Sadly we had to take Clara & Bill to the airport in Halifax - we hated to see them leave.  As a consolation, we took the coastal meandering route back to Lunenburg and we made a brief stop to see the famous Peggy's Cove.  The cove is a tiny fishing village with a classic Nova Scotia lighthouse, but it's interesting since this particular area is very noticeably shaped by glaciers.

We haven't spent any time on the Fundy side of Nova Scotia, and we wanted to see a little of it before we head south, so we rented a car and arranged for a rafting trip on the tidal bore with Clara & Bill.  We drove to Truro at the end of the Minas Basin where the tide meets the Shubenacadie River.  The rafting trip takes you out in the mouth of the river and you get to repeatedly attack the white water waves created when the force of the huge incoming tide meets the outflowing river and actually turns it backwards.  This is the "before" photo - looking across the Basin.  Everything that's green will be the edge of the shoreline once the tide comes in.  The little reddish specks in the center of the photo are some of the rafts gathering at the water's edge at low tide. 

This "after" shot was taken from the same spot, and the old shoreline is now under about 33' of water.

What happens in between is the interesting bit.  There are a lot of bald eagles around since the river is a good food source for them.  They never cease to take my breath away!

As far as the rafting goes, the actual tidal bore isn't as violent or wild as you might think, but it's easy to see rough water meeting placid river water.  The initial meeting is rather tame, but as the ocean picks up velocity and volume, rapids build up shaped by the contours of the riverbed.  It's very safe whitewater rafting since the water is deep and there aren't any rocks.  The rafts have 60hp engines on them, and they crash through the white water, then zip back downriver and do it again.  The rapids continue to move upriver, so we chased them for about 2 hours.  Each raft driver would gauge the fear level of their group and find suitably sized waves.  We were crazies and ended up with big mouthfuls of water from laughing so hard when the waves would crash on us.  What fun!!  The river is very cloudy with a reddish brown silt, so the effect felt like having buckets of cold watery chocolate milk slammed into your face.  We were utterly soaked - Jim was washed out of the boat at one point when it swamped, and Bill & I were in the bow taking the brunt of the waves.  Clara was the only smart one!  We got one of those disposable waterproof cameras to snap some photos in the deluge, but we'll have to wait to get them developed to relive the experience.  Here are Soggy Bill, Damp Clara, and Dripping Jim.

After a shower and a nice BBQ at the rafting company, we spent the night at a lovely B&B in Truro.  The town is interesting - they lost a lot of big elm trees to Dutch Elm Disease, so various artists carved the remaining tree trunks to honor various people.  Neat!

Our good friends Clara & Bill flew into Halifax to cruise with us - it's exciting to be able to share some of this with them.  We had been saving a lot of our touring for the southbound leg of the trip, so we headed to the famous Citadel in Halifax - a really interesting fort that was sunk into the top of a hill to provide a landward defense for the city.  It was staffed by a regiment of Scottish Highlanders in the mid-1800's, and once again Parks Canada has pulled out all the stops with wonderful actors, costumes, displays, and ambiance! 

After touring town we cruised down the south coast to a large area known as Mahone Bay.  It's a large bay with many islands and nooks and crannies.  We visited each of the three towns in the Bay - Chester, Mahone Bay (the village), and Lunenburg.  Each is charming and relatively small, with art galleries and interesting shops. 

Chester was in the midst of (sailing) Race Week, which was fun to see.  The village also has a small playhouse and a youth theatre program in the summer.  We lucked into the opening of "How to Eat Like a Child" done by a terrific group of children and directed by a very innovative group of adults.  I think the grown-ups laughed harder than the kids did - probably because we recognize too much of ourselves! 

The next village we visited was Mahone Bay with it's famous three churches along the harbor.  We picked up a mooring and dinked ashore to explore the shops (lots of innovative art, quilts, and pewter).  Weather is so changeable here that we didn't worry when it started to rain, but it ended up raining all day until we got back to the boat!  We had a ball anyway, and we've learned that the warm engine room is a good place to hang soggy things.

We cruised to the third famous town in this area - Lunenburg, which has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site.  We were here briefly on the trip north and we just loved it, so we were glad to be back for a few days to really explore.  The famous Bluenose II was in port, and we happened to be right behind her heading into the harbor.

We docked on the wharf at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic - a very tall wharf that required some climbing to get off the boat, but it's a great location right next to Bluenose II.

We met friends of Heidi & Peter who summer here, as well as Ed & Barbara from PACIFIC PIXIE that we met in St. Peters.  Small world!

