"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

This seems to be my summer for doing things I haven’t done before, and yesterday was another example. The Tall Ships have been to Halifax before, and other than a visit to the pier where they dock several years ago, I hadn’t paid much attention to them. Other than a casual interest, boats were not on my list of things to do.

Yesterday changed all that. I was invited out on a friend’s sailing craft to get a birds eye view of the Tall Ships as they did their Parade of Sail in preparation of departing Halifax and moving on to their next venue.

What an enlightening experience. From a distance those sailing craft often look pretty small, but not so when you are on board. There was plenty of room for the ten of us, with space to sit in comfort with the Captain while he manoeuvred  to our anchoring point. Or you could choose to go out on deck, or below where the galley, beds and refrigerator were located.

Our sails were not used today because of the intense traffic and the number of people on board. That was okay with me as I am not sure of this leaning over – I am not sure if my sea legs have degrees.

First of all I was fascinated with the different view of our harbour that I had crossed many times over the two bridges, and even taking our ferry across on many occasions. It was different to actually be a part of the waterway traffic large and small, for on this day of celebration the activity was much more crowded.

From my Disc Jockey days I knew  people who sail are a close knit group. That was shown many times by the waves and friendly greeting shouted from craft to craft. And even more so in a big way when another boat was having difficulty getting moored safely due to inadequate anchor chain length, and was given permission to tie up along side ours.

To me, when you are viewing Tall Ships from the dock, they look big. When you view them from on the water, they look Tall. They seem to slip through the water so gracefully, it is hard to remember at one time this was a main method of transportation.

It is even difficult to visualize how many people it takes along with the labour involved to get these massive ships to look that graceful.

Today we talk about being ‘green,’ save energy here, recycle there, and on it goes. I was thinking today, using the wind for power is not new at all. Even the smaller craft we were on, although we used the engine today, most of the time the wind would supply power, and the solar panels supplied all the required electrical power for everything electrical. As for air conditioning – not needed, you couldn’t be more comfortable on a hot day. Today was one of those experiences etched into permanent memory.

There are many more pictures, and I hope to put some of them on the web site soon, along with a few different views of our wonderful Halifax harbour.

-=One Day At A Time=-

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License