So for those of you who follow the blog, You probably noticed that up until this week, I haven’t posted since May 2025. And your likely wondering why. Its a perfectly legit question to ask, and one i find myself asking when something I’m following goes silent.

First, some history. I moved to Halifax in April 2008. I worked from home, and had a harbour view. As stuff would sail by my window, i would wonder it was, and do some research. I figured others might be curious, so I started a blog. The first iteration of this website was called the Armchair Captain, and its still up on Blogger at https://armchaircaptn.blogspot.com/

I never really liked the Armchair Captain name, and so it became Halifax Shipping News in 2010. In 2016 I moved the blog to wordpress, and began self hosting when what i wanted to do with the site out grew what i could do on blogger. Last year my hosting provider since 2016 got out of the hosting business. I now use Dartmouth based Websavers, and the site is hosted in Canada. The big advantage to self hosting is i have control, HSN doesn’t exist at the whims of some tech giant.

Yet the giants lurked

Back in 2012 @HFXShippingNews joined Twitter. Twitter was Fantastic. I built a lovely community there, where folks in the know could tell me whats going on, and i could share the blog with the world. twitter drove growth of the site. As someone who works with computers, I always had a Tweetdeck browser tab open, and had real time updates on well everything.

that was great until 2022 when Musk Bought twitter. In 2023 Tweetdeck became paid. Worse, the chronological feed went away, and suddenly my nice community was interrupted by tweets from the worst people imaginable, and a bunch of Nazis.

I hate algorithmic feeds. Nothing annoys me more with some site shows me relevant content a week or more after the event occurred. Worse, I get fed crap don’t want to see. I left twitter in 2025. Deleting all my posts, but leaving the account active to keep the handle from being claimed by others. More recently I have removed Facebook from my phone for many of the same reasons. Instagram brings little value..

With twitter gone, and my presence there being tied to the site, left a big hole. I’m active on BlueSky, which is a better platform, but smaller then twitter.

Then AI Happened. Google now scrapes sites and presents their contents to users, without them needing to visit the site. This steals revenue, since that is based on ad clicks and page views, which dont happen if people get your content without visiting your site. I’m not looking for Halifax Shipping News to make a ton of money, but I would like it to cover its costs. in this vein, google ad revenue is down, and the ads are larger and more intrusive, which I’m not super happy about.

All that to say i needed to take a break to figure out what i wanted to do. I figured Shipfax had us covered. though that has sadly been silent since January.

Right now, were back. Expect to see regular posts going forward, and some back posts for things that happened in the past year that I haven’t posted about. I’m also contemplating a rebrand to HSN Transport, which better reflects the broader rail and aviation coverage I provide, and also mirrors the YouTube Channel. There will probably also be a Merch Store, and I’m contemplating getting rid of the ads entirely.

As always, I love to hear from readers, so leave a comment or drop me a line with your thoughts.

You can also find me at :

• Builthalifax.ca where I have stared posting commentary on urban issues, beyond just the Built History of Halifax.
• On Bluesky @hfxshippingnews.bsky.social
• Email Peter [at] halifaxshippingnews.ca
• HSN Transport on Youtube

SailGP returned to Halifax, and once again the weather made things interesting. On Saturday, after strong gusts all day, by race time the wind died off. This led to a much shortened course, and for the first time a split fleet, where each race was run twice, with an A and B fleets. the Grand final featured 4 boats for the first time, the top two from the A and B fleets.

the A and B Fleets were arranged based on season point standings. Evidently this worked so well that sail GP Announced the rest of the season will be run this way.

the final Results were Spain with the Win, followed by Sweden and Switzerland. Perennial front runner Australia came in 4th. the Black Foils and GBR did not make the final, so the new format certainly mixes things up.

SailGP is back for 2027, this time May 15 and 16. This early event should also bring more questionable weather, and will take place a earlier then the inaugural 2024 event.

The NorthStar Canada boat spent much of the weekend tied up off Queens Marque.

Halifax does well hosting SailGP. it has one of the best venues, and runs with top international destinations. The City looks great, and if we are wanting to promote ourselves as a ocean technology hub, this is the exact sort of event we should be hosting. the Province would do well to put a sponsorship on the Canadian team.