Cruising isn't always glamorous but it's important to have a good attitude and to be adaptable - otherwise, it wouldn't be fun!

We've been pounded with miserable weather the past few days, and we headed towards the south end of the Bras d'Or Lake to get ready to transit the lock and cruise south.  We anchored near the town of St. Peters so we could dink into the little marina there, go into town, and to get some internet connectivity... in the pouring rain or driving sheets of "mist", both days.  The only consolation was getting into town just as the annual "Coming Home" parade was about to start.  The main street was packed with cars parked facing the street (since it was raining), and we watched a short but very cute parade in the rain!

We arranged to take the big boat into the marina on Tuesday to get some fuel, but ended up coming in on Monday because the holding tank was full - evidently we didn't get a good pump-out in Baddeck.  It was gusting and raining and cold, and it was a bit of a job to shoe-horn the boat onto the little piece of the dock they had available for us.  Once tied up (finally!) we plugged in the 50 amp power so we could fire up the heat to dry things out a bit and to catch up on some laundry.  We got pumped out and we took on about 265 gallons of fuel so we'd have a good safety margin aboard - fuel is expensive in Canada ($5.75/gallon - yowza!), but we didn't want to be short since we won't cross back to the US until the end of August.  It was a good thing we came in on Monday since the winds were much higher on Tuesday. 

We ran into a few other trawlers that we know - LIONHEART from the DeFever club, BAY PELICAN from TrawlerFest many years ago, and our new friends aboard AWEIGH that we met near Marble Mountain last week.  It's a small, small waterway.

The weather was predicted to ease on Wednesday (yesterday).  A lot of other boats in the marina and around the area were waiting for the weather to break, so we had a big crowd waiting for the bridge and lock.  As luck would have it, the tenders locked a northbound boat through first (they didn't realize how big the southbound crowd was) so we waited about 30 minutes, trying not to drift into the shallows or run into one another.  Fortunately the wind was reasonable and we all locked through without any excitement.  We're sad to leave the Lake, but it's time to start making our way south for more exploring and to get to Halifax by Saturday to meet our good friends Clara & Bill who will cruise with us for a week.

Yesterday's weather was better than expected.  Crossing the Canso Straight, we took an 8-mile inside passage recommended by locals which was well-marked but very twisty - 100' deep in the narrow channel with breaking waves over rocks very close by.  Not relaxing, but very beautiful.  We made 80 miles yesterday - anchoring near the town of Liscomb.

We have to travel 83 miles to get to Halifax today.  The reward for getting up early to get underway for a long day is the sunrise, and we were not disappointed this morning!  No fog, either!  (It's not as foggy in August so we should be able to see more things.)

Every day we see beautiful places and wonderful nature.  We've been seeing lots of bald eagles and have been able to get reasonably close to them from time to time.

We spent two nights anchored in Denys Basin, a long wiggling trip among wooded islands and narrow passages that opened up into a big area with fresh water creeks and a river diluting the salt water.  Because the water is more brackish there are more rainbow trout which attract the eagles.  We watched two spend most of the day hunting between two islands right near the boat, and our evening jaunt in the dink was a great way to see them up close.

In addition to the eagles, we've seen lots of  yellowlegs, kingfishers, cormorants, terns, kittiwakes, and a pretty yellow warbler.

We also took the dink to the tiny village of Orangedale with a small store that sells everything (furniture, major appliances, liquor, meat, and groceries).  The town's real claim to fame is a neat little railroad museum.  One of their train cars is a HUGE track snow plow with enormous wings that can swing out.  Very cool.

I've started collecting some small rocks since any given one foot square area has so much variety - speckled granite in so many different colors.  I collect them in the shallow water where they've been smoothed by the wave action.

To add to the new rock collection, we spent a night anchored near Marble Mountain – the site of an old marble quarry in the mountain's side which was used from the 1860s until 1920.  We had a ball tromping around at the water's edge looking for interesting rocks – we felt like little kids, and we got a lot of interesting treasures.

Today we're back in the St. Peters Inlet at the south end of the Bras d'Or Lake, waiting for good weather to transit the lock and start heading south.  It's a lovely place to be "stuck" - we anchored behind a small island and saw another bald eagle at the water's edge.  He waded into the water to wash off the fish he held in his talons, then flew off to a nearby tree to eat.  We never get tired of seeing all this!

