Log #52b Exploring the Bras d’Or Lakes - Part 1

Webbs Cove, Isaacs Harbour, NS

June 25, 2011

Hi Folks,

We are hunkered down for a second night in this sheltered cove on the mainland. We left Baddeck a week ago, have gunkholed through parts of the Bras d’Or lakes as this log outlines, and exited through St. Peters Canal to start our passage down the coast as I will report in my next log. The weather was gloomy, cold and windy today so we stayed put, giving me a chance to complete this log and get it ready to send as soon as we can get access to the internet.

 Right now I just finished going ashore to collect drift wood for our solid fuel stove. This wood supplements the fireplace logs I purchased and cut into thirds for burning in our small stove. It heats the boat up very cosily, and the glass plate on the door allows us to see the flickering flames. I have a quiet music station on the Sirius radio, watching our stove fireplace, and am communicating with our friends on the laptop with this log and covering letter. Life is good. It is good to be back on the water, sailing, exploring, anchoring, and  living in our home of Veleda.

It is quite cold and we have to keep the stove going during the day and have a Coleman camping heater to keep the boat at an acceptable temperature after our stove goes out. I may look for coal when we get to Halifax. It lasts longer at night. I have smoked the boat up a few times, and we have a wide stove pipe elbow on top of the boat’s chimney on deck to channel the strong winds aft to prevent blowbacks. It works.

I will be making a Picasa photo album with more pictures of Cape Breton later, but am attaching several pictures with this log. I also learned a bit about blogs, and am in the process of transferring my logs to one. I will keep up with my E-mailing of current logs until further notice, but hope to have even the current ones on a blog. Many people have suggested I write a book of our travels and lifestyle. My blog will be my book. For it I am editing the logs written (over 400 so far) and adding pictures to them, something I could not do with a published hard copy book. I will let you know the blog address when I am more organized with it. I have a friend met in St. Peters to thank for helping me start to blog. Thanks to Bob and Kathy Groves of Easy Go. More about this interesting couple in later logs.

Weather is lousy, but it is good to be back home on the water.

