We departed Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, at 2330 UTC. I continued to use UTC time because I would get conflicting reports about the correct local time. Newfoundland and Iran set their standard time 30 minutes off the rest of the world. Nfd’s standard time is 3.5 hrs less than UTC. Nova Scotia and the rest of the maritime provinces use Atlantic time. Atlantic Standard Time (AST) is UTC - 4. As UTC has no daylight savings time, ADT would be UTC - 3. Several in Newfoundland told me they did not observe daylight savings time. I now believe that they were just eccentrics like my grandfather who despised daylight time because it made farmers have to get up before daylight if they wanted to get their produce to market on time. Something tells me fishermen would not like daylight savings time either, and that may be the source of some of the confusion.
The departure was uneventful. At 0020 on Saturday I reported to Port aux Basques Traffic Control that we cleared the harbor, and at 0030 we set sail in a 15 knot wind from 290°. Our course to the entrance to the Great Bras d’Or was 216°; the distance was 89 nautical miles. We were on a very comfortable close reach making good time taking the waves quite well. Unfortunately, this lasted only two hours. By 0230 the wind had backed to 270° and slowed to under 10 knots. We could no longer sail our course, and we could not sail anywhere close to the course with any speed. The seas seemed to have come up a bit. We rolled up the sails and motored down the course. It was pretty rough as we banged into the waves several times a minute. The crossing was neither pleasant nor unpleasant once the seas calmed down a bit. While you are doing it, motoring is not unpleasant, but once you turn the motor off and start sailing, you experience a sense of relief that the motor is no longer running.
At 1330 we reached the Bird Islands that lie just outside the entrance to the Great Bras d’Or. There we saw cormorants, an eagle and lots of seals, but no puffins or guillemots. In fact we saw more seals than we had seen on the whole trip so far. Clearly, there were no Inuit to hunt them here. In passing between two islands, we heard an unpleasant thump. We had touched bottom. It turns out that Maryam’s centerboard was down. With her centerboard up she draws about six feet; down, about 12. There was no damage, but it was startling.
At 1500 we entered the Great Bras d’Or under motor power. There was little wind; the sun was shinning brightly; it was almost T-shirt weather. Nova Scotia is a double peninsula lying northeast-southwest, attached to the mainland in its middle by a narrow strip of land. The northeastern part, called Breton, is actually separated from the rest by the narrow Strait of Canso. The northern part of Breton extends further east than the southern part and ends in Cape Breton. The Great Bras d’Or and the Bras d’Or Lakes are a fjord taking up much of the middle of the southern part of Breton. The fjord opens to the northeast in a narrow channel called the Great Bras d”Or, French for the golden arm. A canal with a lock has been dug that provides access through the other end of Breton into the Strait of Canso.
The Bras d’Or Lakes are a wonderful destination for US East Coast sailors. They offer plenty of good sailing water, innumerable anchorages, and, importantly for those used to sailing in Massachusetts and Maine, no tides and no fog. Breton is also becoming popular for vacation homes. Charles Gaines, my close childhood friend, wrote a very nice little book about building a cabin there. The Lakes’ increasing popularity was evident from the large number of new houses built since I was last here in the mid-1990s.
At 1730 we tied up at the public wharf in Baddeck. Baddeck is the main town on the Lakes. It is a typical small tourist destination with lots of T-shirt shops and several nice places to eat or drink coffee. There was a good marine shop that had a fuel filter I needed as well as some of the new LED lights that are becoming popular. Baddeck had neither of the two things I really needed: a solenoid for the generator and a fix for the starboard alternator. Fortunately, the wharf had shore power, so neither of these was critical. We had a very good seafood dinner (Trond had surf & Turf) with surprisingly good, inexpensive Nova Scotia wine, a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon served in carafes by the liter. The local yacht club was a disappointment, but we were able to find a few places where we could get internet access. And we were finally back in the modern world with digital cell phone service, the first since Reykjavik.
The departure was uneventful. At 0020 on Saturday I reported to Port aux Basques Traffic Control that we cleared the harbor, and at 0030 we set sail in a 15 knot wind from 290°. Our course to the entrance to the Great Bras d’Or was 216°; the distance was 89 nautical miles. We were on a very comfortable close reach making good time taking the waves quite well. Unfortunately, this lasted only two hours. By 0230 the wind had backed to 270° and slowed to under 10 knots. We could no longer sail our course, and we could not sail anywhere close to the course with any speed. The seas seemed to have come up a bit. We rolled up the sails and motored down the course. It was pretty rough as we banged into the waves several times a minute. The crossing was neither pleasant nor unpleasant once the seas calmed down a bit. While you are doing it, motoring is not unpleasant, but once you turn the motor off and start sailing, you experience a sense of relief that the motor is no longer running.
At 1330 we reached the Bird Islands that lie just outside the entrance to the Great Bras d’Or. There we saw cormorants, an eagle and lots of seals, but no puffins or guillemots. In fact we saw more seals than we had seen on the whole trip so far. Clearly, there were no Inuit to hunt them here. In passing between two islands, we heard an unpleasant thump. We had touched bottom. It turns out that Maryam’s centerboard was down. With her centerboard up she draws about six feet; down, about 12. There was no damage, but it was startling.
At 1500 we entered the Great Bras d’Or under motor power. There was little wind; the sun was shinning brightly; it was almost T-shirt weather. Nova Scotia is a double peninsula lying northeast-southwest, attached to the mainland in its middle by a narrow strip of land. The northeastern part, called Breton, is actually separated from the rest by the narrow Strait of Canso. The northern part of Breton extends further east than the southern part and ends in Cape Breton. The Great Bras d’Or and the Bras d’Or Lakes are a fjord taking up much of the middle of the southern part of Breton. The fjord opens to the northeast in a narrow channel called the Great Bras d”Or, French for the golden arm. A canal with a lock has been dug that provides access through the other end of Breton into the Strait of Canso.
The Bras d’Or Lakes are a wonderful destination for US East Coast sailors. They offer plenty of good sailing water, innumerable anchorages, and, importantly for those used to sailing in Massachusetts and Maine, no tides and no fog. Breton is also becoming popular for vacation homes. Charles Gaines, my close childhood friend, wrote a very nice little book about building a cabin there. The Lakes’ increasing popularity was evident from the large number of new houses built since I was last here in the mid-1990s.
At 1730 we tied up at the public wharf in Baddeck. Baddeck is the main town on the Lakes. It is a typical small tourist destination with lots of T-shirt shops and several nice places to eat or drink coffee. There was a good marine shop that had a fuel filter I needed as well as some of the new LED lights that are becoming popular. Baddeck had neither of the two things I really needed: a solenoid for the generator and a fix for the starboard alternator. Fortunately, the wharf had shore power, so neither of these was critical. We had a very good seafood dinner (Trond had surf & Turf) with surprisingly good, inexpensive Nova Scotia wine, a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon served in carafes by the liter. The local yacht club was a disappointment, but we were able to find a few places where we could get internet access. And we were finally back in the modern world with digital cell phone service, the first since Reykjavik.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment