We left Nova Scotia on August 29th, after spending the entire month of August exploring her coastline. We loved Nova Scotia, fog and sunshine alike, and we’re amazed that even after spending a whole month traveling down her coast, there were still many areas that we didn’t get to explore.

Cape Roseway Lighthouse

Our debarkation port, Shelburne, was a pretty little town but because of our approaching weather window, we only spent a day and a half there. Some of that time was spent with Gwen and Rob on Avatar, a 42 foot Krogen trawler, enjoying their hospitality and their tips on anchorages in Maine. They made us feel good about our Canadianess when they said how much they enjoyed Nova Scotia and Canadians. Gwen said it was partly because we enunciate so well and that it’s a pleasure to hear us talk; Whodda thunkit eh?

The day we arrived in Shelburne was the beginning of a relatively longish weather window for us to cross to Maine. Some boats left that day and three of us left the day after (Strathspey, Madcap and Barefoot). Barefoot is a Saber 36 and her captain, Gary Scott, is a single hander who’s been out on the water for four years now. We were with Barefoot in Baddeck, Liscombe, Lunenburg, Port Mouton and now Shelburne.

We staged our crossing to Maine from Cape Negro Island, a three-hour hop down the coast from Shelburne and left there the following morning at 6 am, expecting a 28-hour crossing to Northeast Harbor, Maine. The forecast was for south winds of 10 knots, two-foot seas and areas of fog; a better forecast would be if there was a bit more wind so we could sail rather than motor-sail but according to everything I’ve read, you take your weather windows when they come.

Safety measures

Tuesday night, at Cape Negro Island, as soon as dinner was over, we started getting ready for this big crossing. Blair unpacked the jacklines with their heavy duty shackles. Our jacklines are strong strap webbing that run the length of both of Strathspey’s side decks and are attached to heavy padeyes (eyebolts) at the bow and stern. We also have two padeyes installed on both sides of the cockpit interior. Our lifejackets have built-in harnesses that we can attach to the six-foot tethers and on overnight passages, our tethers are always clipped into the cockpit padeyes. If we have to leave the cockpit, we unsnap the shackle from the cockpit padeye and snap it onto one of the jacklines. No one wants to go overboard at the best of times and especially at night into 7° water, the chances of being rescued are slim so a hard and fast rule on Strathspey is that we’re both always snapped in.

Cape Negro Island

As part of our preparations, Blair sat at the chart plotter and loaded the computer chip for Maine while I dug out the paper charts and guide books describing Northeast Harbor. Blair plotted our route and I calculated the route the Yarmouth-Bar Harbor high speed catamaran ferry would take. This ferry travels at 40 knots and would cross our path so it was important to check the ferry schedule and ensure that we would be well clear of that route. The isolation of Cape Negro underscored the seriousness of this crossing and we worked quietly, stopping only to confirm a way point or question a shorter route between islands or whether we would sail inside or outside a particular buoy. A slight swell and the distant crash of waves on the outside of our protected cove reminded us that outside lay big waters. That night, three other boats in the bay bobbed gently on the swell that wrapped around the Cape and I’m sure everyone else was making the same preparations for this crossing as we were.

Leaving Cape Negro Island, the seas were like glass and Venus, the morning star, shone like a bright orange lightbulb in the southeast just above the horizon. It was comforting to look over and see Madcap on our port and Barefoot on our starboard. This was only temporary as once each boat settled into their own rhythm, the distance between us grew; an hour later, Madcap was on our starboard and Barefoot on our port. We all have different waypoints (points on our charts that we sail towards, much the same as you’d plot a car trip; south to hwy 401 and then west to Toronto). Once underway, Barefoot began to contemplate veering further south to make landfall at Rockland because of favourable winds and tides, a change that would save Gary three hours on the trip but meant he wouldn’t be exploring Mount Desert with us.

Fog rainbow

At 7:45 am, fog descended and Madcap and Barefoot were just blobs on our radar screen. At that point, even though the sun was shinning, the air was downright chilly and the water even colder at 8°. We were cold. I was wearing two polar fleeces and my foul-weather jacket and Blair, at the wheel, had even more clothes on. The thick fog added so much moisture to the air that when the sun started climbing higher, we saw fog rainbows. They’re like regular rainbows but almost indiscernible through the fog, more like an arch of lighter colour amidst the blanketing fog. In the distance we could hear the Cape Sable foghorn telling us to stay well away from shore.