Yesterday we explored the Atlantic side of the Cabot Trail and today we'll drive around and see the western side that faces the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  The west side of the island has more gently sloping farmland between the mountains and the Gulf, and there are a lot of French Acadians here - many of the towns and family names are French.  We did another hike through woods and highland meadow out to a wind-swept rocky promontory and we could see up and down the coastline.  Some people were perched on the rocks looking for whales, which are very common around both sides of the island in the summer.  Words can't do justice to the scenery!

We were very lucky to see two bull moose along the wood-meadows part of the trail.  They are huge animals, but very quiet and hard to spot.  They looked at us when we first stopped, but tended to ignore us after that and they kept munching on the small trees and shrubs.

After seeing the two moose on the trail, Jim became very good at spotting more...

Yesterday (Monday) we headed over to the coast to see the reconstructed Fort at Louisbourg.  This was a huge French fortress from the mid-1700s that was lost to the British and New Englanders twice.  Parks Canada has reconstructed 1/4 of the fortress and its buildings - an enormous effort that took over 20 years to create historically and architecturally accurate buildings from scant ruins.  The fortress is staffed with actors and the entire experience is quite moving! 

There are fabulous displays and educational exhibits tucked into various buildings for the visitor to discover - it's just an amazing creation - the best we've ever seen.  Unfortunately, the "f-word" arrived - fog and some rain, but we "soldiered" (pun intended) on.

Across the harbor is a lighthouse, which we saw briefly from the fortress before the fog rolled in.  We ventured out to see it, and were glad we did!

(This image was taken standing several hundred feet from the lighthouse.)

They say that there will be less fog as we get into August.  We certainly hope so since it's made it hard to actually SEE as much of Nova Scotia as we want to!

Today we'll leave Baddeck and start making our way slowly back toward the south, playing tourist along the way.

We've arrived in Baddeck to do some touring.  Alexander Graham Bell established his family's home here and Parks Canada has a fantastic museum dedicated to his incredible accomplishments - much more than just the telephone!  There just isn't enough room in a Blog to go into detail, but he was Helen Keller's teacher and devoted to helping the deaf, he experimented with flight and high-speed boats, and invented the iron lung just to name a few things.

Cape Breton Island was colonized by Scots - in fact, Nova Scotia means "New Scotland".  Gaelic language and Celtic influences are evident everywhere, and one of the nicest things is the Ceilidh (pronounced "kay-lee") - an informal concert of music and dancing.  The fiddle is the primary instrument, playing tunes that are often taught from parent to child.  Piano and drums are sometimes used for accompaniment.  Many towns hold Ceilidhs weekly, and in Baddeck there's one every night.  If we had more time, we would attend more of them!

We rented a car and headed up to the famous Cabot Trail around the Cape Breton Highlands National Park that loops around most of the north end of Cape Breton Island.  We took a boat ride out to Bird Islands in the Atlantic to see the puffins, guillemots, and razorbills - sea birds that come ashore just for the summer to raise their young before heading out to sea for the rest of the year.

We also saw lots of bald eagles - we tend to see them almost every day up here in the Lake.

We started driving around the Atlantic side of the Cabot Trail, and stopped to do a hike through the woods out to a rocky promontory.  The views are stunning!  It's very easy to run out of superlatives for this place!

All along the rocky coast we see little fishing villages tucked here and there, and where there's a lighthouse it's usually crisp white with a red roof.

Tomorrow we'll drive and hike on the west side of the Cabot Trail.

We have had very little internet connectivity, so it's been hard to keep up the Blog.  For those who have not dragged out their atlases or looked at an online map, here's a rough idea of where we are - Cape Breton Island, on the very north end of Nova Scotia.  The yellow push-pin shows the town of Baddeck, where we headed after noodling around the lower part of the lake for a few days after coming through the tidal lock at the very bottom center of the map..

We haven't had the greatest weather since we've been up here - it's been overcast or rainy or foggy.  "Fog" has become the "F-word" since we came here to see things and it tends to get in the way of that!

We anchored near a First Nation gathering place called Chapel Island.  The Mi'kmaq (pronounced "mig-maw") get together here every July from all over Nova Scotia to promote the language and culture and to keep in touch with other members of the tribe.  Some of them came out by boat to see us, and they were very welcoming.  Since it's just a short summer gathering, they have some little shacks on the island, and an RV campground on the mainland a very short distance away.

I keep paddling the kayak and looking at the birds - I'm a hopeless case!  There were a lot of terns nesting nearby, and they're fun to watch since they fish by crashing into the water.

