Nova Scotia: Sailing to Rogue’s Roost

A rookie sailor endures fog, dangerous rocks and a dinghy mishap on a birthday cruise along Nova Scotia’s south shore.

Originally published in Canadian Yachting and Halifax Chronicle Herald

“Guys, come and look at this. We’ve got company – BIG company!”

Skipper David Burke, owner of Angeleah, a well-kept Pearson 303 sailboat, points to the blinking mass on the radar screen. “Whatever it is, it’s coming in past Mauger’s Beach. Likely a car carrier headed for the Autoport at Eastern Passage.” David motions up through the companionway. “Let’s keep a good lookout. She’ll be to port, and I doubt we have 20 metres visibility in this soup.”

The fog hasn’t budged since we slipped Angeleah’s berth at Armdale Yacht Club at 0630. Our destination is Rogue’s Roost, one of Nova Scotia’s favoured south shore anchorages, tucked into the granite coast near the fishing community of Prospect.

With time at a premium for this Canada Day weekend cruise, we’ll leave the mainsail tucked in its kelly green sailbag, relying on the deep throbbing inboard diesel to punch us through the chop of Halifax harbour, around Chebucto Head and along the coast. At an average speed of four to five knots, we expect to make Hearn Island and Roost Island by early afternoon. We’ll anchor for the night and continue in the morning past Chester to Mahone Bay, further along the south shore.

David has arranged to rent a mooring for the summer, and when he invited me to crew on this trip, my family chased me out the door, saying a cruise would be the perfect way to celebrate my birthday. And they’re right. Here I am, on a solid, comfortable boat with a competent skipper and two new friends.

The hulking carrier passes without incident. I’m now glad to be on a boat fitted with all the modern amenities: auto helm, radar, GPS, depth sounder, VHF, dual batteries and a CD player that puts my home stereo to shame.

As we head offshore, the water darkens, but there is nothing to see. The diesel hums as Angeleah’s bow points to 180 degrees magnetic through one of the busiest commercial shipping lanes in North America.

“Gotta be real careful through here,” says David. “You can get some big freighters clipping through here and the navy pretty much owns this place. You might think you have right-of-way, but they rule the channel. Further out, it’s the fishing fleets we need to stay clear of. They’ll show up as clusters on the radar.”

I’m already impressed with this guy. His last boat was a Tanzer 26, and he’s sailed throughout eastern Canada. He’s taken his 6-tonne Pearson from Sydney to Halifax along the eastern shore and into the sailor’s paradise known as the Bras d’Or Lakes, a huge body of salt water cut into the middle of Cape Breton. It’s a secluded sailing ground with consistent winds and very little tidal action, a far cry from where we are this Saturday morning, motoring against the prevailing winds. And with this much fog, we’re relying on electronic (ie: ready-to-fail-at-the-first-hint-of-trouble) equipment to keep us off the steep granite cliffs to starboard. I can’t see the cliffs, but if the chart says that’s where they are, we need to pay very close attention.

This is when I regret my fascination with maritime history. I’ve ready too many stories of the wayward ships that have slammed into the coast or foundered on shoals after an ocean crossing. Looking at the chart, we’re not too far from the site of one of the worst disasters in the Halifax area – Thrumcap Shoal, south of McNab’s Island, where HMS La Tribune was caught in a winter gale in November 1797. Helpless bystanders stood on bluffs in nearby Herring Cove as the sea showed no mercy toward the sailors on the British frigate.

As morning broke, a 13-year old orphan from Herring Cove named Joe Cracker launched a dory into the frightening swell and saved two crewmen. Prompted by the youngster’s bravery, older men joined in to rescue another ten sailors from certain death. The loss of the Tribune took 238 lives. Angeleah’s hull has just passed by Tribune Rock, named in memory of that terrible night.

Now is not the time to think about people dying at sea, I tell myself. Pay attention. Keep your eyes scanning across the bow. Check the compass. Heading offshore, keep green buoys to starboard, red buoys to port. Don’t get sick. I really should have taken Gravol before we left.