At Cape Sable, we started getting a boost from the Bay of Fundy tidal current. There were lots of eddies in the water here and the charts cautioned us about rip tides. Just beyond, at Blonde Rock, we altered course to head towards our fourth waypoint of the trip which was a buoy off of Mount Desert Island. Our chartplotter told us that the estimated arrival time at this next waypoint was 16 hours. That’s the longest eta we’ve ever seen on Strathspey and we settled in for the ride.

In our logbook each day, Blair notes when something needs watching or if something requires repairs next time we anchor or dock. When we left Cape Negro Island, Strathspey was shipshape and packed tightly, her dinghy folded up and stored on the coachroof. We don’t tow our dinghy in big waters usually. In fact, during this entire trip, we’ve towed it only in the Bras d’Or Lakes and Mahone Bay, both very sheltered waters. When we left, Strathspey was also very clean as we’d spent time at Carter’s Beach cleaning, polishing and waxing Strathspey’s exterior; the first time since we’d left dock in June. It’s amazing how grungy the cockpit can get and no matter how clean it was, we’d never say you could eat off it and for sure, the five-second rule could never apply!

For 12 hours, the fog stayed with us and although we had a patch of clear sky above us, we couldn’t see anything beyond a 500-foot radius around the boat. Three boats crossing this large expanse of water is isolating enough and the ever-present fog just increased this sense of isolation. Barefoot finally made the decision to alter course to Rockland and became a smaller and smaller blip on our radar until it disappeared completely which made me long for the fog to lift so I could see Madcap again. In fog, your eyes to the world are blinkered and you only see out through a chart plotter screen slightly larger than a Blackberry. As the day progressed, we began to peel layer after layer of clothes off because it was sunny and warm in our little 500 foot fog-free bubble. A high point around noon was our first (and only) puffin sighting; all by himself just floating along 100 feet off our starboard.

All the way across the Gulf of Maine, I plotted DRs and Fixes on our paper charts. For the non-sailors, DRs are where we think we should be and Fixes are where we know we are; important information to keep us on track. This was mainly because I wanted to know our exact location when that high speed ferry crossed our path. My poor tired brain, with little sleep over the 26 hours, remembered all I had learned in my Advanced Piloting course this winter (thanks to John Moss and all the time he spent helping me with the home study!).

Changing direction

Around 6:30 pm, the tide changed and all those millions of gallons of water started flowing back into the Bay of Fundy. That huge tide exerted an amazing pull on us and our boat speed jumped measurably. We loved getting that extra boost of power but at the same time noticed, for want of a better word, a lot of “crap” floating by Strathspey; free floating lobster buoys, gas jerry cans, logs and masses of floating kelp islands with birds nestled in them. We steer around all this stuff and once, when we noticed our boat speed drop considerably, we actually put Strathspey in reverse to dislodge all the weeds and kelp from her rudder and saildrive; not an easy thing to do when you’ve got a sail deployed.

As the tide changed, the water got lumpy as we steered through the occasional rip tide caused by the change of water direction. As we passed through the rip tides, Strathspey slowed down, rolled in the confused seas and then came back up to speed. These little rip tides were obvious and looked very similar to the one we saw when we entered the Saguenay River back on the St Lawrence in July.

Middle of Gulf of Maine

The sun set a little after 8 pm and a 1/2 hour later, the full moon rose. About two hours earlier the fog had lifted so we had a brief glimpse of Madcap and miles and miles of nothing but ocean around us. Right after the fog lifted, we spotted quite a few Humpback whales breaching and spouting and waving their pectoral fins as they fed amongst the floating seaweed. All night long, we monitored the radar and our AIS system for any big ships that might be heading in and out of St John, New Brunswick but saw no traffic of any kind all night, something that made us quite happy. At one point, around 2 am when Blair was sleeping and I was at the wheel, Strathspey hit something. We were in 200-400 feet of water and it felt like we had gone aground in mud; a sudden slowing rather than a jarring stop. A few seconds later, Strathspey gradually rose up and then gently settled back into her stride. Adrenaline pumping, I scanned the water behind us, seeing nothing, and checked the oil pressure, no change there, and checked the bilge, again no change. It was all so gentle that Blair slept through it. I briefly considered waking him up to tell him but as all seemed normal, there was no point in disturbing his sleep. Was this some large sleeping creature, we’d run over in the night; a whale perhaps? That is definitely one of the hazards of night sailing.

