Prince Edward Island - Kildare Capes

Prince Edward Island - part 4

(sightseeing)

August 18, 2018 - August 20, 2018

We drove from Cavendish to almost the northern tip of PEI, camping right on the coast at Jacque Cartier Provincial Park.  This portion of PEI is much flatter than the area around Cavendish and thus somewhat less scenic.

At the very tip of the island is North Cape and area with a large wind farm installation used for wind energy research and testing. They have an excellent educational display about wind energy in their visitor center.

A look at part of the wind farm from the parking lot of the visitor center.

The two main exterior pieces of a wind turbine can be seen from the parking lot of the visitor center.
The piece above is called the nacelle and houses the generator and all the equipment needed to operate the unit.  You can see how huge it is - sort of equivalent to our motorhome.  The picture below is a closeup of the hub of the rotor.  The rotor (hub plus the 3 blades) weighs about 6 tons.  I was impressed with the number of bolts used to attached each blade. 

One of the three huge blades attached to each wind turbine.
In the background you can see the lighthouse at the tip of North Cape.

Depiction of the inside of a the rotor (on the right) and the nacelle (which house all the equipment).

Looking directly at a rotor assembly.

How a wind turbine is constructed.

A massive cement base for the wind turbine is constructed first.

The completed base ready for the tower to be placed upon it.

All the parts of the turbine arrive at the site by truck. This is one of two pieces of the tower.

The bottom of the tower is bolted to the cement pad.

The second piece of the tower is put in place.

The nacelle is hoisted and bolted to the top of the tower.

The rotor assembly is lifted into place and bolted to the nacelle.

Other interesting things from our visit to North Cape, PEI.

I had no idea that the Appalachian mountains ran up into the Maritimes.  

The North Cape Lighthouse is located just beyond the wind farm. 

Is it any wonder why lighthouses are important. 
We've seen many such maps showing numerous shipwrecks around an island or along a coast. 
The wrecks are so numerous I sometimes wonder what percentage of ships built ended up shipwrecked.

Panoramic view from near the tip of the island.  Building rock cairns seems to be a popular pastime here.

Everywhere we looked there are rock cairns!

Irish Moss is harvested just behind where we stood to take picture above.

A picture of a picture of the "moss" harvest.

This fellow was loading up his truck with "moss" the day we were there.