Bras d’Or Lake

Next on our itinerary was the Bras d’or Lake, translated from French for “arm of gold”, a 100 km long and 50 km wide lake located inside of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The lake is connected to the Atlantic at both the south and north ends and it is also fed by freshwater rivers and the surrounding mountains, making it brackish and tidal. A few years ago, Allen and I attended a seminar on sailing the Bras d’Or Lake, so we were excited for this part of our journey.

We entered the lake from the north, sailing with a strong current down a narrow channel. The scenery was beautiful – lush, green forested hills framed the channel while the 4-knot current swirled the water, creating mini whirlpools and pushed us along at an impressive 12 knots. We passed under the Seal Island Bridge, and tucked into Otter Bay, a small cove just past the bridge, dropped the anchor and launched the dinghy to explore even further.

Next up was the popular vacation town of Baddeck (pronounced bah-DECK). There are many reasons to visit this charming town, including lots of small shops and restaurants, nearby beaches and camping, a well-stocked chandlery and most interesting for us, the Alexander Graham Bell Historic site. Bell was born in Scotland, grew up in Ontario, but spent most of his adult life in Baddeck. He is best known as the inventor of the telephone, but that just scratches the surface of Bell’s inventions and his incredible life and career as an inventor and educator for the hearing impaired.

The site, owned and managed by Parks Canada, houses a large museum with many examples of his inventions, original photographs, documents as well as models of aircraft he designed and built later in his life. The museum beautifully tells the story of the Bell family, how Alexander and his wife were deeply involved with the Baddeck community, lived out their lives here and are buried near their home on the Beinn Bhreagh peninsula. The Bell mansion is still owned by the Bell family and is not open to the public.

After one night in Baddeck we had some bad weather coming our way – strong wind warnings and we needed to get to a better protected location. We were fortunate to have some local knowledge on some safe places to ride out bad weather. Last summer in Newfoundland, we met Sue and Ron who live and sail in Cape Breton. They were incredibly helpful in suggesting anchorages not only for their beauty, but also safe harbours to ride out bad weather. We were not able to sail together this year, but they did drive out to visit us and brought veggies and blueberries from their garden – a wonderful treat!

When strong winds were forcasted, Sue suggested we head to Maskell Bay, just a few minutes by car from Baddeck and about an hour by sailboat. This bay is known as a “hurricane hole’ – a safe place to wait out severe weather. We tucked into the bay behind a sandbar and hunkered down for two days of heavy weather. The wind was fierce, and the rain was off & on, but the view was spectacular. The bay was big enough to shelter at least a couple dozen boats, but we shared it with only one other sailboat. The harbour is surrounded by densely forested hills dipping into a valley, and has a pretty lighthouse at its point. As a special treat, during the brief periods of it not raining, we watched a Bald Eagle hunting for its dinner (and kept Cat Stevens inside).

We anchored again at Marble Mountain and finally made our way to St. Peter’s, a small town at the end of the lake. While we usually prefer to anchor, we splurged on the marina in St. Peter’s because after a week of rough weather and isolated anchoring, we desperately needed hot showers, laundry and a restaurant meal. St. Peter’s had it all and we even did some scootering in the nearby provincial park.

As we exited the lock in St. Peter’s we were back in the Atlantic and we needed to get some miles behind us. Summer was quickly drawing to a close, the hurricane season has begun and we need to get south. The next big stop was Halifax, but we needed to put in 3 long days of sailing to get there.

The Nova Scotia shoreline is very different from Newfoundland. We have become accustomed to the soaring mountains and cliffs of Newfoundland, so Nova Scotia presented a new learning – rock dodging. Nova Scotia is green, lush and while it has hills and rocks, it is much flatter than Newfoundland. However, the rocky shoreline extends far offshore into the ocean, so it is not unusual to be sailing several miles off-shore and to see rocks and shoals awash. They are well-marked and appear in charts, but this is not the place to take your eyes off the charts. Another new factor was the distance required to travel to reach safe harbours. It was at least an hour of travel time just to get inland to reach our anchorage.

We had an interesting experience on our first evening after leaving St. Peter’s. After traveling over 7 hours on a rollie ocean, then another hour to reach Larry’s River, a bay where we planned to anchor, we discovered the bay was not suitable for anchoring. This is rare, but a pretty bad situation, being tired, daylight running out, and not having a safe place to spend the night. I spotted a wharf with a commercial fishing boat in the distance, so we gave it a try. There were a couple buoys at the head of the channel, but none as we entered the channel. As Allen watched our depth suddenly decrease, I noticed new channel markers – DEAD TREES planted in rows leading to the wharf. Not feeling overly confident, but running out of options, we motored on very slowly. We reached the wharf without incident, tied-up up and hoped we had not taken anyone’s spot. A couple more fishing boats came in behind us, they were friendly and docked on the other side of the wharf telling us we were welcome to stay put for the night, but warned us to leave at high tide because of the channel depth. We set an early alarm, slept well and pushed-off the wharf at first light of morning, but not before collecting a gift that was left on our doorstep with a note: “From the The Redhead in Larry’s River – have a good trip.” We love Nova Scotia!