Whimsical Cabin Made With Whale Bones Off Nova Scotia Coast

This is the sink made from a whale's jawbone. And this is its vertebrae turned into a toilet seat. And this might be the most original cabin I've ever been to. Tucked away on a private island off the coast of Nova Scotia, the cabin is surrounded by rough seas and remote coastline and is a testament to human ingenuity in harmony with the sea. There's no roads, no neighbors, and the most jaw-dropping ocean views you'll ever wake up to. Today I'm heading out to revisit this spot to spend some time to unplug, eat some good food, and take in the magic of this one-of-a-kind cabin. This is probably my most ambitious solo sea kayak trip. For the distance I have to go, it's going to be about a 2 to three hour paddle with a lot of open ocean. It's late October. I got my dry suit on. I haven't been here for over two years. Partly because you really need a weather window to get out here. And I've learned a few skills over the summer to make it a little more manageable. There it is. All right, before we get to the main event, there's a little cubby here. Instead of flagging tape, the trail is marked with whale bones. Wow, we're back. That creepy doll is still here. Hello. Used to be a functioning bath. This is where the real magic happens up here. Wow. It is hot up here. It's a lot of heat. I guess it's that sun coming through these windows. This is so cool. So, it's pretty easy to see that this is a pretty special spot. The most unique cabin I've ever seen, and I've been to quite a lot in Nova Scotia. I first came across this cabin 3 years ago while sea kayaking in the area and I was immediately drawn to it because of its unique design. The owner, Daniel Hayes, is a New York Times best-selling author for his book My Old Man in the Sea, which is a true story of his and his dad's insane 17,000mi sail in a 25- ft yacht around Cape Horn, Chile, which is the Mount Everest of seafaring. He later bought this island and spent an entire year from 1997 to 1998 living off-rid here with his family. Here's the house that we built. It's about two floors. It's only about 14 ft by 18 ft. A lot of whale bones out here still. Look at that. Isn't that cool? It's just the coolest garbage. And then you can take it and you build beautiful things with it. Isn't that beautiful? That's a spare seat here if you're scared of the whale seat, which is here. This is a whale vertebrae and it fits your butt so nicely. >> It's easy to tell that Daniel didn't want to simply build a cabin, but use it as an expression of his own creativity and love for the ocean. Before coming out here, I did get permission from Daniel to film and spend some time at his place. Obviously, a really interesting man. If you're building something like this, there's still a lot of homey things in here. There's an entire pantry of condiments and spices, a lot of books. This is a home and it has great bones. A lot of heart went into this and hard work, of course. I'm going to be making some shakshuka. This is a classic North African, Middle Eastern dish. Very simple, fresh ingredients. Tomorrow I'm going to do a little exploration of the island as well as do some sea kayaking to See if I can find some muscles. Tomorrow's dinner requires some seafood if I want any protein. I think that's it for tonight. We'll see you guys tomorrow. It rained a bit last night. It was really nice cuz there was a pitter powder on the roof. Super cozy. Slept 10 hours. I said this in the last video, too, but I got my best sleep on these trips. I'm underslept in the city. So, it's nice to come out, get a solid 10 hours of sleep, wake up to beautiful sunrises on the ocean. [Music] Looking at the cabin, it looks just like it's one floor, but that's one of the features that makes this so interesting is it's a two-story cabin. And the design sort of follows a Dutch windmill. It's the widest on the base and it sort of comes up as it rises up. And I think that helps with the bad weather around here. This cabin definitely gets smoked by big weather systems coming through. And so far it's withstanded the test of time. You wouldn't know it's late fall looking at the surrounding. Other than the coast is all barren lands and all the shrubs have turned a vibrant red, but other than that there's no hardwoods out here. Very rugged terrain. This entire island and everything around is mostly granite. As we've talked about this in the past, this is part of the South Mountain Bathlith. We do have a couple cool features here. We have veins which formed from that granite cracking and filling with a hydrothermal fluid. And as it cooled, those minerals would precipitate out, forming what we see here, which is quartz veins. And we have xenoliths. Xenoliths are chunks of bedrock that have been plucked off and pulled up with the magma as it was cooling. And of course, we got the erratics. We love erratics here at Northern Scavenger. And those are glacial deposits of rocks. I'm going to go on a little exploratory mission. I want to find some muscles for dinner tonight. I know this area has muscles, so I just got to go find them. So, the last time I was here was over two years ago with Rachel. And I see in the comments all you guys are asking, "Where is Rachel at?" Well, we are no longer together. It's been a really tough year. I think Rachel is an amazing person and I want nothing but the best for her. So, yeah. No, it's been it's been tough. I've been quiet on this subject for for a bit because I just wasn't ready to talk about it. Okay. What do I know about muscles? Not that much. I know they are