Bras d’Or Lake Crossing

Meet your captain and board the yacht on arrival morning at our private dock in St. Peter’s. Get familiar with the boat and have a look at the charts and our route for today.

We’ll set out mid-morning through island-studded St. Peter’s Inlet. Take the helm, handle the sail or just kick back and enjoy the ride and scenery. Here you're likely to see eagles, hawks and a variety of gulls overhead, herons and deer alongshore, and perhaps a few seals in the sea. Picnic lunch aboard – if there’s time, maybe a swim too. We’ll cross the big lake where we are likely to experience a bit more wind and wave action for the 12 mile crossing. Then we’ll pass through Grand Narrows where they’ll raise the highway bridge for us.

We’ll see the historic Grand Narrows Hotel on one side and Highland Village (a Nova Scotia Museums site) at Iona, across the passage. Now we enter Great Bras d’Or Channel headed for Baddeck and the Inverary Inn. On arrival check into your room to refresh, enjoy drinks and dinner back at the resort and afterward maybe take a stroll through the resort parkland, sit for some stories and songs around the waterfront fire ring.

After breakfast at the resort’s Lakeside Restaurant we’ll head out for a daysail to explore Baddeck from the water. Some guests like to take the morning to visit the Bell National Historic Site and museum before we sail for the day. Once we leave the dock, we almost always head down into Baddeck Bay for a good look at the expansive Alexander Graham Bell estate, Beinn Bhreagh. Then we’ll follow the wind to explore some northern reaches of the Bras d’Or. We’ll be packing tasty picnic lunches prepared at the resort. We return to our dock at the resort by afternoon’s end for some entertainment ashore, dinner and a pleasant evening walking the town or at leisure on the resort. And a good night’s sleep to rest up for tomorrow’s southbound lake crossing.

We’ll set sail by mid-morning, headed south to St. Peter’s. Depending on the wind direction we are likely to have very different conditions than our day 1 crossing, so there are some new experiences to be had, and perhaps some more sailing lessons too. With lots of practice time. Depending on winds and your schedule, we may poke into some secluded cove for a swim and lunch. Guests who want to learn a bit more about navigation can help plot our course with the captain, and then monitor our progress on the electronic navigation instruments. We will arrive back at our home dock in St. Peter’s by late afternoon.