Deny’s Basin Bras d’Or Lakes NS Canada

After a peaceful night and a leisurely breakfast, we up-anchored at 0945 on Tuesday 21 August and carefully made our way out from the Crammond Islands anchorage.  The other yacht that had shared our anchorage for the night left just ahead of us and on opposite tacks we both beat our way east out of West Bay. Clearly, we weren’t racing but Nicky did have me tweaking the sails just a little more than is usual and it was nice when, having ended up a considerable distance behind the other yacht after the first 2 tacks, we made up most of that ground on the next 2. Had they used their engine to clear the Crammond Islands?  One for the protest jury to discuss!

At the top of the West Arm we headed north towards the entrance to a maze of inlets.  The wind was light, only about 7 or 8knots, and off-wind, even on a reach, our progress was quite slow.  We started the engine off the entrance to the maze, just to give us the motive power to keep going.  The route into the far reaches of Denys’ Basin twisted and turned between islands and headlands, across shallow bars and along deeply scoured channels.

It was a fascinating ‘sail’ with utterly beautiful scenery.

Our anchorage in Denys’ Basin

Eventually we got about as far down Denys’ Basin as seemed sensible from our chart…..

The un-named island

….. and dropped anchor in 4m behind a small, un-named island.

Working on the dorade vents

Dorade vent box back in place, with the work on the stainless steel
protective bars to follow the next day. Note the rust streaks around
 the base of the bar to the left of the picture.  We had worried that this
 was due to rust on the bolt securing the fitting to the deck.  It turned
 out that it was ‘only’ due to the base of the fitting becoming tarnished due
to a failure of the sealant there but, long term, that could become more
than just a cosmetic problem if not resolved

It was a beautiful, sunny and, most importantly, dry day so we decided to make the most of the rest of the afternoon and remove, clean and rebed the dorade vents.  We had noted a leak, only obvious when we had water coming across the deck, that manifested itself in drips down the saloon’s forward bulkhead. From witness marks on the top side (the hidden side) of the saloon headlining, it seemed clear that the dorade vents had been leaking.  We needed to sort that out before we headed out into green water again – hence rebedding the vents.  These jobs always take longer than you want but we successfully removed everything, discovering an old wasps’ nest and a rusty peg in the process, cleaned all the old sealant off the various surfaces and rebuilt it all again with new sealant And, the following morning we removed and rebedded the stainless steel protective bars too.

After a good afternoon’s work we enjoyed a belated sundowners watching the geese returning to their night roosts from the marsh between our un-named island and the shore.  Inevitably, with marshland quite close, that evening’s mosquitoes were large and persistent.

Back to our anchorage

The following day, having worked on the bars over the dorade vents, we decided to try to get to the preferred anchorage in Denys’ Basin according to the book Cruising Cape Breton.  This anchorage is just off Eagle Point and, having so far only seen one bald eagle, and that from a distance, we hoped that by making the move we might see fewer geese and more eagles.  But it was not to be.  As we motored cautiously further up the basin, it was clear that our chart was more accurate than the chartlet in the CCB and we went aground.  The bottom’s all soft sticky mud and we didn’t go on at any great speed so we came off quite easily, but we did dig up a good cloud of silt in the process.  So, we returned to our previous anchorage for another night and it was, again, lovely but there were no bald eagles.

Deny’s Bay, Bras d’Or Lakes, NS, Canada