Strathspey’s bottom

At 5:30 am, we were 15 nautical miles off the coast of Maine in 200 feet of water and we started spotting an occasional lobster pot. We were surprised to see them so soon and although daylight came shortly, it didn’t help a whole lot as a deep thick fog had settled in previously around 3 am. Blair stood on the bow, chilled to the bone, calling directions into one of our family radios. The other radio was beside me in the cockpit and for the next two hours, the conversation consisted of Blair saying “Port”, “Starboard”, or a little more urgently “Hard Port”, “Hard Starboard”. Only once did he say “Neutral, Neutral, Mary, Neutral!” meaning that I’d missed the turn and passed between a lobster buoy and it’s toggle. We coasted over it in neutral and held our breath, watching the two floaters on either side of Strathspey to see if they were tagging along (meaning we’d snagged them on either our sail drive or our rudder). Strathspey’s keel has a lot of “things” that can grab a lobster pot. Snagging a lobster pot would likely mean a trip overboard in that dark cold water, knife in hand to cut the buoy loose. Fortunately, all went well on this particular passage into Maine.

Northeast Harbor

So 26 hours after leaving, we felt our way from buoy to buoy into Northeast Harbor via radar and grabbed the first mooring ball that appeared in the dense fog. After the fog lifted, we moved to a new mooring ball further into the harbour and by 11 am Blair was dinghying the US customs inspector back to the town dock. The inspector had actually boarded Strathspey to clear us into the country (which took all of 20 minutes). And, although we had gotten a US user-fee decal from US Customs in Cape Vincent, at the start of the St Lawrence, we had to purchase a US cruising “licence” from our inspector for $19. So now we’re cleared into the US of A and excited about all she has to offer us as sailors.

The plan right now is to putz our way slowly through the Mount Desert and Penobscott Bay areas until September 11th when we’ll find ourselves a harbour with good facilities. Blair will do some boat maintenance while I return home for four or five days to check in on the home fires.

I am starting to ration my missives on our website to every few weeks or so because, although I want to let everyone know what we’re up to, we also want to spend time getting up to those things! But, in this case, I had to post this one particular log as soon as we got to Maine because it feels like a big accomplishment to have crossed the Gulf of Maine and I wanted to share our excitement and horn tooting with everyone. Thanks for all the good vibes being sent our way for this crossing.

In Halifax we’d seen and done just about everything on our list of “must do’s”. Blair got his music fix when we spent an embarrassingly long time at the Lower Deck listening to two great acts; the matinée act was the duo of Cory Tetford and Paul Lamb who were taking a break from their popular East Coast band Crush so Cory could spend some quality time with his young family. We stayed for the evening act, Signal Hill, who played some great east coast music as well as some very exacting top-40 covers. The rest of the time was spent downtown on the wharf at Bishop’s Landing where we walked the boardwalk, explored some historic sites and best of all where we had a visit from Gilles and Marielle of Lady M, who brought us our newly repaired ship’s clock. When we were in Buctouche, New Brunswick in mid-July, we’d sent the clock back to the manufacturer in Annapolis for repairs and had it returned to us via Lady M’s Halifax address. We don’t wear watches anymore so we’d really been missing our clock.

Peggy’s Cove

We left Halifax in a fog and although we’re pretty used to sailing in fog on this coast, our mood lifted measurably as the fog lifted just before Peggy’s Point. We’d altered course to sail past the famous landmark and, like most boaters who sail this area, we couldn’t help but think of Swiss Air flight 111 that went down about four miles offshore of Peggy’s Point ten years ago. We were headed for Hubbard’s Cove to spend some time with good friends from Ottawa, Tim and Angel. Tim Lewis is a Dartmouth lad living in Ottawa. He and Blair have been playing guitar together for the last 20 years so it was pretty special to meet up with them in Hubbard’s, where they were renting a cottage with their five children. The extended Lewis family (more than 20 of them) threw open their doors, their arms and their hearts to gather us up into a warmhearted down east hug. During our stay in the Halifax area, they included us in their family gatherings at the beach, “aunt” Linda’s for dinner and the Hubbard’s Cove lobster supper.

View from Tim’s Cottage

Tim arranged with Del Meisner for a mooring ball for us in Hubbard’s Cove. Del’s a 44-year veteran of the seas with more than 500 transatlantic crossing under his belt. He said his wife calculated that over the 44-year span, he’d spent all of eight years with her on land; that certainly gives new meaning to the phrase “keeping the home fires lit”! Del has been shipwrecked three times, one time when he was seal hunting on a Newfoundland schooner (“we was out on a seal hunt. We got 350 seals, mostly bitches, but we was too late for the white coats”). Their boat was caught in ice overnight and when the captain gave the order to abandon ship, the men stood on an ice flow and watched their boat (and the seals) sink. The next morning, the coast guard steamed in to rescue them all.

