Thursday – September 7, 2017
We left St. John’s, Newfoundland Tuesday evening and sailed all day yesterday southward around the province of Nova Scotia. The sunny sea day Wednesday melted into thick dense fog and heavy rain this morning.
The ship arrived early this morning in the safe harbor of Halifax, capital of the province. Fog and heavy rain dominated the region. Here’s my photo of Halifax harbor as the Rotterdam slowly moved towards the cruise ship dock. I understand why they painted the commercial cranes a bright red.
Captain van der Wal made an announcement describing high winds (over 45 kts) and the challenge of docking broadsides to the wind. He said he and the crew had tried to dock with the assistance of one tugboat and they were waiting for another tug to come to help. A little while later, the captain announced he had to cancel our stop in Halifax and the ship left the harbor and motored back out into the Atlantic Ocean.
The waves were high and I tried to get a good photo of them, but unfortunately they look compressed when seen from above. The 3rd promenade deck was closed to walkers because it was too wet so I couldn’t get any really good wave photos. But the ship rocked and rolled and creaked all day and night. Thank heavens for the ship’s stabilizers!
We were a bit disappointed. I wanted to visit Halifax again and see how the city has changed over the years. We haven’t visited in many years. However, with the heavy rain we probably wouldn’t have stayed out very long. The real problem was for Canadian passengers who were planning to disembark here, our last stop in Canada before getting into American waters.
At this time, we don’t know where we’ll end up. The choices are to stop somewhere along the coast of Maine or continue to Boston and arrive a day early. We’ll see.