August 16 - 17:  Mahone Bay

     We left Herring Cove just after dawn on Sunday.  We have learned that the prevailing Southwest wind really starts to pick up around noon, and it's best for us to take advantage of the calm mornings and do the bulk of our traveling then.  The day was sunny for now (a fog bank was out there, waiting for us) and we ate breakfast as we motored out of Halifax harbor.  Dan said "Oh there's a Navy ship coming in" and reached for the camera.  Then he reached for the binoculars.  "There's a submarine!!"

     The rest of our way to Mahone Bay wasn't nearly as exciting.
     When Dan was mate on the schooner Roseway, Capt. Jim Sharp had taken the helm for a trip to Halifax.  Dan remembered him piloting the boat, almost on a whim, into a pretty little anchorage in Mahone Bay and it was there we were headed.  Deep Cove has a narrow winding entrance along the steep cliffs of Deep Cove Mountain, and opens up into a small basin that could be a hurricane hole.  We were the first boat to drop anchor in there, and it wasn't too long before others came.  Some were people out for a Sunday afternoon - one of them had a boatful of youngsters who spent most of their time in the water - and a few were overnighters like us.  It was pretty and quiet once the picnic boats left, and we spent a very quiet night.

   
     Monday we set off at a leisurely pace.  We had plans to meet up with Ed and Lainie Porter on the other side of the bay.  They have a small place on Heckman's Island, kind of on the back side of Lunenburg.  On the way, we touched base with our friends on the Volunteer, who were also sailing around Mahone Bay, making tentative plans to have dinner together somewhere on the route.  They are also headed to Maine in the same time frame we are, and chances are we will spend some of the same nights in the same places.

     We got to the Porters' around three-thirty, anchoring in a pretty little spot between Heckman's Island and Fifty Acre Island (which our chart called Fifty Arce, Dan pronouncing it "Arse") and spent a few hours enjoying their hospitality in their livingroom.  They were in the process of packing up for a month's vacation in Maine, and Lainie happily offered us corn, broccoli, and oranges from her fridge.  They have a beautiful Murray-Peterson schooner named Concertina and I got some nice shots of her as the sun went down that night.