Waiting For Boat-o

We wait. 

The winds rise and huge, cold raindrops slap at the window behind me. Cats are squirrely. It doesn’t seem as though we’ll ever be on-board the boat. And I can’t wait to launch the new kayak. It’s now the second week of May, we’re in the apartment on Roncesvalles and the Mary Mary is on the hard at Wright’s Marine four hours north; hopefully she’s still sleepy in hibernation and unaware of our neglect. It certainly isn’t intentional. And I guess it’s early yet, but it feels some days as though her haul-out last September was a dozen years ago. What a long cold winter it seemed. 

Our new Scamper 2 Inflatable Kayak super-imposed on a phony BG

Adrian and I have just come back from Halifax where we had a two-week run of my play, Trudeau Stories, at the Neptune Theatre. I’d had visions before we flew out there of a boat tour and maybe a visit to the Coast Guard Station and breezy strolls along the harbour-walk in the spring air. April was supposed to be a lovely time to visit Nova Scotia.   But 2015 was a dastardly winter down east, they were hit time and again with ice and snow storms. Haligonians were pummeled with so much snow that one man said he shoveled 8 hours one day to clear a path from the road to his front door. The snow stood twice his height.  They all seemed pretty exhausted from the endlessness of it, so we couldn’t really complain too much about the greyness and the rain and wind during our visit. The grisliness of it didn’t demand any backbreaking labour, just a hunch in the shoulders when we walked up hill to get to the theatre in the driving rain.

Snow in Halifax - 2015

We did have a couple pockets of sunshine and climbed up Citadel Hill, and we did visit the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which was very well laid out, with great exhibits on shipwrecks, not only the SS you-know-what, but also the Empress of Ireland where so many more lost their lives; and scores of others from Louisbourg, Sable Island and Halifax Harbour etc.; some detailed Naval histories; beautiful large handmade models of some of the Cunard line and others, stores of ship’s artifacts from the age of sail as well as steam, and some fascinating details about the Halifax Explosion of 1917.  Merlin the Museum Macaw was absolutely beautiful (and he knew it); and we treated ourselves to a couple of glorious visits to the Press Gang Restaurant for oysters, wine and jazz.

Merlin doing his thing

Now we’re trying to decide what boat freezer to buy with some of the proceeds from the play, and--once we decide--how to get it, now that West Marine is closing many stores in Canada. The low Canadian dollar makes this purchase choice tricky too.

I don’t mean to complain, really I don’t.  I just want to be floating.  

Cappie 'floating'