We are enjoying the summery weather in Halifax (18-22C the last few days), tinkering with boat equipment and making new friends as we wait for an appropriate off shore weather window.  There are several low pressure zones bubbling off the east coast that will bring us some unkindly winds early next week that we want to avoid so we are waiting that out to perhaps leave on it’s tail next week.

In the mean time, the SSB radio is installed/working, the AIS is installed/working, and the water maker may well be working by the end of the day!  We are making great use of the time.  We are spending lots of time hiking around getting groceries and other supplies.  Amazing how children complain about a couple of kilometers to walk for groceries and how heavy they think their 5kg backpack is when Mom and Dad are each carrying 15-25kg of stuff.  I offered to trade backpacks a few times but didn’t find any takers.

Our biggest challenge is getting the appropriate supplies for the equipment.  Home Depot and Costco are not very convenient by boat 😉  Propane is also a PITA.  Very few places actually refill propane tanks anymore.  Most have moved to exchange however the steel tanks they use for that are not suitable for marine.  Even Costco in Halifax has moved to a computerized refill station that doesn’t have programs for marine aluminum cylinders…  We did find a place to fill propane in Dartmouth thanks to a new friend Wade at the Dartmouth Yacht Club.  He was kind enough to drive us to UHaul (yes, UHaul refills propane???  At least they do in Dartmouth).  Google and Yellow Pages are NOT useful for this purpose.  Local knowledge is weak at best unless you ask old salts around the marinas and yacht clubs.

On breaks from school, the kids were making new friends.  A young male mallard found us intriguing.  Especially after he figured out we had bread.  Yes, we know feeding the wild ducks bread is a bad idea but we wanted to fatten him up for a more selfish purpose but alas, they named him Poly and he became somewhat exempt from that fate.  He comes back faithfully each day.  Consensus is that he is a young male due to the spots of bright green on his head and neck.  He doesn’t have the full green head just yet, hence why we thing his is a teen in duck years.

He even follows us when we leave in the dinghy for a land tour.

We are getting more adventurous with our culinary skills as well. Nikolas made this lemon/blueberry coffee cake for breakfast!

Waiting on Mother Nature and for some interesting weather early next week with predictions of 50 knot winds on the Nova Scotia coast Sunday and Monday.