The morning after the lobster supper, we weighed anchor at 6:30 am so as to get to the village of Chester in Mahone Bay early enough in the day to catch the sailing races. Tim, bless his heart, got up and waved to us from their cottage even though the sun was not quite up. Chester’s a small town that comes alive the third week of August for Race Week as evidenced by the huge number of racing boats, jammed-packed streets and outdoor bands playing ‘til the wee hours of the morning. We anchored on the south side of the harbour behind Meisner’s Island, close enough to the race course to hear the crack of crisp dacron sails as the Bluenose classic boats rounded the marker nearest us. These boats were designed by the Bluenose II designer - quick little boats with graceful lines. It was the kind of day you’d associate with a race week; sunny and warm, with us in our shorts and tees for the first time in quite a few days.

Bluenose Classics

We left Chester in what seemed to be our standard morning fog and motored on a mill pond sea about 2 1/2 hours over to Princes Cove, a long narrow cove around the corner from the Lunenburg Yacht Club. The yacht club is on the “back” side of Lunenburg rather than the side of town that faces the Atlantic Ocean. This location saves the members a good two hours on open ocean before reaching the calm waters of Mahone Bay for a nice day’s sail. Mahone Bay is sheltered from the big ocean swells and has hundreds of small islands to anchor behind so it’s a favourite destination for sailors on the Nova Scotia south coast.

Mahone Bay

From Princes Cove, we dinghied over to the town of Mahone Bay, a 15-minute ride away. On our way into town, we ran over a long polypropylene line. The dinghy motor hiccuped a little, then roared a lot. We circled back to try to pick up the line but it was well secured to something on bottom. It bent our propeller blades slightly and here’s hoping no one else discovers it with their boat. Mahone Bay’s a boutique and crafts-heavy little town with upscale groceries. Tim’s sister Linda had remarked to us a little wistfully that Mahone Bay had been discovered by wealthy Canadians and Americans who’d build palatial summer homes and driven up the tax base so much so that younger couples couldn’t afford to buy houses in the town they’d grown up in. We wandered along the main street past the three wooden churches, those well-known landmarks at the head of the bay, mailed some letters and picked up a blueberry pie.

It was foggy and rainy for the second day running in Princes Inlet so we stayed put because high winds were expected. It was a quiet, protected little anchorage and a five minute dinghy ride from the Lunenburg Yacht Club where there was WiFi coverage and hot showers. In our anchorage, we had two Ospreys that provided entertainment. They have a cheep-cheep sort of call and sit atop sailboat masts waiting for a chance to dive into the water to grab a slow swimming fish or two. I’m sure they had a nest nearby but we saw no sign of it. And of course there were the ever present cormorants hanging about. Cormorants are called “Shags” by some of the fishermen in the area. These birds have no oil glands to preen their feathers with so when they get wet, they stay wet until they can dry themselves off. It is a common sight to see groups of cormorants gathered on rocks with their wings widespread to dry. There are plenty of what we call “Shag Islands” too, where the cormorants gather to roost, denuding the islands of any vegetation and making them smell worse than any outhouse.

Shags drying out

After two days of rain and fog in Princes Inlet, everything on the boat was damp. Our hygrometer measured 95% humidity. The wood frame on the refrigerator lid was one size bigger and required supreme effort to open. The pegs on my violin absorbed so much damp that I needed Blair’s strength to loosen them and the foul weather jackets and overalls were a permanent fixture in the shower, too wet to store away. We cocooned down below deck and to pass time we read, played guitar and violin and ate. Not a hard life because that is definitely one of the finer aspects of cruising; eating. We eat well on Strathspey. That day we had blueberry muffins for breakfast, sandwiches made with fresh baked bread for lunch and Thai chicken for dinner. It’s definitely a challenge to see what we can whip up in a kitchen smaller than most people’s closets. We have a three-burner gas oven, a fridge that is about the size of a small filing cabinet and less than two square feet of counter space. It’s a far cry from my kitchen at home but there is a place for everything and after preparing meals, cleanup is usually less than a ten minute job.

Bluenose berth

When the rain stopped and the sun came out, we continued on to Lunenburg, arriving on the last day of their Seashore Festival. This is a busy harbour with the Bluenose taking out paying guests, a fishing fleet that leaves early each day and a well-filled mooring field smack dab in the middle. There are few places to tie a dinghy up when going ashore so we followed the crowd (baa baa) and tied up at a convenient floating dock with four other tenders under a sign reading “this is not a tender dock”. Right! We’ll only be a minute. When we returned with a small load of groceries, the Bluenose was up close and personal and we slunk out past her trying to avoid looking at any of her crew. The Bluenose changed her home berth from Halifax to Lunenburg and we think it was a good move. She fits in here in the Lunenburg landscape amongst the houses tucked into the hillside and the merchant buildings squeezed among the wharfs. After all, this is where she was built.