The next day we moved up to a very pretty protected anchorage called Little Harbor.  It's completely surrounded by mountains and trees, and it only has two houses on it.  One is a private residence and the other is a timberframe restaurant run by some Germans who winter in the Caribbean on their sailboat.  They have a very rickety dinghy dock, but the food was good.  We were one of two couples in the place - I guess it's quiet during the week. 

The entrance to Little Harbor is about 75' wide, but 35' deep - so it feels tight getting in there but it's no big deal.  I got the kayak out and paddled the 4-5 miles around the circumference of the harbor looking at birds, crabs, starfish, moon snails, tiny sand shrimp, and the lion's mane jellyfish that hang out at the entrance.  The water is so crystal clear that I could easily see down 15-20'.  This isn't a lake per se - it's really a very complex ocean inlet with openings at the north and south ends, but diluted somewhat by springs and fresh creeks from the mountains. 

The birding was great - this little Plover had two chicks nearby (too shy to be photographed).

And this Yellowlegs was too busy fishing to pay attention to me. 

It's a three day cruise up to St. Peter on the south end of Cape Breton Island - the entrance to the Bras d'Or Lake.  Once again we're in the usual fog as we travel, though the fog usually lifts just as we're anchoring.  We anchored between two rocky islands in Necum Teuch and had to thread our way through some large rocks (tiny islands) to get in there.  The reward was gorgeous scenery - birds, rocky shoreline, deep green trees, etc. 

I really love the wild nature kinds of places - I could spend days just exploring in the kayak.

The next day we anchored in Tor Bay - another pretty place with some small villages in the surrounding hills.  The afternoon was clear for a change, though we had a little fog in the early morning that hid most of the nearest village, except for the church spire.  Every village has at least one church.

7/20 - Finally we have an entire day of traveling without fog!  It's amazing what we can see when we have more than 1/4 mile visibility.  The harbor seals are everywhere, peeking up out of the water at us, but keeping their distance.

We saw two whales (Fin or Bryde) today, about a mile offshore, and a large Basking shark right next to the boat as we passed by the Canso Ledges.  He was so close that we actually put the transmissions into neutral.  Seeing that much in one day makes us suspect that we've passed by a lot more whales but never were close enough to actually see them! 

We arrived in the south end of the Bras D'or Lake up in Cape Breton Island.  It's breathtakingly beautiful up here - everything is rocky and hilly and covered in tall evergreens with houses and tiny villages tucked in here and there.  We came through the St. Peter Lock at the bottom of the lake and were greeted by two bald eagles that flew right in front of the boat.  

We'll be up here in the Lake for about 2 weeks (it's huge), and then we'll start meandering back southwards and doing more touring.  Even though it's called a "lake", it's really a complex inlet to the ocean.  The water is gin-clear and we see Lion's Mane jellyfish and other ocean critters. 

Since we're pretty remote, we rarely get any signal for internet, though we have some cell (voice) service more often than not.  We took the dink into the little town of St. Peter today (in the rain) to explore and to catch up on email at one of the Canada government-sponsored internet access points - this one happens to be in the local school. 

We stayed in Halifax from 9 July - 17 July at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron in the Northwest Arm (a small waterway off Halifax harbor).  Some of the time was spent catching up on the mundane stuff of everyday life - laundry and chores and a project or two that we never get time for on underway days.  The Northwest Arm is heavily wooded and smells so pine-y and nice.  (If you look in the distance to the mouth of the Arm, you can see the usual fog bank.)

People are extremely friendly - club members often offer a ride downtown or to the store if they see you waiting for the bus.  It's very close to downtown, but it feels like a world away.  The club has a lot of racing sailors and they sponsor some major ocean races. 

They also have a wonderful youth sailing program, and it's been fun to watch the little kids out in their Optimist Prams every day - rain or shine or fog.  They have to wade in the 58 degree water to launch and retrieve their boats every day, and they just love it!

 We did a little touring around the Halifax waterfront (boats - what else?), and saw the famous Theodore Tugboat (from a children's TV show - Halifax is his home port), the historical Acadia - a survey ship, harbor pilots and tugs, and we toured the Atlantic Maritime Museum.  The Titanic rescue was based in Halifax and they have a lot of the artifacts here.  Many of the dead are also buried in local cemeteries.

We looked through the DeFever Cruisers directory and found a couple that lives in Halifax.  It turns out that they are members of the RNSYS, and they live right on the NW Arm (where we are) with their DeFever 40 docked out front.  We made contact and we kayaked down to their lovely home.  We had a grand visit and really enjoyed meeting these folks, who have taken their 1974 DeFever all the way to the Florida Keys (several times) with their children.  Everywhere we go, we find that people are so warm and friendly - it's been wonderful!

