Sunday, July 14, 2024

Tanner's Pass (Not Lunenberg!)

[Kyle]We left Halifax in 4am darkness for the shortish upwind bash to not Lunenberg. We had really wanted to go to Lunenberg. Everyone we met told us to go, putting special emphasis on explaining the utter pointlessness of visiting Nova Scotia without a stop there.

With the forecast the way it was, we had two choices for our visit: The first was to anchor on the unprotected southern side and take the beating we would get when trying to get to and from shore. The other was to take advantage of Begonia's shallow drought and anchor on the lovely, flat, protected northern side of the village. The seemed like the obvious choice until I started measuring out the route. The northern anchorage is a long way out of the way along our generally coastal route. Getting in for a stop and then getting back out would likely cost us three days, which I didn't feel we could really spare, considering the places we were trying to get to down the road as well. Because of this, we chose the third option of going to Tanner's Pass, which is accessible from Lunenberg via a really long dinghy ride at high tide, but it's at least not too far out of the way.


Tanner's Pass has a smattering of cottages and working fishing boats - make it very picturesque!

There is maybe just enough deep water in Tanner's Pass for two boats to have enough swinging room. Fortunately for us, the other guy never showed.

Our first morning there, we arose too late for high tide, so we contented ourselves with a long dinghy-tour of the dozens of channels and islets around Begonia. It is very wild, pretty and remote around here.


Exploring the islands and inlets by dinghy - such a joy

The next morning announced itself not with gleaming sunlight coming in the hatches, but deafening rain bouncing off the decks and forming a haze of mist. Not feeling too enthused about a four-hour dinghy ride, during which we would be bailing the whole time, in order to get to town, we instead opted for a day of cozy, warm foods in our dry cabin. I guess Summer is over again.


Anchorage location >> On google maps

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