Donna and I met in 1990 when we both lived aboard our sailboats in Toronto. We moved in together in 1994 and were married in 2000.
At the end of 1998 we took a fatefult trip to the Lunenburg area to visit friends at their vacation home. We fell in love with the area and very quickly decided to move from Toronto and give it a try. At the time we were running an Internet based software business, so our physical location wasn't important.
We came back in the summer of 1999 on a "scouting" trip and were lucky to find a beautiful oceanfront property (not such a beautiful house!) to rent. The property was for sale, but we convinced the owner to let us rent it on condition that we would move out with 30 days notice if the property sold. We wanted to rent for a year just to be sure that we liked living in the area, before we committed to buying. We arrived with all of our possessions in a rental truck in September and found a note on the door from the real estate agent asking us to give her a call. Sure enough, after about two years on the market, an offer had been received for the house!
We spent the next couple of weeks driving around looking at other potential properties, but nothing came close to the house we were in. After great deliberation, we decided to make own offer to purchase the house (even though I had told Donna previously that under NO conditions should we buy before we had lived in the area through the winter). The owner, a Swiss gentleman who used the house as a vacation property, turned down both offers with no counter.
We continued to enjoy the house while looking for other places. We'd spend the day driving up and down the coast checking out places for sale and rent but it always came down to the same thing. As soon as we arrived back "home", we realized that nothing we had seen came close to where we were. About a month later we called the real estate agent to see if she felt there was any chance of a compromise on the purchase. She said that coincidentally enough, the owner had also contacted her looking to see if something could be done. We made a new offer, he made a reasonable counter and we settled.
We have lived here for almost ten years (spring 2009) and still absolutely love it. Over that time we have become accepted into the neighbourhood, at least as well as "come from aways" can be accepted and have learned a lot about living in a rural fishing community. I have become heavily involved in building and repairing wooden boats for a hobby and have recently taken up wood carving. I was the treasurer and chairman of a local wooden boat festival for several years. , Donna has found her calling in looking after dementia patients, both in paid and volunteer positions and has taken up rug hooking and crocheting.
Our plan for the next few years is to sail on our boat Malolo to the Bahamas each winter (possibly leaving the boat somewhere south on the US East Coast for the summers) while enjoying the summer season here in Nova Scotia exploring the waters in our small boat Meander. All in all, not a bad life.