Lunenburg

While in Lunenburg, Blair rebuilt our head (aka toilet); a job he had been putting off while his imagination developed various unpleasant outcomes. There is something called a joker valve on boat toilets and suffice to say, it gives the average sailor nightmares to think about changing it. No details will follow other than to say nothing was spilled and Blair’s stock in “who’s your daddy” T-shirts just went up even further.

Since August 21st we’ve been using the diesel Espar heater to warm the cabin up in the mornings, especially since we are anchored in water that rarely exceeds 14°C and has lately been as low as 8°. The water in our tanks is refrigerator-cold and sometimes I can see my breath even though it is a sunny day outside. The humidity in the boat every morning is 90% and the temperature usually around 10°C. We leave the ports open all day when we’re not sailing and the humidity sinks to about 70% but even so we are finding spots of mildew on our cabin roof over our bunk which I’ve dealt with by wiping them with a water and vinegar solution. I’m surprised by this as I wasn’t counting on humidity and mildew being an issue until we reached the Bahamas.

LaHave Islands

In these last two weeks, we’ve left those isolated anchorages so pristine we didn’t think twice about eating mussels found on their shores and now we’re in civilization with a bang; Halifax with its busy harbour and downtown, Chester Race Week and the Lunenburg Seashore festival. So, when we left Lunenburg, instead of continuing on to our intended destination, the town of LaHave, we drifted off the beaten track and anchored behind Bushen, a small island in the LaHave group. It’s quiet and remote and has a great view of the LaHave Islands. We positioned Strathspey about 200 yards south of a green buoy that marked a shoal barely awash at high tide. About two hours after we anchored, a fishing boat came by and the driver stepped out of his wheelhouse, matter-of-factly leaned over and snagged our green buoy with his boathook, secured it to a cleat on his stern, powered up and towed the buoy away down the channel and out of sight around the corner. An hour later, he brought the buoy back and re-anchored it a good 100 feet north of its original location, with his boat stereo all the while playing the Lighthouse song “Sunny Days” full blast. In these remoter areas, the fishermen play a big role in marking the safe channels but in this case we weren’t sure what this was all about and were glad we arrived and anchored when we did.

Buoy on the move

After enjoying that remote little anchorage for one night, we moved into the town of LaHave and tied up at the LaHave Bakery dock the following day. Yes, odd as it seems, this bakery has dockage for boats. In fact the LaHave Bakery building houses an eclectic group of business; a skateboard factory, a boat builder, a crafts store, the bakery and restaurant, a publishing house and marina. The man of the hour in this outfit is Peter Brown and he treats every boat like they’re the QE II arriving, making sure everyone is well secured and has everything they need. The best part of being on this dock is that early each morning around 5 am, the smell of baking bread wafts out over the water.

LaHave Bakery

Everyone in this building seems to be do-it-yourselfers on top of being fine craftsmen. Jesse, the 20-something partner of the skateboard factory (Homegrown Skateboards) built all the presses in the factory himself, silkscreens all the original designs on the boards as well as organizes competitions on his own halfpipe (also on the third floor of the bakery). Kevin Wambach, on the ground floor, builds fine wooden boats anyone would be proud to own as well as just about anything else you’d want made out of wood. You can see his portfolio here.

Small wooden skiff

We stayed two nights at the bakery. But, baked bread coziness aside, the clock is ticking. Blair and I think that there’s nothing drearier than a rainy fog-choked passage off the Nova Scotia coast with waves crashing white in the distance over low-lying shoals. Yet again, there’s nothing as fine as the sunny day we’ll have two days later, when the breeze is fresh, when the air has a clarity only found over water and the ocean is a deep rich blue. We’ve seen it both ways but right now, our frosty breath in the mornings, the way our boat computer’s hard drive runs sluggishly ‘til noon and the ever increasing layers of clothes we’re wearing is telling us that it’s time to start heading further south.

We left the LaHave Islands and headed west to Port Mouton (the locals pronounce it Port Ma-toon) and spent a few days at Carter’s Beach, a beach that makes us dream of the Bahamas. The beach is deserted until well after noon, the fine sand is powdery white and the sun shines down like it will never be foggy again.

