Fall in Halifax/Dartmouth

The coming of September meant time to get ready to leave Into The Blue while we travelled to Toronto for the wedding of one of our daughters. We investigated different possibilities, and finally decided to leave our nice quiet anchorage and move over to Alderney Marina off the main harbour, on the Dartmouth side. We had found a very solid and relatively inexpensive mooring owned by the marina that we felt we could comfortably leave the boat on while we travelled. Once there we found our new spot was also conveniently close to a large library with internet access, the weekly farmers’ market, and a grocery and several other stores. Back from the wedding we decided to stay on where we were after September. There were interesting times - when the wind blew from the southern quadrant there was little shelter for our mooring. There were days when going out to the boat was a challenge, days when the wind blew up the harbour and created a large swell that made the boat look as if she was sailing into the waves. Luckily those days were few, and the wind almost always died at night.

As September became October and then November the weather became more unsettled and cooler. We spent much of October looking for an apartment to spend the winter months in. We had taken a hard look at our insulation and heating, and our lack of one and deficiencies in the other made it clear that wintering on the boat was not a good option. Winter, after all, was not in our original plans when we outfitted the boat, just the possibility of cool days and cooler nights. And cleaning condensation off the inside of the boat morning and night is not much fun. Then towards the middle of October we were given the chance to move into a spot at the marina vacated by a boat which had been taken out of the water. We took it happily, since it meant we could enjoy the shelter of the breakwater, the unaccustomed convenience of quick access to boat and land, and move off the boat much more easily. We walked around Dartmouth looking at apartments until we found the small one we are living in now , signed a seven month lease and moved in toward the end of the month. That turned out to be a little bit before NorEaster Noel blew into town.

The good thing about small apartments is that it doesn’t take much to fill them and make them look comfortably lived-in. Ours is furnished with donated, lent and cheaply acquired furniture, thanks to friends made after we arrived here and the local internet marketplace. And somehow the bits go together well enough not to look jarring. And, a real bonus, there is a large cupboard in the apartment which can be stuffed with boat bits - all those things which could not be left on board to freeze or get mouldy. There are lots of them, as we found out going through our lockers. The friend who helped us move (on, of course, a rainy, blustery day) was astonished that so much could come out of a boat so small.

It’s a quiet neighbourhood we’re in now, particularly at night and even more particularly on a night that is cold and wintery. The apartment building sits near the top of a hill looking down toward The Narrows between Halifax Harbour and Bedford Basin. There are no large highways nearby, no hum of city traffic. Two buses run past, from which we can transfer to others which will take us just about anywhere we want to go. There is a grocery store nearby, a small library and community centre down the road. We settled in quickly.

Then NorEaster Noel blew through. The afternoon before the storm arrived we took down all canvas, tied off ropes, took everything off the outside of the boat that could come off and tied down anything that could not, then doubled up most of the ropes as well as tying off the stern to a ring on the main dock, to try to hold the boat off the finger she was lying beside. We were not alone while we worked - other people were on their boats doing the same thing, some moving their boats into safer slips more sheltered by the breakwater. The evening came cold and still. We had done everything we could; now we could only wait and hope. We took what comfort we could from the thought that little damage had been done to boats in the marina during Hurricane Juan.

At the apartment we filled containers with water, cooked up some food in the pressure cooker and made sure our flashlights were in good working order. Our apartment is very sheltered so it was difficult to gauge what was happening outside, but that day there were times when the wind rattled our windows. We spent the day of the storm watching it’s progress on the weather channel (we enjoyed free cable for a month), checking our sources on the internet and listening to the radio - we were lucky that our power stayed on. We heard of some people who stayed on their boats in different harbours - all were fine; we heard that the waves in Halifax Harbour reached thirty-four feet high - higher than our boat is long; towards the end we heard of a few boats washed up on rocks or on to the shore in different places. We had decided ahead of time not to brave the weather and go down to the marina. There seemed little point, since as the storm progressed the waves and surge would make it too dangerous to try to reach the boat even if we saw anything happening. That was our home out there - we had done our best to prepare her, but it was a nervous day and night.

The next morning with the wind dropping Richard went down to the marina to see what had happened. The main docks are held in place by poles anchored into the seabed. Chains around the poles allow the docks to rise and fall with the tide. The marks from the chains showed that the surge had lifted the docks almost to the full height of the anchoring poles, and one dock had stuck at that height and was sitting at an angle, but apart from that there was little damage. All the boats in the marina had come through with little or no damage, and for us the only memento was some scratched paint where a fender had exploded and the boat had rubbed against the dock for a short while. We could breathe again.

Winter since has been a succession of more or less breezy days. The people who assured us that winter in Halifax did not see much snow, and what there was did not stay for long have been proved wrong so far this year. With La Nina dominating the weather patterns, Environment Canada is predicting the snowiest, coldest winter in the past fifteen years and the current forecast predicts the arrival of another NorEaster in the next few days. We sure know how to pick ’em!

Still, winter aside, this is a good place to be ashore in. There is work, people are friendly, there is lots happening and apartment rents are generally reasonable. And we are never far from parks and wilderness areas. Dartmouth has been nicknamed “City of Lakes” because of the number of lakes within its borders. Our apartment is a short walk from Albro Lake - it is covered now with snow and thin ice, but underneath the snow is a beach you can swim from on a warm summer day. And another short walk away is a monument to the Halifax Explosion of 1917, a piece of one of the ships that blew up in what was one of the most deadly explosions ever, a reminder of a difficult part of the city’s history. Other historic monuments and plaques are scattered through the city, giving a sense of the history of the area and the pride people take in it.

And now Christmas is approaching, and it will certainly be a white one. The snow that’s here shows no signs of disappearing any tiime soon. We’ll enjoy Christmas in the snowy north this year and look forward to having a green one next year. And we’ll let you know how it all goes.