Cruising Nova Scotia Advice

[bobdugan]

Folks,

Some hearty Cape Dory crew will be helping me get Emerald from Portland, ME to Halifax and back again.

My hearty wife (and 10 year old, and dog) aren't thrilled about the ocean crossing part, but they are excited about coastal cruising Nova Scotia. The plan is to cruise from Halifax to the Bras D'Or Lakes and back again over a period of three weeks.

Here's a tentative to/from Halifax/Bras D'Or Lakes plan:
Week 1: Get to Bras D'Or Lakes
- Halifax -> Jeddore Oyster Ponds (Sea Rover Cove resort nearby): 32NM
- Jeddore Oyster Ponds -> Shelter Cove: 27NM
- Shelter Cover -> Spanish Bay (Liscombe resort nearby): 34 NM
- Spanish Bay -> Yankee Cove: 42NM
- Yankee Cove -> St Peters Canal/Bras D'Or Lake: 35NM

Week 2: Explore Bras D'Or Lakes

Week 3: Get to Halifax
- not sure yet, distances similar to week 1 with tweaks to the nightly anchorages

Comments?

Reading material:
- Cruising Guide to the Nova Scotia Coast by Peter Loveridge (he just updated this and now sells it as a CD that contains a PDF)
- Cruising Guide to the Nova Scotia Coast by Cruising Club of America
- CHS Canadian Tide and Currents 2016 Volume 1
- Atlas of Tidal Currents Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine
- Sailing Directions: Nova Scotia and Bay of Fundy
- Tons of paper charts

Comments?

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

Bob

[David Morton]

Sounds like a great trip! and that's a great picture! In fact, I am the recently adopted owner of nice 1 year old, 30lb pooch. I'd like to introduce him to sailing this season. Though I do not intend to hijack your thread, but I would really appreciate any tips you've learned about how to get my little guy comfortable on a sailboat and possibly being my crew on my annual cruise up the Maine coast this summer. He is concerned about the availability of football, popcorn, and beer during the passage, however.

David

[Jim Walsh]

You should be hearing from Jenn & Terry McAdams with advice concerning Nova Scotia shortly. Glissade's home port is Mahone Bay.

[bobdugan]

Sounds like a great trip! and that's a great picture! In fact, I am the recently adopted owner of nice 1 year old, 30lb pooch. I'd like to introduce him to sailing this season. Though I do not intend to hijack your thread, but I would really appreciate any tips you've learned about how to get my little guy comfortable on a sailboat and possibly being my crew on my annual cruise up the Maine coast this summer. He is concerned about the availability of football, popcorn, and beer during the passage, however.

David

We have been cruising the coast of Maine with our two year old dog Belle since she was a puppy. For the most part it has been a joy for her and for us. Our son likes to play with her while we are underway and when we arrive at a new anchorage we get the joy of watching both of them explore the shore. Lots of great stuff to smell, eat, and roll in.

Belle gets seasick if it gets lumpy which is hard to watch (and cleanup). We have been giving her dramamine but also have some other medicine that the vet gave us if it's going to be a long, rough day. The medicine makes her lethargic, and less nauseous and when it wears off she's her usual perky self again. Sometimes we forget to give Belle medicine once we get our sea legs... but she reminds us pretty quickly.

Sometimes we will leave her on the boat if we're going out to eat or if we're visiting another boat. But we try not to leave her alone for too long.

She has never gone to the bathroom on the boat, even if when it was a long sail, but we haven't tested this past 14 hours or so. At some point she'll have to give in and get it over with. We've tried to encourage her with lots of different folk remedies with no success. We do keep a small fake green grass mat as a target for her and occasionally put it out and encourage her to do her business... she just looks at us like we're aliens. I think we are worried about it more than she is. A fellow dog owner told us that the dog will go if it really has toure which makes sense to me.

We have shampoo to wash her if she rolls in something nasty.

She has a life jacket which we use when transferring her from the boat to the dinghy. She's not a great swimmer and doesn't leave the cockpit while we are underway. At anchor she walks around the boat and gets very excited if birds start swimming towards the boat... but she'd never jump in the water by choice.

[jen1722terry]

Just letting you all know that we sent Bob a rather long set of thoughts on his Nova Scotia cruise plans. Rather than bore you all with it, we PM'd it to him.

If any of you plan on doing Nova Scotia soon, let us know and we'll send the info.

Happy Sailing this spring!

Jenn and Terry

[bobdugan]

Thanks for the PM and all the great advice and the phone conversation. I love this board!