Carter’s Beach

We’re in Shelburne now, our debarkation point for Maine. This harbour and specifically the Shelburne Yacht Club is where most yachters gather to cross the Gulf of Maine. It’s a big crossing and requires good planning. Here’s where we fill our diesel tanks, watch the weather reports, find our window and head across to the United States.

The Bluenose II in Lunenburg Bay

Just before we left the Bras d’Or Lakes we made changes to both our sails and our storage. Since Quebec City, we’d been using our smallest foresail in expectation of high winds on the northern St Lawrence and around Gaspe. It had given us more control in the high winds but since PEI, we’d really been wishing for more sail to push us along a little faster. So, in St Peters, we packed away the smaller sail and dug out our big 135% genoa that we usually use in Lake Ontario.

Folding Foresail

Blair and I were also concerned about Strathspey’s performance in the heavy seas we’d encountered so far; Strathspey felt sluggish and was riding too low in the water for our comfort. To counteract this, we lightened up the bow in a big way by unloading our third anchor, 35 feet of chain and 200 feet of line from our anchor locker and sent them home via Purolator in a big plastic garbage can. We gave everyone fair warning the garbage can was coming so they wouldn’t think someone was playing a practical joke when it was left on our front doorstep. I gathered all our charts and guidebooks (a surprisingly big weight) from our bow storage area and moved them to the stern berth under our other two sails and as a last temporary measure, for the passage over to the eastern coast of Nova Scotia, we didn’t fill our bow water tank. We left the Bras d’Or Lakes the same way we arrived, through St Peters Lock and Canal, riding a good three inches higher in the bow.

St Peters Lock and Canal

We left the Lakes, with Madcap and Atlantic Star, and headed out to Cap La Ronde so as to get a one-hour headstart for the next day’s crossing to Nova Scotia’s eastern shore. We anchored behind the headland that night and the wind blew one way while the swell from the open ocean wrapped around the headland and hit us broadside. All night we rocked, not violently, but enough to disturb my sleep and give me that car-sick kind of feeling if I sat below decks to read.

Cap La Ronde

The next morning, we hobby horsed our way across Chedabucto Bay, a disturbed body of water where the currents meet and swirl in confused seas, and then from Canso snaked our way down the coast taking the sheltered passages anytime we could. One of these sheltered areas, Andrew’s Passage, was a little slice of Georgian Bay; long smooth rocks slanting into deep water. Its low green foliage had that clear distinct smell of blueberries. It’s the season and Jim tells us that blueberries are Nova Scotia’s number one agricultural export.

Andrew’s Passage

We tucked into Port Howe, a long-fingered cove with rocky tree-lined shores and deep waters. Gary went ashore and picked fresh mussels off the kelp covered boulders that were exposed at low tide. The six of us ate plate after plate of steamed mussels and simply tossed the shells overboard after each bite; an easy dinner cleanup that night. We’re noticing a fair number of mosquitoes out just around dusk and here in Port Howe we’ve cracked open our jumbo-sized bottle of Avon Skin So Soft that Lee and Phil of Enchantment dropped off to us in Baddeck.

Fresh Mussels

The following morning, we woke up to a pea soup fog. I’ve heard that expression so many times and now I understand. The air is filled with a fine spray that rains down through the hatches and portholes making your blankets dampish and your charts feel like heavy cloth. When the wind blows, the damp falls off the mast and rigging and sounds like rain on the deck. In our anchorage in Casey’s Cove, all contrast was blurred; the islands and shorelines in the big bay were softened, the tree outlines were smudged and the water was smooth. It stayed that way til just after noon and then the sun came out and burned the fog off.

We continued down the coast to Liscombe River, which had been touted as an absolute “must stay” and stay we did, for three nights; partially due to weather, mostly due to the inviting resort with scenic hiking trails and excellent restaurant. We anchored seven miles upriver, just outside the line of red buoys marking the 12-foot channel into the Liscombe River Lodge dock. It was here that we had our first taste of late summer weather, waking up one morning to a cabin temperature of 10° C and mist rising off the fast flowing river that has kept Strathspey immobile between the buoys. Strathspey was covered with that heavy early morning dew that you see at the end of August, the kind that usually heralds the end of summer. I don’t know if this is the case or whether this is just typical Nova Scotia weather. Either way, it’s way too soon for us because the last time we used our heater was July 12th and this was August 6th; will our summer be only three weeks long this year? Dang!

