Day 27, July 14 -- Clarke Cove (Marble Mountain) to Little Bay to Malagawatch Harbor -- 12.5 NM

During our walk in Clarke Cove we met a man from the city  at the north end of Cape Bretton, Sydney, who was restoring what had been a general store for the quarrymen into a home. Also a steel miner from north of the Arctic Circle was home on leave and told us of a German style restaurant in Little Bay, which was intermediate between Clarke Cove and Malagawatch Cove. The quarry here at Marble Mountain was the big employer here from the 1890s to the 1920s. A  sign on the dock said there was a $7 per day for dockage fee. It was an honor system - a box into which to put your money. Like in the US Virgin Islands. I like to pay what I owe, but did this fee apply to tieing up a dink for an hour?  I was told that it did not.

Here is the little lighthouse at the entrance to Clarke Cove, the one shown on the cruising guide chartlet in yesterday's post. Most of the lights here look alike and are not very tall. Theyu dont need to be and most sailing is by day and they show up very well. A lot better than the buoys, which are tiny. 

Little Bay is not very little, almost a mile long and more than half a mile wide, but the deep water in its entrance is very narrow.

Here is the Cape Bretton Smokehouse, from ILENE, and the reverse view.

We enjoyed the house specialty, Altantic salmon smoked by the owners; in other words, what every New York deli calls Nova Lox. The owners have a 33 ton steel sailboat that they sailed here 17 years ago from Germany via Africa and the Caribbean. I also tried an Alsterwasser, which was the name that our last boat came with. I had to do it in honor of the Tartan. Beer mixed with Sprite! I never have to do that again, thank you.

The wind finally came up in the afternoon and we were able to sail around the islands to Malagawatch harbor at about 5 knots with Genny alone, before motoring through the passage to our anchorage. Lene manned to iNavix program and navigated us, by a safer, longer, outside course than I had planned. But once in the harbor she relinquished these duties back to me. I stayed outside the five meter curve, i.e., in 16.4 feet of water or more.  But glancing at the depth meter I saw nine, eight, seven and swerved sharply toward the other bank before the depth meter started yelling at me. We got to six feet which is way outside of ILENE’s comfort zone. I believe our depth sounder a lot more than Canadian charts.

We anchored in 14 feet with 60 feet of snubbed chain. A hundred yards away was s/v “Kite” a lovely Valiant yacht out of Portland Maine. A neighbor at last. Though some people say that the reason they like Nova Scotia more than Maine is the solitude. For the short hops in the relatively calm waters of the Bras d’Or Lakes, until further notice, we are towing our dink to save the effort of lifting it even though this costs us at least half a knot. But having the dink so readily accessible and seeing a US flagged sailboat, our first since Shelburne, I drove over to say hello. They are former New Yorkers  and have sailed in the Pacific but are headed for Newfoundland. It is nearer to Portland than Cape Breton is to New York.

The cruising guide said that eagles soar here but we did not see them. Avid readers will recall that we spent a night in Malagash Cove. Now we are in Malagawatch Harbor. I do not think that these are named after a certain sweet Spanish wine. Rather, the fact that these are Native American names is corroborated by the chart which shows a reservation for this tribe nearby.

Calm next morning, most all of them are. the wind comes up later.