We've been zooming up the southeast coast of Nova Scotia, heading for Halifax.  We ran 83 nm on Monday, all but the last hour in thick fog, and then 81 nm to Lunenburg with only about half the day in thick fog.  We were gratified to finally *see* some of Nova Scotia after working so hard to get here!

We arrived in Lunenburg early enough to go ashore and walk around the town a little bit.  It's a small fishing town with very brightly colored buildings, lots of art galleries, little shops, and the Atlantic Fishing Museum.  We are saving the museum tour for our more leisurely southbound leg of the trip, but we enjoyed walking around the harbor and seeing the serious business of fishing. 

We also saw the very moving Fishermen's Memorial, with the names of people and boats that have been lost over the years.  Some years there were several members of the same family lost, and one part of the memorial listed boats that went down with all hands lost.  It is an extremely hard way to make a living, and I still can't imagine how these fishermen found their way safely home in the fog years ago without all the modern safety and navigation tools that we have now.

With our fast pace we're just able to sample little bits of Nova Scotia, but we're getting a better feel for what we want to see when we shift to a slower touring pace once we get up to the top and start heading southwards.

I've been treated to more new bird sightings out on the ocean - black guillemots and several kinds of shearwaters - Greater, Manx, and Sooty.  The ultimate treat was getting to see a puffin fly right in front of the boat!  He looped around and was quite distinctive - a stocky black bird with bright orange legs and that distinctive beak!  It was in the fog, out on the ocean, and it was very very exciting!

We finally arrived in Halifax and we arranged to dock at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron for a week to rest and catch up a bit. 

The weather is looking good for a few days, so we have the opportunity to make the crossing to Nova Scotia.  Saturday we left Castine and headed over to Southwest Harbor on Mount Desert Island (where Acadia National Park is located) to get fuel and water and to position ourselves for the passage.  We were able to find diesel at Dysart's for $4.50/gallon plus tax - a horrid price, but very good compared to what a lot of people are paying these days. 

We continue to be impressed by the number of classic, gorgeous sailboats in Maine - I want them all!

The crossing to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia is about 100 nautical miles so we need to leave very early in order to make port while there's still some light.   At 0500 on Sunday morning, the fog was pea-soup thick, but we're learning that fog is a fact of life in this area and we need to keep on keepin' on.  I drove outside for a while, to better hear other boats moving around and to see the masses of lobster pots that clog Maine waters.  There are two kinds of lobster pot arrangements - some have a single float, and some have two floats - one on the vertical line (a toggle), and a second float a short distance away - to make the pot easier for the lobsterman to snag.  Dodging pots in thick fog can be a little challenging, but dodging the toggle style can be a real adventure!

Unfortunately, our buddy boat TIDE HIKER reported that one of their engines was overheating about a half-hour after we left Southwest Harbor, so they had to turn back for repairs.  They will catch up with us in a week or so, but we needed to press on.

The good thing is that we didn't see any more lobster pots once we left Maine waters.  The bad thing is that we didn't see much of anything since the fog never lifted, and visibility was never more than 1/4 mile.  Fourteen and a half hours later we arrived in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, after sunset (but still somewhat light), in thick fog.  Notice the tide line on the wharf here - about 12'.

Because fog is such a large part of boating in Nova Scotia, there are a few areas that have a vessel traffic management system, where you report in by radio at various checkpoints (marked on the charts).  This is very helpful so they know who and what you are, and they can advise you about any other traffic in your area.  This augments radar and the AIS (for commercial traffic), though we learned that not all of the fishing boats report in.  Nothing is more exciting than a radar target that passes close by in a narrow harbor entrance!  (Don't ask me how I know that...)

We tied up to the only dock that was big enough for us (and not already full of large fishing boats) and called Canadian Customs.  We cleared easily and they were very friendly and helpful.  We hoisted our Canadian courtesy flag and went ashore to the little restaurant that owns the dock (pay the bartender).  Luckily it was open until 10pm on a Sunday night, since we finished the Customs formalities just after 9pm and we were tired and hungry!  The place was warm, friendly, and pretty inexpensive, and we enjoyed a good dinner.

We're still in Castine for the 4th of July, and the Siegels told us that we would be treated to a real old-fashioned town-wide celebration.  We were not disappointed!

