Nova Scotia

Landfall in Nova Scotia was tricky. Coming from Bay of Fundy we had patches of fog and the world's highest tides to consider. It was crucial to time it right before entering Grand Passage. But everything turned out right and we had a good rest at Brier Island.

Leafing through the guidebook I suddenly realized that Joshua Slocum had spent parts of his childhood here. I got the feeling that Brier Island was holy ground. 

There was a guy at the dock who casually informed us about his distant relative. In fact, he invited us to his old house where the documentary about Slocum had a scene or two. History came to life. Everything in the house seemed untouched for a generation or two.

We left Brier Island in dead calm, but with a 4 knot current and standing waves in the riptide. It spat us out in a grey wall of fog. It's hard to imagine a place like this without gps. Joshua Slocum had the trickiest training ground on earth.

This place of love and darkness by Henrik Nor-Hansen | Make Your Own Book


This book is from our winter in Alaska. (It's not possible to leaf through it on iPad)

This is the cat

We got a new cat in Canada. It disappeared after a couple of weeks. We plastered missing cat posters all over. Then I heard a woman calling out to the boat. This is the cat, she shouted.

It turned out to be a different cat. But I couldn't say for sure, since our cat had been missing for two weeks already. I thought she might have changed.

Nina found our cat the next day. Now we had two cats. They were almost identical, a siamese mix of some sort.

We entered Hudson River in the autumn. The trees were all ablaze. I had really radiant dreams. 

But the hunting season had started and we could hear what sounded like regular shootouts at dusk. These guys were serious, with camouflage painted faces.

I was about to take the cat ashore. The cat was at the bow, hesitating. From the dinghy I could see her puffy upper lip and I suddenly got a vague thought about John Malkovitch. I might have been worried about the hunting militia. We hardly saw any wildlife but I felt unsafe in the ongoing war against ducks and deers. 

So I rowed slowly ashore, kind of reluctant. I had promised to take better pictures of the cat. Just in case she disappeared again.