The other two crew, Lang and Johnny, have both taken their anti-seasick medication. They’ve sailed with David before in pretty rough seas. Lang is a policy analyst with the provincial tourism department. Johnny works in construction. Both are friendly guys who are true Maritimers – never at a loss for a good story. There’ll be no shortage of conversation or humour on this trip. The few moments of boredom are broken by lame jokes about Swedish women in search of hardy Canadian sailors. Ahar, maties!

I hop below and grab the chart bag and find CHS #4237 so I can visualize where we’re heading. When David invited me along, I jumped at the chance to learn all I could about coastal piloting. My only previous sailing experience was limited to Laser racing on Wascana Lake in Regina, where I ended up turtling and sticking my mast into six feet of the thickest, stinkiest muck on the planet (they’ve since dredged and deepened the lake) so cruising into the Atlantic is pretty heady stuff.

The GPS shows we have passed Herring Cove and Ketch Harbour and are on course toward famous Chebucto Head, where untold thousands of ocean-going vessels have made landfall after their Atlantic crossings. The chart tells us that along with radio signals and lights, there’s a fog horn that signals twice every minute. As we approach the point, wrapped in fog, we’re all straining to hear the deep ‘Woooomp, Woooomp’ from the shore. Then, the eery but welcome sound penetrates the fog and reassures us that David’s navigation is right on the money.

Lighthouse at Chebucto Head.

I time the signal on my watch. “Yep, twice a minute,” I advise my mates. “Must be Chebucto Head.” It dawns on me that they know perfectly well where we are, but they’re too nice to make me feel like a real greenhorn, a far cry from the old salt Captain Joshua Slocum, who sailed by this very point more than a century ago on his epic journey around the world. He was the first person to do it alone. In his book ‘Sailing Alone Around the World’, Captain Slocum noted in his log for July 3, 1895:

“6:45 p.m., close under Chebucto Head light near Halifax Harbour, watching light after light sink astern as I sailed into the unbounded sea.” Two days later: “about midnight, the fog shut down again denser than before. One could almost stand on it. I felt myself drifting into loneliness.”

At the base of Chebucto Head, there are some nasty rocks that would chew up the ¼ inch-thick skin of a fiberglass boat. Our skipper is steering from the cabin, and every now and again he touches the plus or minus button on the auto helm to nudge us a bit left to make sure there’s plenty of room between us and the aids to navigation that he has programmed as waypoints. I’m fascinated at the technology. Steering without a wheel or tiller. Cool.

While David steers from below, Johnny is asleep on the port cockpit locker nursing a mild hangover, unaware of the water dripping from the boom onto his PFD, then his pant leg. Lang and I are trying to see through the curtain of fog, as the ocean swells play with Angeleah. We decide that Johnny needs the sleep more than he needs dry jeans, so we let him be.

When we reach red buoy ‘AM 58’ near Shannon Island, David focuses totally on his radar and GPS. This is serious stuff, conning Angeleah through a narrow channel, in total fog, between Hearn and Roost Islands, and thenonto a 100 degree magnetic course toward the anchorage. I was at the wheel as we passed green buoy ‘AN 52’.

“Dave, should I be to the left or right of the green can?” “What? Right, always right. Where are we?”

He jumps into the cockpit, sees the green buoy passing on the wrong side of the boat and grabs the wheel, cranking hard to starboard. “Everything left of that buoy is shallow water and nothing but rock. We’re fine now.”

At anchor in peaceful Rogue’s Roost.

Fifteen minutes later, we anchor in 10 or 11 feet of water, well behind a group of power boaters who had rafted together for the night. As dusk falls, we gather around the cabin table munching on chips and dip, washing it down with rum.

“What’ll it be boys, light, dark or mystery?” asks our host. I ask for half an inch of the light, sissy stuff topped up with cola all the way to the rim. B.B. King’s blues classic ‘The Thrill is Gone’ is groovin’ out of the CD player. We talk and joke long enough to hear the CD repeat three or four times. I’m not much of a rum drinker, but damn, this is fun. So this is why people get hooked on cruising!

