Owl’s Head to Taylors Head

We woke up on Tuesday to completely windless conditions. We knew that we didn’t have a long sail ahead of us, so there was no rush to make the breakfast. We checked the wind forecast and confirmed that our decision not to sail to Sable island was the right one. There would have been no way for us to land.

Meandering through the islands

The cruising guide lays out the possibility of a way that is partially inshore, that is one doesn’t have to go into the Atlantic while heading east from Owl’s Head bay. Well, it’s not always that way, there are some islands that have extremely shallow depths to the north of them, and there are peninsulas that jet out far into the ocean. We decided to take that route to try to find wildlife.

We did find birds and seals. We saw very little human presence: a sailboat tucked into a well-protected lagoon, a sailboat motoring offshore and a fishing boat.

The Bawleen

For lunch we decided to tuck into a natural lagoon, described as “a unique biosphere” in the cruising guide. The guide mentioned a rock at the entrance which we slowly navigated. What the guide nor the chart mentioned was a rock in the middle of a 20-foot deep passage. Luckily we were not going very fast, and nobody got hurt. Salty Ginger stopped with a big boom. I put the engine into neutral, we reassessed the situation and motored around the rock to drop the anchor. There are many places where I have seen the depth meter disagree with the charts. In one place where it was supposed to be 13 feet, the depth meter showed 30. This rock and the passage inside the Bawleen was the first place where the disagreement went in the other direction. We inspected the bilges and everything looks dry. The bilge pump is not running more frequently than it used to before.

The lagoon is indeed very pretty and it is a bit surreal to be sitting in a huge lake shielded from the Atlantic and the shore by islands and low-lying rocks.

Katya and Pasha used the leftover steak and made quesadillas which we enjoyed while observing the fog rolling in. It was not that thick, so seeing it slowly cover more and more of the surrounding areas made the lagoon feel magical. The seals were occupying all of the nearby rocks that we could see and some of them would pop their heads out of the water not too far from Salty Ginger, checking out what it was that we were doing.

Despite the cruising guide’s mention of abundant fish, birds and even eagles, we didn’t catch anything (Mark tried very hard!), and we didn’t see that many winged friends.

Taylors Head Park

Outside the lagoon (we now knew where the damn rock was!) we saw more pillows of fog and as we motored south to go around the Taylors Head peninsula we saw the wall of fog through which we had to lay our course. Now the visibility was 100 meters. That is Nova Scotia in July.

As we were pulling into the huge bay where we planned to anchor, we could barely see the land. And now we had confusing information: the guide book recommended pulling in close to the beach and anchor there, but the charts showed rocky bottom. Given our earlier encounter with the rock I decided to be more paranoid than usual and even though the bottom appeared to be sandy, we attached a trip line to the anchor. Just in case it would get stuck under a rock.

We put together the dingy and motored ashore. Salty Ginger disappeared from sight, but we saw a few groups of people walking along the beach. And that gave us an opportunity to stretch our legs. The jellyfish were plentiful in the water and we found out from the locals that touching their tops didn’t burn the hands.

We go to Sable island

Before the dinner we checked the weather forecast. Favorable winds to go there, unclear conditions for landing, favorable winds to return to the mainland. Given that it would be unlikely for us to come back any time soon, we decided that we should go. If it will be too dangerous to land, we will take pictures (hopefully there won’t be too much fog) and go back.

We went through Salty Ginger and prepared a plan to improve the buoyancy of the dinghy. I also found a junior rain poncho which we will use to cover the bow as protection for a potential rogue surf wave. We went through the safety briefing: staying safe in the cockpit, man overboard procedure and deploying the life raft. We watched the orientation video which instructed us to keep 10 horse-length from the wild horses, 10 seal-lengths from the seals and 5 meters from the natural ponds. The video conveniently only shows airplane landing, and our potential landing will be quite different!

Breakfast is ready. We eat, clean up and go with the light northeasterly wind.