Channel-Port aux Basques

There were horrendous gale force winds making a howling noise most of the night. We were expecting to be called by the hotel during the night to say the boat had arrived, but no such luck.

In the morning, I went outside and took a photo of our hotel and also of the harbour without a ferry in sight!

 

We had breakfast and then I made the decision to call the hotel in Halifax and cancel our booking for tonight. It's a shame, as our two-day stay in Halifax will be cut short. We then all drove to see if the local Railway Heritage Museum was open, as we had seen they have an extremely rare Portuguese astrolabe, a 17th century navigational instrument that was recovered from a wreck in 1981.

Unfortunately it was closed, so we headed for the terminal to find out what was happening to our ferry. We were told that we had to check in as they were expecting the boat to dock in the next few hours.

The ferry terminal with the trucks lined up waiting to load.

I went into the terminal and up to the observation deck to take this photo of the ferry still out at sea!! It had now been outside the harbour for over twenty hours.

The cars lined up ready for loading when the ferry finally arrives.

We waited for several hours and then suddenly there was an announcement that the Blue Puttees would be docking in ten minutes. We all rushed outside and watched as she did a 180 degree turn, struggling against the wind, and then reversed up to the loading ramps.

As I walked back to our car, I saw this ATV on a trailer. It made a good photo.

As I type this, I can see the cars and trucks unloading and, with any luck, we will be boarding by 6pm, at the latest. The wind is still gusting and I can only imagine what the crossing is going to be like. It's definitely time to take the seasickness pills we brought with us!!

This posting is being continued from our hotel room in North Sydney after our crossing from Channel-Port aux Basques. As soon as we boarded the ferry at around 7pm, we were told that when we arrived at around midnight in North Sydney, we would have to disembark as the ship was returning immediately to Port aux Basques. I was annoyed, to say the least, as we were hoping to stay in our reserved cabin until the morning.

We then discovered we had an inside cabin without a porthole, which was far from ideal and, try as we might, they wouldn't swap it for an outside cabin.

I went up on deck and took some photos of Channel-Port aux Basques as the ship steamed out of port. The wind had finally died down and it was a clear but chilly evening as we left Newfoundland after our stay of nearly a week. What fun it has been.

 

 

The sun was setting as we headed out into the Cabot Strait and the ship started to roll in the swell left behind by the storm that had been raging here for the past two days. It was a beautiful sight as I watched the sun slip below the horizon.

The journey took about four and a half hours and we reached North Sydney, Nova Scotia at around midnight. We disembarked and drove the short distance to our hotel, which we had managed to book on the ferry. We checked in and got to bed around 1am. We adjusted our watches by the half an hour difference between Newfoundland time and Atlantic time.