It reminds me of the chorus in ‘The Bosun’s Alphabet’, a sailor’s song popular among square-riggers during the late 1800s:

“Merrily, so merrily, so merrily sail we,
There’s no mortal on earth like a sailor at sea,
Blow high or blow low!
As the ship rolls along,
Give a sailor his grog,
And there’s nothing goes wrong.”

Around midnight, at anchor in Rogue’s Roost, we settle into our sleeping bags. Skipper is in the V-berth forward, Johnny and I take the settees in the cabin, while Lang, the shortest of the crew, scampers into the quarter-berth next to the diesel engine and below the cockpit. It’s a tight squeeze.

A light breeze tickles the halyards against the mast. Not enough noise to keep me from a deep, long sleep. Even the party boys on the raft have turned in for the night.

Morning brings brilliant sunshine, perfect weather to ease out from the rocks toward Prospect. We’ll get to see what we sailed through in yesterday’s fog. We weigh anchor after a filling breakfast of eggs, fried tomatoes, toast, juice and coffee. As we pass the village of Prospect to our starboard, white crashing rollers slam the rocks. Nose into the wind, it’s on to Peggy’s Cove, Ironbound Island, past St. Margaret’s Bay, Tancook Island and into the gentle waters of Mahone Bay.

A few minutes after leaving the Peggy’s Cove lighthouse to starboard, we pass what appears to be a wounded seal or small whale. We can only see what appears to be either a dorsal fin or a flipper. Whatever it is, it turns slowly and is unable to dive. Not much we can do.

Now we’re almost directly above the final resting place of Swissair Flight 111. On Sept. 1, 1998, 229 people died here. I was a television reporter with CBC, and spent that night at CFB Shearwater. Cameras rolling, we watched as ambulances streamed onto the base, lights flashing, only to leave when it was apparent there would be no one to rescue. The disaster has been chronicled in books and on television, and now, here on the water 150 feet above the sea floor, a sadness comes over me. I move forward to sit on the deck at the bow. The warm breeze and sun and gentle motion make it easy to close my eyes and fall into a half-sleep.

Not long into the protected waters of Mahone Bay, David decides we’ll head to the town’s anchorage. We’ll pick up our mooring and go ashore, where our first priority is a shower, then dinner. The temperature has climbed all day, and the thought of a cold beer washing down a plate of fish and chips seems like a grand idea.

Mahone Bay is a must for cruisers along the south shore. Home of the annual Wooden Boat Festival, the town attracts talented craftspeople and city folk who scratch their rural itch by visiting on weekends. Shutterbugs come here to photograph the three beautiful churches (United, Lutheran, Anglican) perched together at the head of the harbour.

One of the enduring stories is about Mahone Bay’s role in the war of 1812. An American privateer named the Young Teazer was chased into the bay by a British warship. One of the privateer’s crew was a British deserter, who was at his wit’s end to avoid capture and harsh punishment. He set fire to the Young Teazer’s ammunition stores. The ship blew up, killing 28 sailors. A local gift shop carries the Teazer name to this day.

Our dinner and copious amounts of brew behind us, the three crew foolishly decide to row the tender out to Angeleah. Johnny forgot the rule about the importance of keeping a low centre of gravity in a small boat, so over we went, gear and all, into the drink. Locals on the wharf seemed to enjoy the entertainment. Red-faced but happy as clams, we made it back to the boat to catch a wonderful sunset.

Monday morning dawns clear with a light mist hanging above the water. Another huge breakfast, then all four of us use mops and buckets to wash the deck from stem to stern.

The morning fog is burned off by the sun poking up over the eastern horizon. My first offshore cruise will end when my sons Matt and Adam drive out from Halifax to pick me up at the wharf.

“That was awesome, man,” is about all I can say to thank our gracious skipper for the invitation, and for guiding us here safely.

“We’ll do it again,” says David.

After farewell handshakes, my sons and I head out on Highway 103 toward Halifax. I’ve already made up my mind to someday buy a boat of my own. In the words of Captain Slocum:

“To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. The tales of rough usage are for the most part exaggerations, as also are the stories of sea danger. The days passed happily with me wherever my ship sailed.”