After a fast breakfast we took Kato out in the dingy for an explore, first checking out the entrance to the cove for exiting it with less anxiety! (see notes above). We then headed to the foot of the cove and went ashore to visit the grave yard and walk over to eastern Cove. I hopefully brought a bucket for berries. Kato was having a great time bounding around, jumping out at Dave, at one point leaping up against his back and running off. When we got into some boggy land he stood still and meowed loudly until Dave picked him up and carried him.

We read some of the inscriptions, noticing that there were a lot of men named George Snooks buried there, some drowned, some dying young but some in their 80-90s as well. The most recent grave was after the relocation and it seemed the family buried their Dad right next to their Mom.

We hiked through never seeing any berries and came to Eastern Cove which is a pebbled beach with a hill of pebbles some huge storms had made almost into a breakwater protecting the boglands beyond it. We played on the beach among the sun-warmed stones and enjoyed the sunny morning. On the way back to the dingy I discovered that blueberries here grow very close to the ground, and the berries are few and far between, but I got some for my hopeful little bucket!

We dinghy-ed over to see our little fixer upper and had a peek inside. Beds were made up, but the amount of flies and broken boards told us no one had been here for a few years. We carefully closed the door and headed back to the boat.
Saying goodbye and thank you to this special place we carefully wound our way back out into the bay and headed over to the Northeast Arm past Harbour Breton.

We had both sails out and motor off all the way across the bay, sun shining. As we reached the mouth of the arm we took in the sails and turned on the motor so Dave could catch a couple of fish for dinner, and then brought Jenny back out to sail us up the arm.
That was fun whipping through when winds picked us up to 6.7 knots, then dying down we dropped to 3.5, then back up again. The winds came and went depending on the mountains around us but we made it up through the beautiful shores, passing the town of Harbour Breton and three fish farms before we had to take the sail down and turn the motor back on to go through two sets of narrows into Balden's cove. The guidebook cautioned these narrows, but after going into Sagona, this was a piece of cake. The charts seemed accurate and there was plenty of depth and the rocks and shallows were obvious.

The cove was populated with new cottages and once anchored we had boats speeding past us rocking the boat inconveniently as Dave worked on installing the winch. I am often amazed at the lack of sensitivity people in power boats often have. Whenever we pass fishing boats anchored or drifting, we slow right down as a courtesy. I wish that courtesy could be extended to us when we are anchored! A generator was going at one of the cottages and we could hear people calling back and forth. Not such a secluded spot as we anticipated, but very pretty with it's rising forested shores.

We BBQed the fish whole as they were little, removing insides and heads, stuffing them with sliced lemon and herbs and wrapping them in tinfoil. Beans and rice and a salad and we were set.

The cottagers quieted down after some fireworks and we went off to sleep.