in shallow tidal waters. There's a bit of a bay here. that tapers into a river. I'm going to go up there to see what's in store. Will there be a muscle? Maybe. So, all right. This is pretty cool. This is a fresh kill. Look at that. It's still wet. And otter just jumped in the water and he was on something over here. That is a big sculpin. Good for him. Okay. Is that changing my mind? There is a dead lobster and a dead sculpin and an otter. Yeah, it looks so dead here, but there seems to be some life. Okay. I think I see muscles down there. I was just about to call this place off. No, I think that was an oyster. I think there's oysters in here, too. So, how deep are we? 3 ft. Too much for me just to go down like peck at. So, I have another idea. Okay, you guys already know. Brought the mask. brought the flippers and I brought a wet suit cuz you never know. Yes. So, I'm just trying to get in here and it is so silty. Other than that strip of rock at the outflow of the river, all the banks are just muck. You'd have no idea that there's muscles or scallops or whatever is down there. Okay, let's go take a look, though. You can see what I mean here that it doesn't really look like a spot that would hold shellfish. But as soon as I get to the rocks, I start seeing oysters. In Nova Scotia, you cannot harvest a wild oyster. It is highly regulated. And I'm pretty sure that the commercial licenses are mostly for farmed oysters, but this is the largest oyster bed that I've ever come across. Some of them are larger than my hand and it was incredible to find them in such a random spot. But obviously, this area holds lots of life. We got a lot of bait fish and you know, there's a sculpin around. There's otter. And it took a little bit, but I did start finding the muscles. Some of them were stuck among the oysters. The oyster was the prominent shellfish in the area, but I was able to sneak in the cracks and find a couple muscles. I didn't have my weight belt on and it was really difficult to stay down cuz I was so buoyant, but overall I was able to get about 20 muscles for the pot tonight. On the way out, I saw see an enemy that I wanted to get a shot for you guys, but I was struggling so hard to stay down. Here's a perfect example of how buoyant I was. If you're going to be diving here, you really need to have a weight belt or it's near impossible to get below the surface. I harvested 20 muscles and now I'm just cleaning off all the barnacles and and oysters that are stuck to the outside before bringing them back. There's an eagle up there. The wind's picked up a bit and there's some big clouds forming behind me. Look to be stacking a bit which is signs of a cumulo nimbus cloud which can bring uh thunderstorms and a change of weather. So tonight I'm going to make a muscle Thai coconut curry. I got this three-step easy package with coconut milk, curry paste, some spice, leftover onion and garlic from last night, and cilantro and a lime for toppings. It's going to go [Applause] [Music] I'm noticing some didn't open and those are ones that I'm not going to eat. panang curry muscles with a little garnish of peanuts, cilantro, and lime. Let's try a full muscle here. Cheers. A1. I lost about half right off the bat cuz they didn't open. And then a few other ones just didn't look healthy. They had a bit of a green lip. And I'm not looking to get sick out here. Well, another day in the books. That little section I came through today was full of life. And I'm super grateful to to be here on this weather window in late fall. Those muscles were pretty good. I could have eaten another 20 of them. I was a little hungry after that, so I ate a bar. But other than that, lovely dinner, good flavors. Anyways, overall good meal, good day, beautiful weather. I think the weather is supposed to hold for tomorrow morning, which is great. And yeah, we'll see you guys tomorrow. All right, guys. Just about to head out of here and I thought I'd give you a quick tour of the cabin. We got the beautiful views from the porch with some whale spine for decoration. We come inside. Beautiful 360 vistas. One of the most unique parts of this entire cabin is the whale jaw sink. There's propane here when they used to live here full-time. A proper functioning stove. All the fixings to make your your meals tasty. Reading material. There's a bed here that it can be pulled down with this pulley system. I didn't mess around with that because I see that there is an actual bed up there and covers and stuff. And these older cabins, that stuff gets musty after a while. So, I didn't want to mess with that. We'll go downstairs. I didn't spend any time down here because upstairs is so nice, but there's a fully functioning wood burning stove with lots of firewood. Dan was saying he likes to keep this stash just in case there's a sailor or fisherman who crash landed here and needed to get warm. It is nice to see the camaraderie between seafaring folks. a bath with a MacGyver shower system, bunk bed, work area, and in here is a washroom. It's much cooler down here than it is upstairs because all those windows bring in a lot of heat from that sun, but there's a lot of reading material here. That was one of the main things I noticed. Very cool spot. Guys, thank you so much for watching. If you guys enjoy the content, please consider subscribing. And if you're in the Maritimes and you know of a cabin or you own a cabin that you'd recommend me checking out, I'm putting my email in the description. I'd love to explore more cabins and I'll make a video of your spot. Guys, thank you so much. We'll see you next time.