August 22-23: Yarmouth to Grand Manan

     We left Yarmouth to make the passage across the Bay of Fundy after a busy and yet leisurely morning.  We were up early and Dan ferried me over to the yacht club for one last load of laundry while he spent the time readying the Willie Dawes for our first guests!  Our friends Jon and Ann from the Volunteer came over for pancakes.  Dan makes great pancakes.  Ann brought fresh strawberries, which were just the right topping.  They too are crossing over to Maine, but they had plans to stay in Nova Scotia for a few more days and so the table talk was mostly about judging the right tide and planning the right time to leave for the crossing.  It’s 65 miles or so to Grand Manan.  We left around ten am;  they decided to rent a car and see a few more sights, maybe do some hiking.

Leaving Yarmouth - back into the fog...

    Our crossing couldn’t have been smoother.  The sea was like glass at times, like gently ripply satin at others.  It was very thick of fog, though, and we saw a few seabirds but nothing else.  (One of those birds was a tiny thing and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was - a dovekie?  A sandpiper?  Some kind of tern our book didn’t list?  We never did figure it out.)  We timed the crossing pretty well, and got a boost from the various currents and tides as we crossed.

     About seven pm we were close enough to Grand Manan to hear the fog horns, but we didn’t see anything until we were literally right next to it.   We decided to skip the southerly Seal Harbor and headed right for Grand Harbor, where there is a small protected fishing harbor at Ingall’s Head.  Dan had been wanting to tie up to a fishing boat, and here is where we finally did.  We tied alongside the Plain Jane 1 for the night, and Tommie the cat was entertained by seagulls landing on the boats all around us.

    We were in no hurry in the morning.  I baked toffee squares and Dan toyed with changing the oil, but happily set aside that task to chat with the captain of the Plain Jane 1 who came by to see us.  The two of them had a friendly discussion about Grand Manan, the fishing industry, and football for a couple hours.  

    We set off for North Head Harbour (Grand Manan) just after lunch, once again traveling in the fog and bursting into the clear to tie up at another fishing wharf.  This is where the ferry runs to and from St. John’s, and it is a short walk down the road to Swallowtail Lighthouse, which is a beautifully done, newly opened museum.  We walked down the brand new boardwalk to the lighthouse which was perched on a rocky cliff  and went in to read about lighthouse families and their experiences.  You can go all the way up to the lens.  Dan and I had a long talk with the young volunteer there, a local high school student, while we waited out a passing shower.  She filled us in about the efforts to preserve the lighthouse as well as life on Grand Manan and answered our questions about where to get ice (at a local cafe) and where the grocery store was (in another town.)  Dan wanted to take her home with us and introduce her to our older son.  

     We were told by the owner of the ketch that took people out whale watching that all the moorings just outside the wharf were privately owned, but free to use if unoccupied, so we moved the Willie Dawes over to an empty mooring and settled in for the night as the fog drifted back in around us.  

North Head Harbor, before we moved to the mooring.