Halifax Harbor and bridge

We have been having a great time in Halifax visiting old friends and family that we have not seen in a long time. Everyone has been so generous offering cars, inviting us for dinner and just making us feel so welcome. Thanks so much to everyone!

Bill Graham picked us up at the club on Sunday and we had a great night with them. Their home is right on a lake and although the fog just wouldn't go away, we could see some of the lake once and a while. Sharon cooked us dinner which was delicious and we spent the night at their place. They have 2 yellow labs and they invited neighbors over who have 2 black labs. Lindsay would have been in heaven had she been there as one of the black labs was only 7 weeks old. On Monday, Bruce made a few phone calls and set up an appointment with the mechanic to come and fix our generator (finally) . Bill and Sharon then took us for a drive to check out the Dartmouth Yacht Club and make arrangements to move the boat there. They did not have a dock for us so we would be on a mooring ball. We decided not to move the boat yet as we needed to be on a dock for the mechanic. They then took us to a beautiful old Officer's Mess for drinks and lunch. It is the oldest mess in Canada and used to be a stable for horses. After lunch we went back to the club and had dinner with our friends from Denver as they were leaving the next day for the South Shore. On Tuesday we said goodbye to our new best friends twice as just as they were leaving the docks, 2 customs officers came running down the dock and asked they to return to the dock as they had no record of their boat entering Canada. The boat had been here for 3 years and they had cleared in Summerside so once they showed them their documentation, they were once allowed once again to leave the docks! Nothing like a little excitement on the docks to start your day!

Here is a picture of our friend from Denver rowing over to have dinner with us.

Bruce and I were to meet Bill again in Dartmouth and drive him to the airport so we could use his car for a couple of days. We managed to take a city bus all the way from the Royal Nova Scotia to the ferry dock in Dartmouth without getting lost or on the wrong bus so we thought we were doing well. We drove Bill to the airport and then went onto visit my Uncle Frank and Aunt Rita who I haven't seen in about 19 years when we had our last family reunion. They also invited their daughter and her husband and son over for dinner. I had never met her son and husband before so it was a great night of getting reacquainted with family. Dinner was also wonderful Aunt Rita!

On Wednesday morning the mechanic arrived at 0900 and by about 1030 her thought that he had the problem fixed as he had found a faulty bleed screw and a couple of leaks in the lines. He started the generator and let it run for about a half an hour and declared it fixed. Bruce walked him to his van to fill out the paper work and I decided to do the dishes. As I was putting the water in the sink, the generator started to die again. I quickly yelled to Bruce and he chased the van yelling to the mechanic to come back. He managed to get his attention and he returned to work the rest of the day on the generator. By the end of the day, he was still trying to find the problem and decided to take the lift pump off and take it back to the shop and test it. He told us he would be back the next day again. This put a wrench in our plans as we wanted to move the boat over to Dartmouth and go to Mahone Bay on Friday. The mechanic was back on Thursday and he said the pump was working so he was back to square one. The only thing left to check was another bleed pump that we never use. This ended up being the problem so he bypassed this pump and everything has been working fine since. The generator is now running better than it ever did. It only took 9 hours of labor to fix it. So much for a $50.00 fix in St. Peter 's.

We decided to run the dinghy engine into Sackville to a Mercury Dealer and leave it there to be fixed while we had the car. We talked to him about trading it in for a 2.5 horse power engine when he fixes it as we are finding the 9.9 to be too heavy and a bit of a pain to put on and off the dinghy. A 2.5 we could leave on the dinghy and davits which would make things a lot easier. Hopefully we can work a deal out with him when we get back. We came back for lunch and let the generator run for over an hour and everything was great so we decided to leave for Dartmouth while the weather was good and leave Mahone Bay for Saturday. The sail thru Halifax harbor was great and we met up with Sharon and Rudy (neighbor of Bill and Sharon's who also has a boat in Dartmouth) Rudy lent us a bridle for the mooring ball and Jeremy (the dock hand) helped us secure it to a mooring ball. We kept Sharon overnight on the boat and had a quiet dinner with her as Bill was still at work.

On Friday Rudy gave us a ride back to the Royal Nova Scotia to pick up Bill's car and then came back to Dartmouth in time for Bruce to have lunch with another old friend of his from Pem Air, Bill Wingfield. Bill's wife had a cold so I opted out of lunch and had a relaxing lunch on the boat by myself. We then left the club in time to pick up Bill at the airport again as he had a layover in Halifax. We went back to his house again for the night and dinner. This time Bruce and I did the shopping and made dinner for them. It was still foggy and I still have not seen the view from their deck! Bill jokes that every time he comes home the fog or rain move in and once he leave that the sun shines, I am beginning to believe that he isn't really joking!

Bill's check-in was at 0720 on Saturday so we had to get up early to drive him and then go on to Mahone Bay to visit other friends and return their charts finally. We had all had showers when the phone rang and Bill's flight was delayed until 0945! Some things never change when you are flying and we sure don't miss those days. We were all up so decided to leave a little early and have breakfast on the way. We finally make it to Mahone Bay about 1100, just in time for lunch with our friends! No, we didn't eat again, we actually turned a meal down for a change. Blair and his wife Laurie are renting a place for 2 weeks in Mahone Bay and also keep a boat in the bay on a mooring ball too so they have the best of two worlds there. Laurie's daughter and her friend who are 15 had entered in a cardboard boat building contest in town as the wooden Boat Show was on for the weekend so after lunch we all went into town to the show. The girls were given Styrofoam, cardboard and duck tape only and they had to design a boat and then launch it later and race the other homemade cardboard boats. The girls did a great job and came in second in the second race and also got the Titanic trophy! Good job girls. Last year's competition only had one boat sink but this year only one boat did NOT sink. The girls boat at least made it back to the dock in one piece and it was very nicely decorated.

Lunch with Blair and Laurie

Card Board Boat Race

Don and the girls, Don was a skipper on the Bluenose for 20 years.

One of the best parts of the day is that we also ran into our friends from Denver who we had said goodbye to a few days earlier. They were having so much fun in Mahone Bay that they were spending more time there than they planned. It was great to see them again. We also ran into Eric off of Mad Dash. I forgot to mention that when we were at the Royal Halifax, Mad Dash was on our dock and we recognized it from our club in Port Credit. I had forgotten until Bruce reminded me that we had bought his cradle for our boat from him when he left the club for Bermuda. It was great to see Eric and his wife again also. We left Mahone Bay and arrived back at the club about 1900. We met up with another friend w ho has a boat here and worked with Bruce, Mark Dinan. He invited us out on his boat to watch the fireworks off the Halifax Bridge. The fireworks were great and really different as we had never seen fireworks off a bridge before.

Today, we are heading back to Toronto for a week to 10 days. I hope to fly to Sault Ste. Marie for a couple of days to see my mom and sister and then back to Toronto for a few days. We probably won't return before the 13th of August and then will pick up our dinghy engine and head to the Mahone Bay area. It looks really beautiful and we would like to spend at least a week there.