Houses in town were decorated with bunting, and the parade twirled around the town common.  Kids of all ages participated, some in costumes, and some with some interesting "floats".  The whole town turned out for the parade, with the fire department selling t-shirts and showing off their shiny trucks.  The evening was capped off by fireworks in the harbor, which we enjoyed, shivering - the coldest 4th of July I've ever experienced!  The whole thing was just wonderful - and it brought back memories of my own childhood when we put streamers on our bikes and clipped playing cards to the spokes of the wheels, and when Mom would make a flag cake with blueberries and strawberries. 

I'll let the photos speak for themselves...

We arrived in Castine around the 2nd of July to visit friends and to spend a little time exploring a beautiful Maine town.  Our good friends Dick & Jean Durgin from the N. Va. Sail & Power Squadron spend their summers up in Maine not far from Castine, and it just so happened that our other friends Bill & Bonnie Fulford were in the area, cruising in their "land yacht" visiting the Durgins.  We all got together for lunch - a great treat!

We also got to visit our DeFever friends Jeff & Karen Siegel and their wonderful yellow labs.  They moved to Castine about 15 years ago, deciding to escape the rat race in DC.  Jeff & Karen played uber-hosts, lending us their storm mooring nearby and baby-sitting our liquor supply since we're headed to Canada and the rules say that you really can't "take it all with you".  Jeff & Karen are the authors of ActiveCaptain - a wonderful free tool for finding information about anchorages, marinas, etc. - we've been using it heavily as we travel.

Castine is also home to the Maine Maritime Academy - and we have two friends who are graduates (Ken Boschert and Tom Holland), so we had to tour their training ship "State of Maine" and see the campus. 

Of course, the morning we were to meet Jeff & Karen ashore the harbor was socked in with thick fog.  We were to meet at Bah's Bakehouse - famous for fabulous pastries.  When I looked outside and saw the fog I asked Jim if he still wanted to get in the dinghy and venture over to town.  "OF COURSE!", he said.  Jim is never one to miss out on a great pastry.  We used a little hand-held GPS to help guide us past the rocks at the mouth of the cove, and we went slowly - listening for sounds of other boats in the harbor.  It's much easier in the big boat with the radar!  Needless to say, the pastries at Bah's were even better than promised, and we continue to get better at managing in the fog.

The cove where we're moored is a very protected area surrounded by tall pines and the rocky shoreline.  Harbor seals occasionally peek at us, and Jeff told us that there's a nesting pair of bald eagles nearby, though we didn't get to see them.  I spent some time kayaking around and found this loon.

Since we are still waiting for weather in this beautiful wooded cove, I thought I would write about some of the sights.  I finally got a chance to do some kayaking and exploring - seeing the big black-backed gulls and the common eider ducks.

The eiders tend to congregate in large flocks on the water, and they sound like a group of deep-voiced men mumbling to one another.  We've also seen harbor seals in this area - occasionally out in the ocean, and several times in the cove here.  They are pretty shy so we haven't gotten a photograph of one.  Yet.

When we think of Maine we think of lobster, and we've certainly seen ample evidence.  Lobster pots litter the water with little apparent rhyme or reason, in depths from 25' to 200'.  Many anchorages are rendered unusable by masses of pots, but we need to remember that many people's livelihoods depend on these pots. 

We respect the watermen and the difficult conditions they work in - pea-soup fog, cold, and the big ocean.  We visited two fishing villages nearby and saw this reminder...

We took "BEASTIE" (our big dinghy) down the river a few miles to explore.  The tide range in this area is about 9-10', so things look a lot different at low tide!

We went ashore in two places, and we walked around the little towns of Sebasco and Cundy's Harbor .  Sebasco had a little restaurant but not much else (it was very rural, focused on fishing).  There's a very upscale family-style resort a few miles up the road in Sebasco Estates that felt a lot like the old Catskills resorts (think of the setting from the movie "Dirty Dancing").  Cundy's Harbor is also strictly a fishing village, warm and friendly.  We asked for a restaurant recommendation and we ended up at the "Block and Tackle" about 1/2 mile up the road - owned by the mother of a lobsterman we spoke to on the dock.  His daughter also worked there as a waitress - nice gal.  The walls were particle board, but it had a big menu and everything was home-made.  The food was wonderful, inexpensive, and served with a smile - perfect!

We headed back down the hill to the harbor, and saw that it was starting to get foggy - time to get aboard BEASTIE and get back to our boats!  This is a view of some of the lobster boats in Cundy's Harbor.  There is something about these boats - they have the most *perfect* proportions.