Liscombe River anchorage

This was a worthwhile detour upriver to the Lodge because it gives us a less ocean-skewed perspective of Nova Scotia. Until then, my impression was that this was a windy, fog-bound province. We used the Lodge’s hiking trails, their sauna and most importantly, we swam in their pool. Ahhhh, never mind the chlorine, this was fresh water, or at least as fresh as we’ll see til next June when Strathspey’s bow touches Lake Ontario again. Our last day in Liscombe, Chester, the marina operator, graciously offered to take us into town for groceries, a trip that evolved into an afternoon’s tour of an area of Nova Scotia that he is especially proud of. He detoured to Indian Point, a narrow spit of rock and gravel, where the local lobstermen gather ballast for their traps. Next stop was the St Mary’s Smokehouse for smoked salmon samples and the inevitable purchases; my favourite was a double-smoked maple glazed salmon that was as sweet as candy. Our last stop was Sherbrooke, of the Stan Rogers “O the year was 1778. How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now” fame. We toured the old water-powered sawmill there and then picked up our groceries. Chester was an excellent guide and went a long way to making this one of the most pleasant interludes on our trip through Nova Scotia.

Plank Salmon

We tiptoed out of Liscombe in a heavy fog that enveloped both shore and buoys. I stood on the bow looking for the red cans while Blair picked them out on radar and chart plotter. It was a strange sensation to look out beyond Strathspey and see nothing but a thick cottony grey. By noon, the fog lifted and we continued west through a relatively windless day with a long rolling swell yet no waves. This was the calm before the storm as a gale was expected to blow through the area late that evening, bringing winds of 40 knots. We traveled about five miles inland at the end of that day to find a secure anchorage in DeBaies Cove, Ship Harbour which would hide us from the winds as well as the huge swells that get stirred up in those winds. After today, Blair and I agreed that the “must haves” for a trip like this are radar (to see where we’re going in fog), a chartplotter (to help pick the safe way through passages in heavy seas) and a heater (to drive out the persistent damp). Number one on this list though, is definitely radar.

Creeping out of Liscombe

Sailing in Nova Scotia is not for the faint of heart I think. The weather averages 17 days of fog in July, 12 in August. It has a rugged coastline, strewn with shoals. When planning our days, we count on an extra hour of travel at the end and the beginning; an hour to motor inland to find a safe anchorage protected from wind and swell and then another hour the next day to motor back out to the ocean. This is not warm water either; the seas on the way into Halifax were 11° C. On the other hand, the reward for sailing here are deserted anchorages, spectacular scenery and warm and generous people; a pretty good tradeoff in my books.

We’re in Halifax now, back on the grid and none too soon. When I called Bishop’s Landing to get an overnight slip right downtown in the harbour, I left a voice message and at the end of my message, I actually said “Over” (for you non-sailors, that’s VHF radio boattalk for “this conversation is over”); only marginally odder than if I’d said “10/4 good buddy”. We love being in downtown Halifax. The Busker’s Festival is on, we can walk up to The Citadel and there’s a Godiva chocolate store about 100 steps from Strathspey; life is good.

Strathspey at Bishops Landing in Halifax

We’ve been in the Bras d’Or Lakes for seven days now. In St Peters, just at the entrance to the Lakes, we heard our first Mayday ever. A Mayday makes everyone sit up and take notice. You don’t carry on; you stop what you’re doing and pay attention. Channel 16, the hailing station, bleeped a loud, nonstop whistle; definitely unignorable. We’ve heard lots of pan-pan’s in Lake Ontario and the 1000 Islands but never a Mayday. A pan-pan means that there is an emergency on board a boat but for the time being at least, there is no immediate danger to anyone’s life or to the vessel itself. But a Mayday means someone is in serious trouble. All the boats in the marina had their VHF radios tuned in to listen. No one left the marina. We listened, obviously unable to help, but imagining ourselves in that situation. A boat had run aground in fog somewhere off Cape Canso, it’s captain had broken his arm and his leg was bleeding badly. We listened while the Halifax Coast Guard Radio gave instructions, provided encouragement, explained how they were going to rescue the boat and calmed its captain. Other boats in the area called in to see if they could help. The Coast Guard received offers of assistance from both a warship from Sydney carrying a helicopter and the icebreaker Earl Grey. In addition, there was a fishing boat one hour away. Two hours later, the captain and crew were rescued. This underscores again that the boating community is a close one (sail and motor both) and that the Canadian coast guard provides a calm voice in emergencies.

Blair’s Workshop

During that stay in St Peters, Blair took some time out for boat maintenance. On the few times we’ve anchored on this trip, we noticed that our windlass no longer pulled the anchor up smoothly, so Blair took it apart and discovered that three bolts had sheared off. He drilled them out, replaced them, greased the two disks and reassembled the windlass - all this in our cockpit using his lap as a workshop table; a handy guy for sure!

