I've got the last of my photos from my Cape Breton sailing trip to share with you tonight. I ended up with some pretty good ones. There are quite a few here for the last days of the trip, but not quite enought to split the post up. The next step is to go through all the video I've collected over the 3 week period and do something with the best of it. I've got a lot more video than I do pictures so when I take a closer look, I'm sure there will be lots of interesting clips.

If you missed any of the last posts about my sailing trip, they are here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 - 7 Day Trip Day 1 and 2

Week Long Trip

Day 3 - Hanging Around Badeck

There was not a whole lot sailing this day, that's for sure. It was raining off and on; sometimes quite heavy. We ended up just chilling out on the boat for the day in Badeck and I ended up finishing a little vector drawing that I had been working on.

The morning water was absolutely still as the fog rolled through the mountains.

Like glass.

Near the evening, I took a walk along the beach after the rain had cleared up to stretch my legs a bit. Being on the boat all day was sure relaxing, but there isn't a whole lot of room to be moving around. The beach was full of interesting things to take a look at and photograph as well.

Like these eagle tracks that were everywhere along the shore.

There were wild roses lining the banks as well. I really liked how this shot turned out, with Badeck showing in the background.

This rose is catching the last of the sun before it sets.

Day 4 - Badeck to McKinnons Harbour

The next day, we picked up my brother, @thebrassdoor, on the wharf in Badeck before we set sail again. It was a good chance for us to restock on beer, food, and gas, and water before heading off into the less populated parts of the Bras D'Or Lakes.

We made pretty good time sailing once we left Badeck. We didn't have to tack at all headed for the Grand Narrows Bridge. The wind was blowing in the perfect direction and we made a straight shot right to it in no time. I was actually skeptical we'd even make it that far on that day if we had to tack into the wind.

The bridge opens and closes for boat traffic all day. Here it is opening up for us.

And through we go.

The old train bridge just stays open now. There aren't any trains anymore so what would be the point of closing it? Also, it's completely rusted.

The other side of the lakes are quite a bit larger than the side we'd been sailing initially. Being larger, there is also more wind, and bigger waves.

Eventually, we started to lose the sun so we headed in towards McKinnon's Harbour to find a nice anchor spot for the night.

McKinnon's Harbour is a really nice little spot. It's got a really narrow entrance that had to be dug out for boats to actually get through. Once inside, though, it's a huge harbor with all kinds of little coves to tuck into and stay. Most of them had cottages on them, but we found a really nice one with no one around.

Day 5 - McKinnon's Harbor to Marble Mountain

We ended up getting on the move early on day 5. The wind was pretty light and we just motored around a bunch of islands checking out the scenery. We headed down to Marble Mountain to check out some of the beaches down there. It was a wicked hot day, so swimming was the best option to spend the day. I broke out the GoPro for this one and got a bunch of videos while snorkeling around the boat. No pictures, though. You'll have to wait for the videos.

Around supper, me and @thebrassdoor took a walk up the shore and collected a few pounds of muscles to go with our supper. We could have just boiled them on the burner stove, but we went old school and built a little fire to cook them up with some seaweed.

Delicious!! It had been a long, long time since I'd had fresh muscles like that. A perfect way to finish off the day.

Day 6 - Marble Mountain to Island Point

I didn't take a whole lot of photos this day. It actually was a very troublesome day. It first started out being absolutely no wind. Like nothing at all. We ended up motoring all the way back to Badeck because there was just nothing. We stopped in again to grab a bit more beer for the last night. The water bladder had also busted sometime and we had about 100 liters of water in the boat that we spent mopping up while we motored back.

Getting into the dock was another challenge. There was only one tiny spot and we ended up having to take a couple of runs at it before we could get tied off. It just added to the frustration of the water problems.

Once we finished up in Badeck, we decided to go back to the spot we had stayed at just for a quick swim. Not two minutes from us pulling away from the dock did we run out of gas on one of our tanks. It wasn't the biggest of deals as we had lots of gas, but we ran the motor dry and we were really close to shore. The wind had now picked up and it was blowing us in towards the rocks. We quickly changed the tank but we were getting too close to the shore and my brother and I ended up jumping out of the boat to keep it from hitting the rocks. Doing so, I landed funny on my foot when I jumped out and sprained my foot.

We managed to get the engine running after a bit of priming and completely avoided any disasters; except my foot.

After that, we made it for a swim and then headed down to Island point for the night. We got the spinnaker up about halfway there and sailed right down to it - so at least we got some sailing in for the day even if it was in light winds. It made all the troubles we had for the day worth it.

Day 7 - Island Point to Bras d'Or

We got going fairly early this day, too. We needed to get back somewhat early to get the boat packed on the trailer to head back to Halifax. The winds were really blowing this day and we were able to sail back quite fast with the wind pushing us right along with only the jib sail out.

Pictures never seem to capture waves very well but these were a few feet high and we were almost surfing on top of them with the sailboat.

And that was it. It was a great 3 weeks of sailing and the weather was absolutely awesome. Cape Breton is tricky when it comes to the weather so I'm quite happy it cooperated.

We're thinking that in two years we might head up and do it again. This time, we'll start from the opposite end and just sail the whole thing with longer stops along the way. Then we'll just get the trailer up to the other end to take the boat out so we don't have worry about getting back.

There were quite a few pictures to finish this trip off but I hope you stuck with it till the end and enjoyed them.

Stay tuned for the video.

On another note, looks like SBD is back to $1 so it's time to start the 100% power up again.