If you come to Baddeck you must go to the Alexander Graham Bell museum. What an interesting man he was, and it seems well loved by all who knew him. The shops and restaurants are interesting and independent and the people are here from all over the world. The marina has a world map up where visitors pin the map from where they are from. Sailors from every language stroll the boardwalks and sailboats flying flags from from everywhere swing on their moorings in the sheltered harbour.
One night sitting on our boat we heard the most beautiful woman voice echoing off the water and decided we needed to go ashore to see where she was.
They had the main street blocked off and there were venders with food and art and interesting ideas, even a fortune teller! We walked past a young woman by herself who seemed to be busking towards a crowd watching something we assumed must be our mystery singer but saw fire batons thrown above the crowd and realized it was not music.
Back up the other way we stopped to ask a vender where the singer we heard might be and noticed he had Cool Hemp coffee. Cool Hemp was a name of a company that was our friends Rob and Christine and sure enough this guy was their distributor in NS. Small world. Big Spruce Organic brewing company was there. We had stopped by their hop yard last year to meet the farmer as we are thinking about putting in a hop yard ourselves.
As we walked by the very young busking woman she started to sing and that voice filled the air. It really is in the genes here. We told her ow she was a siren that calle dos in and stood to listen to her for a lovely while, sipping Big Spruce Organic beer.
We also found some of the tastiest garlic and brought some back to the boat. Baddeck is fun!
The day after Dave's Birthday was suppose to be a day off for him as he was pretty tired, and a boat cleaning and laundry day for me. He did have one job o do, finish the second toilet installation.
It was a windy and rainy day and
when we went out to start the dingy it was full of water! Dave realized that when he was installing a part to the boat he forgot to tighten some screws and it was leaking. Yikes!
He took me over to shore with the garbage and recycling and laundry and promised come back and get me when I was done.
I browsed the shore for sea glass and got an unexpected FaceTime from our 4 year old twin grandsons who were excited to tell me they had learned to ride their two wheeler bikes they had gotten for their birthday in June. The only problem with sailing is I miss my little people. Their one year old sister had called earlier that day to show me she could say Granny and Pop Pop now.
Over laundry I met a local real estate agent/sailor/ resident of Baddeck, she used to teach junior sailing and had just bought a small sailboat she was fixing up to teach her kids to sail. It is a sailing community here.
Dryer loads finally done I called Dave to come and get me, but the motor on the dingy would not start and he had worn himself out trying to get it going. I took the $5 water taxi home and had a go at the dingy motor taking out and cleaning the spark plug...and who designs these things? Truly! You cannot get a spark plug wrench in there at all, no you have to fiddle with pliers and have hands small enough to get in there. I kept thinking water had gotten into the gas somehow but I could not get it going either.
Dave taxied over to get a new spark plug even though I had cleaned this one, but they did not have the kind we needed. But the toilet got installed after discovering the 32 dollar part we had bought was not what we needed. Good thing we had bought it here and could return it! It was just one of those days and it wore our captain right out wrestling with everything. So much for a day of rest for him!
We were expecting Eva and Gary to arrive the next day for a few days sailing with us so this was going o be interesting with no dingy. We decided to shift realities and made a lovely marinated chicken and baked potatoes on our stovetop oven, which works better than our regular oven and uses way less propane.
After a good nights sleep, the dingy motor started first pull, the newly installed toilet worked perfectly and the sun was shining!
Todays plans are to await Eva and Gary's arrival with our car and go stock up and then take of for a new anchorage with a pleasant sail!
We realize we need to take it easier as Dave is in recovery from 2 years of intense medical intervention and needs to take it much easier than he has been. It is agreed that I will be his personal servant and will do all the menial tasks and the running and fetching for him on this trip.
I know how it looks and my feminist attitudes are having to suck it up and cater to a man's needs lol! The good part of that is that while I have been working on keeping his weight and nutrition levels way up for the past two years, mine have gone up too and some of the pants I left on board two years ago are a bit tight... so it does work out well for me to do all the slog work of running a boat. You just never know how life will unfold.