Bridging the Gulf
ENVELOPED by the sound of a mournful ‘moo cow birthing’ foghorn reverberating through the dank air we sailed away from Halifax, Nova Scotia, into a rippling curtain of fog.
In Nova Scotia’s thicker, wetter, colder kind of fog the litany of shipwreck sagas are palpable along its shoal, rock and island littered coastline. No visibility, tides and currents pulling boats this way and that, no chance of a sun sight to settle dead reckoning positions; no wonder, in times gone by, hulls and souls were destined to disappear.
Certain our course was empty of other vessels and hazards, via the telltale tablet and unfogged radar, we assuredly sailed full pelt into the murkiness, past fog hidden Brig Rock, Sober Island, Tom Fool shoal, The Lump and corroborating waypoint buoys each with its signature clanking bell, shrill whistle or woeful hoot.
Locals describe the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia as the ‘eastern shore’ because it lies due magnetic east from Halifax. The coast is as jagged and ragged as can be with helpful offshore sea buoys and danger marking inshore buoys. We were destined for superlative Cape Breton Island but instructed by an old timer not to rush beyond the ‘eastern shore’ for behind its peripheral protrusions, which are a break wall to the Atlantic, there are dozens of land-locked bays, protected beaches and tranquil anchorages in short or long day hops of each other.
The plotter reckoned it would take us four days with stops to appreciate its offerings. It could have taken four months for all I cared as we poked Passepartout’s bow into the fog and watched its curtain close upon the city.
That familiar feeling of deliverance mixed with sluggishness and
