Day 34 – Halifax Harbour to Rogues Roost
Andrew woke before me and went for a coffee at Timmy’s. He returned and led me back to see the glass blowers working intently in their shop nearby. We watched until it felt like too much staring, and then headed to the Halifax Central Library.
The library proved amazing, although our frame of reference was heavily influenced by a long string of tiny libraries in quiet coastal villages. The modern design rose eight floors with all glass walls, four incongruent rectangles stacked on top of one another.
The interior featured a tangle of staircases through a bright, open atrium in the center. The glass presented excellent views of the city and traffic below. An automated book return system slid books along a conveyer belt and sorted them into bins labeled with their corresponding floor. It was such an inviting space I felt drawn to sit for hours or even days and felt nostalgia for the countless hours at my college library.
Back on Isla, we reversed out of the docks and motored past downtown to the mouth of the harbor. We pointed upwind and put up the sails in strong, gusty winds and followed the Earl Grey, a Canadian Coast Guard ice breaker and buoy tender, out to Portuguese Shoal. There, they placed a channel marker with a stout onboard crane, while we continued around the point.
We heeled too far for comfort in a gust, and subsequently reefed the mainsail, dropped the genoa, and put up the storm jib. The winds eventually died down some but the swell grew steeper and stronger. Andrew started the Atomic 4 and I teetered around the deck lowering both sails. The short time spent working on the bow, forcefully oscillating between even-with, and then six feet above the water, brought on a large wave of nausea. I recovered in the cockpit while we motored, ducking from time to time as spray flew over the bow. One particularly steep wave crept over the toe rail and slid back into the bottom of the cockpit, soaking my feet.
Amongst all the agitated water we spotted a second ocean sunfish, unphased and lazy as ever. The swell lessened as we approached Rogues Roost for a second visit. We ducked in a dropped anchor, recognizing one of the six other boats who had motored past us earlier in the day. A strange cross between a fractional sloop and a catboat neighbored us to starboard, the spreader-less mast above a line of six yellow, and therefore diesel, jerry cans.
We broke into the cheese and crackers before Andrew “pwned some mackerel” for dinner. I cleaned the five fish and set a head out on bait again while we ate. The hook came up stripped clean, crustaceans to blame, we figured.
The forecast for the next day called for high winds and two to three meter seas, due to a hurricane out to sea; we decided to sleep in and stay put the next day. It was a wonderful evening in the Roost.
