Golden Arm

We are under way southbound across Chedabucto Bay, headed for Canso, Nova Scotia. I expect I will not finish typing under way and will finish the post from there. This morning we left behind Cape Breton Island, passing along the east coast of Petit-de-Gras Island.

A different view of Jerome Point Light, as seen from Battery Provincial Park in St. Peters.

Friday morning we weighed anchor for the four-hour cruise to Baddeck, the only port of any substance inside the lake. Our cruise took us through the Barra Straight and the Grand Narrows, where we had to request opening of the bascule highway bridge. A railroad swing bridge also crosses the narrows, but the line is abandoned and the bridge is locked open.

In the Barra Strait approaching the Grand Narrows and its pair of drawbridgtes.

We dropped the hook in Baddeck Harbor between some unused yacht club moorings and a handful of anchored sailboats (map) in the early afternoon. After getting squared away we splashed the tender and I ran ashore to explore the small town. My first stop was the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, a museum right in town dedicated to the inventor who made Baddeck his home for the latter half of his life. His estate, Beinn Bhreagh, still in the hands of his descendants, is visible across the bay from downtown.

Vector at anchor in Baddeck.

Unsurprisingly, the museum quickly glosses over the invention of the telephone, which happened on US soil when he was a naturalized US citizen (Bell was born in Scotland), and focuses instead on his accomplishments as a Canadian. Bell was heavily involved in the development of hydrofoil technology and the first powered airplane flight in Canada. Replicas of the hydrofoil and airplane are museum artifacts, along with what's left of the preserved hull of the hydrofoil. The museum was heavy on storyboards and light on artifacts, and actually pretty run down as museums go, but admission was only cdn$8.50.

The working replica of the Silver Dart, with the replica of the HD-4 hydrofoil behind and to the left.

After departing the museum I made a big loop of downtown, scoping out a few eateries and noting a well-stocked chandlery at the boatyard. Given that it was Friday night, I made a reservation at the Bell Buoy Bistro for dinner. There are no actual bell buoys in Lake Bras d'Or, so we assume this was a word play on the inventor. Another restaurant, already fully booked, was the Cable Room at the Telegraph House. After dinner we walked the length of the town to the Co-Op grocery for a few items before returning to the tender at the yacht club's dinghy dock.

Our view from dinner at the Freight Shed.

Saturday was forecast to be a dreary day, raining all day, and we elected to just stay put. I zipped ashore just as the chandlery opened to pick up a bilge pump that I had spotted there on my walk, and which turned out to be the one I needed for the tender. Bilge pump in hand, I was going to walk a block uphill to the Bean There Cafe to pick up breakfast sandwiches to take home, but it was already sprinkling and instead I made a quick retreat. We decked the tender to give ourselves the option to depart if need be, and to keep it from filling with rainwater since the automatic bilge pump is on the fritz.

Grosvenor Hall, The original post office and customs house. The clock works.

As the rain started in earnest I immersed myself in the water heater project, fully replacing the return hose with the 16' of heater hose I had picked up in St. Peters. I did not have enough hose to also do the supply side, and the return hose turned out not to be the problem. I briefly contemplated replacing the supply hose with the old return hose, but decided that, for the amount of work involved, I'd rather use fresh hose rather than the 20-year-old one I removed, so the next phase will have to wait until I can source more hose (the auto parts place in St. Peters had not yet restocked as of yesterday).

Baddeck as seen from our anchorage.

The rain let up by 2pm and by 3 it was pleasant outside, and so I ascended to the boat deck for another key project. The steering on the tender had once again become very stiff, even though I had just fixed it in Manhattan barely two months ago. It was easier to get it apart this time and I again cleaned it up as best I could before re-greasing it. It's now on my list to pick up a shotgun cleaning brush, which is really the right tool for the job, whereas I have been making do by rodding Scotch-Brite through with a socket extension.

Best shot I could get of Bell's estate, Beinn Brheagh, as we passed.

It was nice enough at dinner time to splash the tender and return ashore to the Freight Shed restaurant for a nice dinner on the patio. The building was literally the freight shed for the commercial wharf, which itself has been lined with floating face docks and re-purposed as a transient marina. After dinner we made a short loop through town just to stretch our legs. On our way back to the tender we ran into the good folks on Loon, whom we had met in Summerside.

The lake was flat calm on our way to Chapel Island.

We were not quite done with the raw beauty of the lake, and so yesterday, after heading into town for breakfast sandwiches at the Highwheeler Cafe, we weighed anchor and set our sights on a group of anchorages more or less on the return route back to St. Peters. The entire lake is rimmed with spectacular anchorages, and we could easily spend a full month just gunkholing the lake, but we need to be moving along, and we opted not to press further into the arms of the lake, effectively doubling every additional mile.

Vector at the east wall in St. Peters. The dock is lined with pots. Battery Park behind.

I swung past Beinn Bhreagh on our way out of the harbor, and after passing back through the Grand Narrows we ended the day by dropping the hook in a semicircular bay north of Chapel Island (map), well away from civilization. The island itself is First Nations land, but the small settlement is at the other end of the island, and we spent the afternoon and evening surrounded by nothing but trees. I went outside after dark to take in the sky, which was spectacular on a clear night.

Another of the whimsical fireplugs, this one an aquarium. The town is also full of these painted bikes with flowers in their baskets.

Perhaps prescient to have fitted this one with a face mask, it's actually in front of the town pharmacy.

Yesterday morning we wrapped up our stay in Lake Bras d'Or, with a short one-hour cruise bringing us back to the lock just after lunch. After clearing the lock we tied up on the east side wall (map), a bit further out of the traffic lane, behind a pair of lobster boats., which seem to just live here, their pots stacked on the bulkhead. I walked to the auto parts place to see if they had restocked the heater hose (no), and then looped through town before returning via the park. In the evening we walked to Louie's Cozy Corner for dinner.

These Jolly Rogers where on every light pole, with other pirate or mutineer-themed articles about town. I learned that St. Peters Pirate Days festival is coming up in just a couple weeks. No idea why, although numerous pirates were hanged in Nova Scotia.

Update: We are anchored in the small harbor of Canso (map). Winds were expected to pick up throughout the day and we are happy to have the hook down in the lee by 12:30. At some point under way Louise checked again to learn that winds are now forecast into the 20s overnight (at one point the forecast called for even more) and it looks like we'll be pinned down here for two days at least. From here on out we'll be alternating making tracks when the wind lays down with spending multiple nights tucked in somewhere along the coast. Our next major port of call will be Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I walked the campground at Battery Park at sunset, and some of the sites made me a bit wistful. I love living on our boat, but there are parts of our camping life I miss dearly.

A quick final note about today's post title: Yes, Bras d'Or literally translates to "Golden Arm," and evidently I have a penchant for making these literal place-name translations into post titles. I once titled a post from Baton Rouge "Red Stick" and apparently baffled a number of readers. But, in fact, there is no golden arm in the lake, and the name is the result of mistaken folk etymology, a back-formation from the latter part of Labrador. It's on my mind because yesterday I had an exchange with friends who are visiting Havre de Grace, and I'm sure you can now guess the title of the post I linked for them.

Sunset over St. Peters, unobstructed by trees. Or a lighthouse.