Louse Inner Harbour NS Canada

Yankee Cove

Leaving Yankee Cove

Over early morning cups of tea on Friday 17 August we were able to appreciate the beauty of Yankee Cove, something we’d not really had a chance to do the previous evening as we’d arrived so late that the mosquitoes were out and biting almost as soon as we had the anchor down.  Now, however, we has a chance to enjoy the place, but not too long as we wanted to get on the move to arrive at our next destination, Louse Harbour (not a great name!), whilst the tide was still rising.

Approaching Louse Harbour. (Lower centre) The small island with trees

Past the ‘small island with trees’ and heading towards
the channel into the inner harbour.  This bit’s easy (and deep!)

Louse Harbour is only a short distance from Yankee Cove but we had a fun off-wind sail, through the inshore passage, with a short beat for the final couple of miles.  Off the entrance to the ‘harbour’, it’s actually a well-protected rocky bay in the middle of nowhere, we took down the sails and, yet again, consulted the pilot book and the chartplotter before starting to feel our way carefully into the bay.  The pilot book’s guidance for the first part is sketchy, to say the least, but it does state that yachts drawing more than BV have made their way into the inner harbour, therefore they must have got through the main entrance.  The charting shows a clear rock free area shown between some rocky ledges/islands and the shore, even if the depths aren’t given in detail, just in a shade of blue that indicates that BV should be able to get through.  After an introductory sentence, the pilot book says ‘basically, you want to head for the small island with trees, leaving it to starboard’.  You actually don’t see this ‘small island’ (lower centre in picture collage above) until you have made it through the first part of the entrance (about 0.25nm on a track of 337degMag), at which point you turn left 60 degrees and aim at the island.  Quite why anyone thinks one would want to leave that island to port is beyond us; there are rocks everywhere in that direction!  Pilotage becomes quite easy at this point and for the next 0.25nm or so. And then it all gets very interesting!

Entering Louse Inner Harbour. Bar at the narrowest point

The channel into the inner harbour starts off wide and deep and becomes progressively narrower and shallower. Not obviously narrow, but somewhat nastily so.  At the narrowest part the pilot book says (and Nicky saw on our way out) that there is a shallow ledge across the channel that comes out from the eastern (right hand) side to, about, the middle of the channel.  So, very slowly, Nicky took us in down a line 1/3 of the way from the west (left) side of the channel.  It all seemed rather tight and, of course, we had no idea how steeply shelving or otherwise the rock wall to port was.  But we had it on good authority that other, deeper yachts than ours had got in …… and we did too.  (min sounding approx 3.1m)

Once inside the inner lagoon, our next concern was an uncharted rock just on the left as we entered, min sounding about 8ft apparently but not something you want to get the anchor chain stuck on.  So, we headed a bit further in and dropped the anchor about 100m short of some ominous floating weed.

The (uncharted) rocks

We launched the dinghy and I went to investigate and, sure enough, the weed was attached to some substantial-looking uncharted [Ed: no real surprises there!] rocks.  So, for future reference I noted their Lat/Longs and we marked them on the electronic chart and in the pilot book.  Bill and Lydia will either love us or hate us from scrawling notes all over their book!

After a spot of lunch we took off in Lewis and Clarke mode, out to explore the area and, perhaps, find the animal track alongside a stream, mentioned in the pilot book, which apparently lead up to a warm, freshwater lake (suitable for swimming) on the high ground above the pool.

We found the stream (we think) but there was no easy way to walk up the side of it so we contented ourselves with a dinghy ride all around the islands in the bay.  It is a truly beautiful area and to satisfy our inner explorers we even found tiny channels where we had to lift the outboard to get through the shallow areas.

Seal:  ‘Sunbathe on this rock….no, no, that rock…..Well, I’m not sure, let’s just check back again.  This rock’s better for the yoga pose…..that one might be more comfortable for lounging. Oh, I don’t know, it’s all so difficult….. What’s that boat doing here?  Do I need to look good for them?... Best I try the other rock again….’

As we had dinghied around we had seem the heads of a number of seals but we didn’t get to see any close up. However, our sundowners entertainment was watching a seal try to choose between which of the 2 unmarked rocks he (she?) wanted to sunbathe on as they uncovered in the late evening light. Every now and then there was a slight splash as the seal decided that the other rock was the preferred haulout or yoga location.  Then a few minutes later it returned from whence it had come.  It’s a hard life being a seal on a beautiful summer’s evening [Ed: and it was a hard life for Reg later deciding which of the very, very many photos I had taken of the seal to use here.]

Without a doubt, Louse Harbour, despite the dodgy name, is our favourite Nova Scotian anchorage so far.

Louse Inner Harbour ,NS, Canada