, I was too busy keeping myself from an unpleasant end.
Once I was around the point and into the Dingle Arm (the waterway on the other side of the city) things calmed down a bit, but as I was heading south on the harbour side I had the wind at my back. Now, in the Arm I was going into the wind, and given how many marinas there are in this area, I was constantly dodging sailboats that were coming at me at a good clip. Even so, I was happy as a pig in poop to get away from the ocean.
Anyone who doesn't think there's money in our city has obviously never been up the Dingle Arm. I snapped a few pics of sailboats in the marinas, and marveled at the splendor of the boats tied up to the private docks of the houses on the Arm. Property alone along here is worth about a million dollars, or three times that of my apartment building.
I have to say, as fun a trip as this was, I was VERY glad to see Horseshoe Park at the end of it. As I was waiting for my wife to pick me up I sat and watched these ducks going about their business, napping in the sun, something I really felt like doing too!
All in all I covered 19.4kms, including the walk to get to the park in the first place. Everything was covered in salt, as you can see from the GPS screen.
My camera housing was significantly obscured by salt, my paddle is all gritty, my skirt stained (I know that is going to cause some jokes
), my watch unreadable, the screen on my phone virtually unuseable, and there was also a lot of salt encrusted on my hands, although I didn't post the pic on FB of crusty white stuff on my hand for obvious reasons...
All in all it was a great trip and I enjoyed it more than I have said here. There is a lot more to it, like the seal I saw, and being terrified of the Coast Guard ship Earl Grey passing very close to me, or the guy in the sailboat that was probably a little annoyed at how easily I passed him by!
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