We had a lovely day our last day in PEI. We motored up the river to a town called Montague and lucked into Montague days. There was free music, raft races, kids games and wonderful strawberry shortcake to be had.
This is the view of the marina, with the stage with the free music off to the right. The next shot is of one of the homemade rafts that raced down the river, rather a unique design.
The day after we had a great 50 nm crossing of the Northumberland Strait, which is between, PEI, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The wind was aft of beam at about 10 -15 knots, just about perfect.
Here I am cleaning the stainless steel on the way from PEI to Nova Scotia, I hadn't done it yet this year and I wanted to boat to look it's best for when we go in Race the Cape, a six day race around the Bras D'Or Lakes.
We passed through the Canso Canal, between the Nova Scotia mainland and Cape Breton the next day and headed to Guysborough to visit our friend Kate from Yellowknife. Here we are just through the foggy locks and the bridge is swinging shut. All traffic too and from Cape Breton had to pause for little old us, I always find that an unusual fact. Why not make us wait until there is another boat to go through, pretty cool !! Kate
is involved with the recreation department and has got a grant to run a sailing school there. She needed some help with the light on her mast and in short order I was hanging off the top, unscrewing the light and rewiring it, putting butts on electrical wires and shrink wrapping them with a propane torch. Lucky I didn't burn myself up or drop the darn thing and brain someone down below.We are now in St. Peter's just in the Bras D'Or Lakes after spending the night in Arichat on Isle Madame. There we had a lovely walk down a rocky beach, just us the rocks and the waves. Almost at the end of the beach Barry found a message in a bottle. Someone in PEI had put it in the there in April, 2014 and asked that whoever found it let her know where and when they found it. It was quite the coincidence the next day when I checked my e-mail to find a message from a fellow in Somalia that found the bottle I tossed in the water when we crossed the equator near the Maldives in 2011. Who would think that the two incidences would happen so close together. There is one more bottle I tossed in, in 2008 when we crossed the equator going to the Galapagos, I wonder if anyone will ever find it!!
This is our passage through the St. Peter's Canal, the entrance from the Atlantic side, exiting the locks and the swing bridge still opened up after our passage. The canal was blasted out of the rock in 1869 to provide a route into the Bras D'Or Lakes from the Atlantic. Before that they used to pull boats along a portage over a road of logs to get them from one side to the other. There is a very nice Marina here with showers, laundry and acces to St. Peter's. I just visited the German bakery and bought some yummy sunflower bread. The festivities start tomorrow so we have some chores up our own mast to try and get done this afternoon.
