Visit Seal Island, Nova Scotia
Visiting Seal Island in southern Nova Scotia, Canada
Late in the summer of 1997 I was parusing the notice board at AYC and noticed a posting by the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society. Their notice was an open invitation to join NSLPS members on an overnight trip to Seal Island. The poster told of sleeping in a fisherman's bunkhouse on the island used by fishermen for over 150 years, walking sand beaches and green forests, visiting a shipwreck and viewing the graves of lost souls washed up on the island. Well, I was hooked. It sounded romantic. I took the number and called the trip coordinator. Were there two spots open for my wife and I? Yes!! I sensed the enthusiasm of our trip coordinator who had made the trip a year before. She was going back this year. She told of the difficulty landing on the island. This wasn't a place easily reached. It was all the more attractive. The first thing was to find out what I could about our destination. Seal Island is the most southerly point of land in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is the southern most of the Tusket Islands, a strip of shoals and islands stretching out twenty miles from the coast of Nova Scotia. Situated very close to the Bay of Fundy, with the world's highest tides, the area is treacherous for the rip tides and currents flowing around the islands. This would account for the huge number of ship wrecks around the area - 180 documented, perhaps as many as 300. This area was beside the sailing route from New England to Halifax. These monstrous currents would draw unsuspecting ships to their doom on the islands and shoals as they tried to pass by in dense fog. The sailing directions are a Canadian Coast Guard publication for mariners. It gives descriptions of areas and lists the hazards. Read the sailing directions for Seal Island Finally the day of departure arrived, September XX 1997. We were to depart by fishing boat from Cape Sable Island for the 18 mile trip. The weather was cool and the trip proved to be rough. I braced myself in the wheelhouse against the pitching of the boat as it smashed through the waves. Ronny Kenny and his son, our boat operators commented that this would be a good day in the winter, when their lobster season was open. There went any desire I ever had to be a fisherman. Two hours later we arrived at Seal Island. To our great pleasure, the wood stove was going as we piled into the fisherman's bunkhouse where we were to stay. A hot cup of tea or coffee and we all felt a lot better. With great anticipation, we looked forward to our weekend adventure. The weekend was to be unstructured except for Saturday afternoon when the lighthouse would be opened for our viewing. To follow our excursions, you can view a map of Seal Island. This map has "hot spots" in which you can view photos of the location. Look for your cursor to turn into a hand pointing. That denotes a "hot spot". Use your back button on your browser to return to the map. On our first day, Saturday afternoon turned out to be sunny and warm. We hiked to the east settlement at East Side Cove, where there are a collection of houses, mainly summer homes. They looked well kept for the most part. It is here that the church can be found. We continued on through the woods to the lighthouse. Arriving there we found that the gentleman with the key had brought the wrong key. We could only view the outside of the lighthouse. Here are some pictures of the lighthouse... We continued on to Mother Owens Point where there was a magnificent sand beach. Past the beach were large rocks with, you guessed it, seals. I managed to get up close enough to get a couple of pictures of them on the rocks. Boy, do they love to sun themselves. We headed back to the Fisherman's Bunkhouse for supper and after supper yarns by the fire. We all spent a pleasant evening and retired early in anticipation of our second and last day. Morning arrived and following breakfast, we headed out for a hike around the top or north end of the island. As we hiked around, we noticed a ships wheel imbedded in the tall grass. There was little doubt it was from one of the numerous shipwrecks of the past. When we arrived at Sand Cove, a large beach on the east side of the island, we could see the remains of a small steel ship standing bolt upright on the beach. It was the Fermont, a victim of serious leaking on a trip from Montreal to the United States in the early 1990's. The captain put her on the beach to give the crew a chance to escape to dry land before she sank. Here are some pictures of her... We were only gone two days but somehow, we all felt this experience had touched us and we were returning home with a fresh view of the world. I wish to thank the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society for sponsoring this trip. Should you wish to contact the society, you can visit their site at http://WWW.EDnet.ns.ca/educ/heritage/nslps/. Further reading about Seal Island: Return to ocean1.net.
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