Mile 1102: Shediac

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Shediac N.B. Current Location: Shediac Yacht Club Date: July 2-5 Mile:  1102 Locate: Ramble On Locate: Finnish Line 2.0 Google Photo Album

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Our leg from Bouctouche to Shediac was a short 20nm day. Before we departed, we pumped out. The club has pumpout facilities but no fuel, sort of opposite of what we've had for the last while. Before we left, John the marina manager, showed us our "boat pictures". He keeps pictures of every visiting boat and owners in carefully kept binders. I'm sure he can recount/remember every visiting boat and their story. If any KYC'er ever ends up here in the future, lookup Dragon III, Finnish Line and Ramble On!

Entering Pointe-du-Chene

Departing Bouctouch we had to reverse our winding entrance, but a little bit of familiarity helped relieve the stress as we puttered our way out following the many marks and ranges. Not much wind for this short leg, but warm and pleasant.

Pointe-du-Chene wharf

Shediac Bay is a moderately large, but quite shallow bay. It has two harbours, the first of which ( Pointe-du-Chene ) is the tourism harbour with shops, tour boats, a marina and the fuel dock where we would stop first. This was one of the tightest harbour entrances we have experienced.

Very tight harbour entrance

Harbour guard

 While the charts did have entrance marks indicated, the actual location of these marks was barely 2-3 boat lengths from the rock wall. I suspect silting has tightened up the entrance over the years. In either case, you drive straight at the rock wall, and then hang a hard left at the first green mark. At this point you are so close to the wall that you are peering over the rock pile to look for mast heads of any outgoing sailboat. After a couple of hundred yards the entrance appears at which point you need to do a hard almost 180 degree turn to enter.

We pulled into the fuel dock but found no-one was in attendance but there was a number you call. Within a few minutes of our call, a woman rolled up on her bicycle and we were filling up. Once we were fueled up and paid for we departed on a 1 nm hop to the next basin which was the Shediac Yacht Club. This is where we would be staying for a few days to await the arrival of our Chris "the other" and Andrew "the son".


We also saw the Coast guard cutter, "Corporal Tether", moored here and performing maneuvers at the dock. This was the boat that had just towed one of the dead right whales to Cape Breton for a necropsy to determine the cause of death. Today it seem's to be performing thruster practice as they were hovering about 40 feet from the wharf trying to maintain position.

Linda and I had researched restaurants in Shediac and decided on heading Le Petite Paris for our anniversary dinner. Turned out not to be quite the french restaurant we had expected, but it was nice none-the-less. The entertainment highlight of this dinner out was Terry the cab driver. For the short cab ride to the restaurant, he kept us giggling and laughing at the ribald stories of other passengers and the antics they get up to. It was entertaining enough that we called him for the ride back to the club.

Next day, Chris MacDonnald, Bob's crew until we get to the Bra d'Or Lakes, arrived after two days of driving up from Florida. He arrived for some of the nicest weather we've had so far. The weather does seem to be warming up and staying warm!

Moncton airport is only 20 minutes away from Shediac, and this is where Andrew was flying into. Chris was kind enough to drive Bob and I to the Airport to pick up Andrew. Andrew had taken the train from Kingston to Ottawa the night before, and then flown direct to Moncton today. A short and relatively painless flight. Once we got back to town, we located Linda and parked ourselves at "La Coast" for a nice seafood lunch

Boat BBQ pizza!
(bechamel with
bacon and scallops)

Later that day, we did a full provisioning for food, beer, wine, and some fresh seafood. Linda and I were planning another "boat pizza" night, and this time it was going to be seafood pizza (bechamel with
bacon and scallops for one, and shrimps simmered in garlicky wine sauce then baked with Italian cheese blend for the other)!

Back in Quebec City, the proprietor of "La Pizzaio" had given us some parchment paper for cooking BBQ pizzas. We had had a great conversation with him where he told us that they would cook pizzas while camping, using parchment paper to keep everything from sticking. He gave us about 10 sheets from his kitchen and some instructions on how to make it work. Tonight we put them to use and they worked perfectly!

During our provisioning we stopped into a Home Hardware for something that Bob needed. I was just wandering around and bumped into a display of 1 lb propane canisters. Not that exciting really, but before we left on the trip, I made some holders for these canisters for Bob and I that use 4" white PVC pipe and some end caps. These are then filled with canisters, and fastened to the pushpit. Turns out that the batch of canisters that Canadian Tire sells (Coleman) are a couple of mm's too large, and don't fit (they all have a weird manufacturing bulge in them), but the ones that Home Hardware sells (Bernzomatic) are built to different tolerances and fit perfectly! Now, I hope not to need these as they are for our propane heater (for cold nights without shore power) but if we do, we're now set!

side by side at Shediac Yacht Club

Shediac Yacht Club has a building with and reception desk, lounge area, washrooms, showers and laundry. They have a second building that has space to hold events, but there is no restaurant or bar. The grounds are nicely kept and everything was in good order.

The Club was pretty busy once people got off work. They head out for race nights and sail in the shallows just beyond the Pointe-du-Chene basin. A small flood of motor boats would also all depart at about the same time and then later, once it starts to get dark, then all return en masse to the harbour.  Once an a while, there would be stereo competitions that were somewhat jarring, but overall, we had a very enjoyable stay.

Lobster capital of the Woooorrrld!