Yarmouth—with its 16-foot tide swings—is our last intended stop in Canada this go-round.
Not that we’re anxious to leave, of course, because we love Canada. Over the last four summers we’ve spent a good deal of time in five of the thirteen provinces. We’re qualified to opine that the people are great and the scenery is awesome, and we’re gracious enough to overlook the abomination that is poutine.* But Hurricane Dorian now is tracking towards Nova Scotia. At best we can get to Maine and avoid the storm entirely. At worst processing a property or life insurance claim from Maine will be much easier. But first we have to get to Maine. But even more first we had to get to Yarmouth.
As of last night, our plan was to get up at 4:00 to catch the tidal current. No Drama planned to leave later and anchor, so we said our farewells. At 4:00, however, we found her lit up like Christmas with Jeff and Fred and Ann and Zak and Sheila all buzzing around preparing to leave. Turns out their evening cocktails yielded the realization that they just couldn’t bear to fall behind goobers with far less boating experience, so both boats took off in the dark. And by dark, we mean pitch-black dark. No moon and no-other-light-source kind of dark. Thankfully after a while it got just light enough to see, which conveniently—and perhaps not coincidentally—allowed us to watch an awesome sunrise across the Atlantic horizon.
After that, not too much going on, but at least the water was calmer than predicted. Apparently despite the lighthouse, Cape Sable—the actual Southernmost Point in Nova Scotia—enjoys a disproportionally large number of shipwrecks. We’re not sure why, as we—the aforementioned goobers—saw the light and not much reason to sink.
That’s right baby, we successfully navigated eastern side of The Shipwreck Shoreline! The coolest part of the trip was dodging the islands through Schooner Passage.
The islands weren’t necessarily majestic, but still photo-worthy.
As we approached Yarmouth, we passed The Cat, a super-fast ferry providing service between here and Bar Harbor, Maine.
Except when we looked into sending Shannon over on The Cat so she could catch a plane in Portland, it wasn’t running. And when Fred looked into taking it over so he could catch a plane in Portland, it wasn’t running. In fact, the ferry hasn’t actually ferried anyone all year. The locals are blaming Bar Harbor infrastructure and the lack of a customs station on the other side, but all we know for sure is that The Cat is a nice big boat just wasting away in Nova Scotia.
Unlike The Cat, the waterfront webcam was in fact operating. We took a screen-shot selfie as we lined up to dock at Killam Brothers Marina.
Around these parts, the Killam name is a big deal. A mess o’ Killams started a shipping and chandlery business circa 1838, and Killams continued to run the business until the last one gave it up in 1999, although there’s still some tenuous connection to the wharf and marina and a museum and other stuff.
We generally accept only the “early to bed” part of Ben Franklin’s proverb, so were fairly uninspired when we landed this afternoon. But we still mustered the oomph to walk around town. The park was nice.
The shops were cute.
But that’s about the sum of our exploration. Tomorrow we face thirteen hours across the Gulf of Maine on a day that’s supposed to be crappy but less crappy than the following bunch of days. To a near certainty the blog report on re-entry will be untimely.
____________
* Deep in the Amazonian rain forest, indigenous cave-dwellers, untouched by civilization and uneducated even by third-world standards, intuitively know that ketchup is the only sauce belonging on a french fry. Okay maybe sometimes cheese. ABSOLUTELY NO GRAVY.