All the best,

Aubrey

~~~~(\_~~~~  ~~~~(\_~~~~ ~~~~(\_~~~~ ~~~~(\_~~~~

Log #52b Exploring the Bras d’Or Lakes - Part 1

Webbs Cove, Isaacs Harbour, NS

June 14, 2011

We finally left Baddeck Marine at 1100 on June 17 for this year’s sailing program down the east coast and over to Guatemala. Off at last!

Touring Cape Breton

View from Veleda over Kidston Is. light

Town wharf with BYC

It has been over two weeks since we arrived in Baddeck on June 1 and boarded Veleda next day, June 2. These past two weeks have involved much maintenance in cloudy rainy cold weather, and one overnight check-out sail as reported in my last log. Baddeck is a pleasant town with good facilities. I enjoyed watching the Stanley Cup playoffs at the Baddeck yacht Club near the marina, even if the Canucks lost. From Veleda we had a good view across to Kidston Island, the lighthouse on the tip, and the Bell Estate across the channel. The Alexander Graham Bell Museum in town is extremely good, portraying his life interests and inventions, far more than just the telephone. The Lobster Supper restaurant did not open until the weekend we left, but we had a chance to enjoy its all you can eat chowder and mussels as well as their specialty, LOBSTER.

We took some time off and rented a car for a couple of days to go around the Cabot Trail and get final supplies. The 268 kilometre (168 miles) circumnavigation of the upper peninsula and Cape Breton Highlands National Park was quite enjoyable. We drove across central Cape Breton to the west coast and up through several Acadian fishing villages, seeing many homes and businesses flying the Acadian flag, the French tri-colour with a gold star in the corner.  The park is spectacular with scenic vistas from the road winding along the mountainous coast (see attached photo) and over the tree clad highlands. We didn’t have time to take the whale watching tour boat, but on our return down the east coast we took a “busman’s holiday” by taking the Bird Island Boat Tours trip out to a couple of outer islands outside the Great Bras d’Or Channel. 

Great Cormorant drying its wings

Razorbills nesting

The weather was cold and grey, and the sea was lumpy, but the bird life was spectacular, as these islands are rookeries (see attached photos) for great black-backed gulls, razorbills, black guillemots, kittiwakes, double crested cormorants, great cormorants, and the cuddly looking puffins. We planned to take the whale watching tour next day, but storm conditions prevented the boats from going out.

I was getting “antsy” to leave, and we could have done so the previous day after our final watering, pump out and refuelling, but Judy wanted to take the pressure off and have another night with electrical heat in this cold miserable weather.

Down the Bras d’Or Lakes

Our departure was a cool day, relatively clear for a change, as we motored out into the larger St. Andrews Channel. Two hours later we went through Barra Strait Bridge into the large southern portion of the Bras d’Or Lakes.

A couple of notes about the Bras d’Or Lakes (the name means “Golden Arms”) -- This is a single body of water extending through the southeast half of Cape Breton Island, but it is divided into several channels (Great and Little Bras d’Or Channels in the north, St. Patricks Channel, St. Andrews Channel), bays (West Bay and East Bay), Barra Strait in the middle, and St. Peters Inlet, canal, and lock at the south end. All of these bodies of water run in a northeast -- southwest direction. They may be the remains of fault lines, possibly a continuation of the fault through Scotland, known as the Great Glen, site of the Caledonian Canal which encompasses Loch Ness, formed in the supercontinent of Pangaea before the tectonic shifts creating North America, Eurasia and Africa.

Barra Strait is named after Barra in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Many other place names on Cape Breton are of Scottish origin. Of course it is known that the name of the province, Nova Scotia, means New Scotland. We sailed through the Caledonian Canal and the Outer Hebrides in 2000, and had a day at the beach in Barra. The beach at Barra is a wide shallow beach which accommodates the Barra airport, the only airport in the world which has its arrivals and departure determined by the tides, as planes can land on the wide tidal beach only at low tide (see attached photos).

We called the bridge at Barra Strait and it opened for us as we approached. Motoring into the larger main body of the Bras d’Or Lakes, we went past the quaint town of Iona (another Scottish name from the Outer Hebrides) and over to the bay and cove studded peninsula on the northwestern tip of West Bay. One of the reasons the Bras d”Or Lakes are so popular and scenic is because of all the little bays, coves, inlets and creeks that can be explored and have good holding and well protected anchorages. We wended our way into Crooked Cove to anchor (45 54.700N, 060 59.781W)   behind two islands joined by a narrow marshy sandspit (see attached photo). This is an idyllic isolated anchorage which we explored with the dinghy. We were unable to circumnavigate the islands as there was a shallow marsh linking the one island to the mainland. This was only 20 miles from Baddeck.

Engine Problems

After a leisurely breakfast we motored six miles around to anchor in Seals Cove (45 54.700N, 061 05.381W) behind Lewis Island in Denys Basin. It is another nice anchorage, but we wanted to explore the Marble Mountain area, which was highly recommended. As we entered Clarke Cove we saw a British boat, Sulana, anchored near Marble Mountain wharf, and went over to say “Hi” to them, then motored up into the inner bay of the cove. It was a well sheltered bay with tree-clad Marble Mountain on one side and a narrow peninsula with a couple of expensive looking cottages on the other side. While going up this stretch and on our way out I put the Yanmar diesel engine at full throttle of 3400 rpm for about 15 minutes. We had been advised that the Yanmar engines needed to be worked at full throttle to clear the pistons, and were advised to do so for ten to twenty minutes at the end of each days motoring. Veleda really moves along at over seven knots at full throttle, charging through the water with her stern lowered into the water as if she is trying to get up on a plane.

We have done this a couple of times before. However, on our way out the cove a red warning light came on – overheating! I shut the engine off in mid channel and we drifted as we removed the steps to look into the engine compartment. The smell of a hot engine, and steam was streaming out of the compartment. But all the belts were fine, and the water reservoir was half filled, so we couldn’t immediately assess what the problem was. In the meantime, we were drifting in mid channel. I started the engine again and the warning light did not come on for a few minutes, then it started again. When I checked while the engine was still running at low revolutions, I saw a stream of pink fluid cascading into the bilge. We had a water leak somewhere! We turned around and slowly manoeuvred into an adjacent cove behind McMillans Point, where we shut off the engine and dropped anchor (45 49.459N, 061 00.316W). When we checked the engine after letting it cool down, there was no fluid in the heat exchanger. We started to put in antifreeze, and saw it streaming out the side of the engine. A bleed valve had loosened and was letting the water drain out. After tightening it up we put in more antifreeze solution and saw no more leakage. We were sheltered OK, but there was a strong wind warning on the weather broadcast, and so we motored around four miles to Little Harbour. This well sheltered pocket bay is almost landlocked, with a very narrow entrance. We nestled close in shore, protected from all directions.