Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

Thursday, August 28, 2008

046-5.940 N
060-44.880 W

Ahoy from Baddeck, Nova Scotia!

Baddeck is a tourist town on the Bras d'Or lake on Cape Breton, which you know based upon your thorough reading of my last log, is the northern most island of Nova Scotia. :-) There aren't many town on Bras d'Or, so this one fills the need for people who want to tour the lake. We had a nice sail to here a couple of days ago and we pulled into the docks at Baddeck marine with the intention of renting a car to explore the rest of the Cape Breton.

While we have little interest in wandering through the multitudes of gift shops, we really enjoyed our visit to the Alexander Graham Bell museum. He spent a significant portion of his life here and we were quite amazed at all of the inventions which are credited to him. We all know the story of the telephone and Mr. Watson, but did you know that he was heavily involved with aviation and hydroplanes? I certainly didn't. The photo to the right is of a replica of the HD4, which is a hydroplane that they developed.

We also met up with m/v Venture, which is a boat that we've been seeing on a regular basis since we entered the Erie Canal. Venture is a 65' Fleming, and Tony Fleming and crew have been out cruising around on it. This version of the boat is Tony's R&D boat, so he keeps trying out new equipment on it. It must be tough traveling around the world experimenting with new systems and being able to write that off as a business expense. It sounds like a great job, if you can get it. We had dinner with them and it was nice to finally be able to spend some time getting to know them.

The next morning awoke to heavy rain pelting the deck. After consulting the Internet weather radar, I saw it wasn't raining N and W of here, so we retrieved our rental car and headed out to see Cape Breton. It wasn't very nice to start, but as we approached the W coast, the skies got brighter and hints of blue even showed through. Yeah! The interior of Cape Breton reminds me of parts of New Hampshire, with low mountains and rolling hills descending in to broad valleys. That all changes when you hit the coast and find steep cliffs cascading into the ocean below. Many of the cliffs are red granite, which on a sunny day, would provide a stunning contrast to the blue skies.

Once you start this trip, you basically have to do a complete 300 km circumnavigation of Cape Breton as there are no roads crossing the interior. There is a road taking you 15-20 km to the far north tip of the island, but you have to transverse it both directions. The west coast and northern sections of the island were most picturesque and interesting to us. There are a ton of small gift shops, which all seem to offer the same types of items (pottery, jewelry, etc), and we have no idea how these people survive with such a brief tourist season. Based upon the number houses with lobster traps stacked in their yards, it appears that many of the residents are in the lobster business.

Our plan was to leave today and move down the lake towards the lock at St. Peter's, but the wind is howling, the rain is coming down and it's foggy, so we may sit here another day.

Enjoy and be well!

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser:

Dockage at Baddeck Marine is $1/ft. They have a very limited number of slips. There appears to be quite a few empty moorings which are either Baddeck Marine's or belong to the Baddeck Yacht Club. Nice staff and big, clean showers.

We rented a car from Rent-a-Wreck in Baddeck, which is your only option for many miles around. We got a compact for $44 (with taxes), but they only give you 200 free km and after that it's $0.20/km. We racked up 370 km...

Log ID: 1272