Arriving in Halifax

We arrive and drop anchor near the marina with a few other boats. We try to call the border service but their published their number doesn’t work.  It’s a beautiful still summer morning and the rowers are out in force. We disturb a resting cormorant and then retire for a couple hours rest and then dock at the fuel pontoon and try to get in contact with the customs again. 

The friendly marina  crew lend us a phone and it magically works. We register our arrival and 10 mins later a large black truck appears and out pop black clad armed and bullet proof vested serious looking guys and so begins our grilling.

They ask lots of open questions about what we did immediately on arriving and ask us to show our phone logs to prove we tried to call to register.  The number published is non-geographic which neither of our roaming eSims can access. Catch-22 and a bit of a fail for the CBP tech team as non local sims  (just the people that need to) are going to really struggle to call them. It dawns on the CBP guys that we are not international wine smugglers and they ease up. They reveal they have been tracking us on AIS all along so good thing we didn’t tell any porkies. In the end they stay on the dock and no rubber gloves are harmed. We begin chatting and they offer some local guidance, just the beginning of truly amazing Canadian friendliness. We remove the quarantine flag and are now free to get off the boat .

After a rest and a beer we decide to investigate our wayward radar. Our sum knowledge and experience with these devices is precisely zero. F goes up the mast (again) to retrieve the emitter dome whilst I worry about falling tools penetrating my skull.  

With the device on the bench we cable test the thing and find only one semi loose connection. Slightly concerned about microwaving our eyeballs (apparently a risk according to the ‘internet’) we lay the emitter on my bunk and fire it up from a safe distance to precisely zero effect. Still as dead as a dodo. F later bites the bullet and takes it to the local expert who pronounces the last rites on the motherboard. The only option now is to buy another which he does and arranges delivery to St John’s in Newfoundland.  Till then we will rely on water based technology. 

Friday night sees us as almost the entire audience for a local guitar club who use the marina. It is good fun and I get in the mood and sing along when I know the tunes.  The band as love it and buy us a drink. Next day, one of the band members appears with a bag of home made banana cake buns. This is Canadian hospitality at its finest.