The Bras d’Or Lakes are much like the 1000 Islands but with tall rolling hills on all sides. There are lots of protected little anchorages to chose from and (and this is a big AND), we have Roger’s cell phone coverage. This is a big plus for us as we’ve not had reliable cell coverage since Rimouski which means we haven’t had a good long palaver with our children since early July.

Hard earned holiday

From Escouminac, New Brunswick right down to Isle Madame, the fishermen we’ve met have told us that the Bras d’Or Lakes are a favourite destination of theirs for summer holidays. They clean their fishing boats, removing all traces of their livelihood, pack up their families and head south to the lakes. These guys are hard workers, pulling in 45,000 pounds of lobster in the six-week summer season alone. The two boats in this picture told us they’d kept some of their lobsters alive at the end of the season to bring down to the Lakes as a treat for dinner one night. When they got anchored, they put their lobsters overboard in nets to keep them happy ’til dinnertime but by the time dinner rolled around the lobsters were none too lively. The lobsters just couldn’t handle the lower salinity of the Bras d’Or Lakes. Although the Atlantic Ocean gets in here, there really isn’t a huge tidal exchange of water. That plus all the freshwater flowing into the lakes, made this too big a change for them.

Little Harbour

These lakes are also a popular destination for the racing set. Annual sailing regattas are held all over the lakes throughout the summer. Boats head this way from Halifax and all up and down the south and south-east shores of Nova Scotia because the fog and swell-free lakes provide a perfect race course. In Baddeck, there were no available slips at either the marina or the yacht club but we managed to snag a mooring can in amongst some pretty nice boats, most notably an Oyster 41, a Hinkley Bermuda 40 and a Beneteau 50; all here for the race week of August 5th.

The Hunter Gatherer

Once we entered the Bras d’Or Lakes we met up with good friends of Madcap’s from Halifax, Gary and Pam Upham on Atlantic Star. Gary, an oyster lover at heart, dinghied with us up to the head of Cape George Cove and hopped out to scoop oyster after oyster out of the eel grass and into our bucket. We had them as appetizers that night; likely the freshest oysters we’ve ever had.

The Bras d’Or Lakes is actually two lakes, Bras d’Or Lake and Great Bras d’Or Lake, separated by the Barra Strait. On Bras d’Or Lake, we anchored at Cape George Cove and Little Harbour, both little gems set amongst the hills. In Little Harbour, there is virtually nothing on shore except the Cape Breton Smokehouse and restaurant. This out-of-the way restaurant served their own smoked salmon and was surprisingly busy considering it’s isolation. When we arrived for a late supper, there were seven dinghies tied to their dock and about six cars in their parking lot.

Iona Hillside

We’ve not dined out an awful lot since we left Trident because we’re finding that our dining dollars have morphed into marina dollars instead. We’ve stayed at marinas quite a bit more than expected due to weather, lack of anchorages and sometimes just because we want easy access to a town. We enjoyed our dinner that night and the following day, we hailed the bridge tender at the Barra Strait Bridge to ask him to open his bridge and we sailed past Iona and into the Great Bras d’Or Lake.

Bell Estate

In Great Bras d’Or Lake, everyone makes a beeline to Baddeck, summer home of Alexander Graham Bell. We stayed one night around the corner in Maskell’s Cove and then another three right in Baddeck on a mooring ball. On the way into Baddeck, we detoured past the Bell estate which encompasses the entire end of a peninsula about three kilometers across the bay from the village of Baddeck. Bell purchased this property way back in the 1880s after he invented the telephone and over the years kept the townsfolk on their toes by setting the fastest water speed record in his HD-4 hydrofoil and piloting the Silver Dart in the first recorded flight in the British Commonwealth; he was just narrowly beaten out of the world record by the Wright Brothers.

We’ve enjoyed the Lakes. The pace of life is slower here, like most of the Maritimes. When you walk down the sidewalk, everyone says hello; even the teenagers! If you look like you’re even thinking of crossing the street, all traffic stops to let you jaywalk. If you look like you need a lift when you’re toting your groceries back to the boat, someone stops to offer you a ride and when the checkout girl at the Foodland says “you have yourself a really good day now”, you know she means it. This has been a good rest for us but tomorrow we leave the calm confines of the Lakes and go through St Peters lock and canal once again and head out into big waters. We’ll head back out into the Atlantic, across the shipping channels, around Cape Canso and point our bow towards Halifax.