Day 09 - Cape Breton to PEI

We woke up and headed downstairs for breakfast around 7am hoping the next few hours would somehow bring us good luck. The U-Haul and car rental locations that we planned on contacting didn’t open until 8am. We expected the mechanic from the local garage between 8 and 9am. Few words were shared over breakfast as we vacillated between which options we preferred. Trust the weld? Get a truck and drive it back? Ship it home?

Despite the circumstances, the view from the dining room was quite beautiful. The staff at the Inn were exceptionally helpful providing us the use of their phone and coming to get us when we had return phone calls.

At 8am, Michele started calling the U-Haul and car rental locations (those that had Sunday hours). Things were not looking good on the car rental front. None of the local places had one-way rentals that could go further than PEI. They didn’t have any pickup trucks. The U-Haul in Port Hood, two hours away, was a little more promising. The owner was away for the day but the employee at the store gave Michele his personal phone number to call him. He was very nice and was spending the day at the races. He said he had two 14’ trucks that we could rent one-way from Cape Breton to Virginia, USA but it would likely be expensive. He said he would arrange for the central office in Dartmouth to prepare an estimate and call back.

Meanwhile, Jim (the mechanic from the local garage) showed up. He inspected the trailer, discussed possible options with Rob. Because the bend in the drawbar was right at the point where the drawbar entered the receiver channel in the trailer frame, he would need to be able to pull the drawbar out a bit. If that was possible, then he could straighten the drawbar, weld some angle iron to the failure point and we should be good to go! He was very confident that he could do it. He brought his kind father with him and we chatted for a bit about the Cape Breton road conditions.

Given the other options this sounded the most promising. Jim said it would be approximately 2 hours to get it all done, so with nothing to lose, the five of us lifted it into the back of Jim’s truck! Up it went easy as could be. We strapped it down and Jim headed off to the garage to make the repairs.

Michele and Rob insisted that Jerry shouldn’t sit around waiting with them and instead should continue with the scheduled route and ride the Cabot Trail. If everything worked out, the trailer would be ready around noon and Rob and Michele would meet Jerry at the ferry for the trip over to PEI.

After about 2 hours, Rob called the garage and they told him that the trailer weld had been completed and Jim was reassembling the trailer. Rob and Michele put on their gear and rode over to the garage to pickup the trailer.

When we arrived, Jim had just finished up and it looked great! Rob had also asked that Jim remove the wheel that the previous owner had installed on the bottom of the drawbar. Rob believes that this wheel was the cause for the trailer bottoming out. The wheel reduced the ground clearance by nearly 3 inches. Additionally, Rob made an adjustment to the drawbar's dampening system to further increase ground clearance. The drawbar now had about twice the ground clearance that it had previously. Jim proclaimed that the trailer would be able to make it back to VA.

Eternally grateful for Jim giving up his day off to help us out, we squared up with Jim for his time and materials, hooked up the trailer and headed on back to the Inn to reload the trailer and make our way to the PEI ferry.

With the burden and worry gone, we could enjoy the ride (albeit still bumpy) back to the highway on our route.

The trailer was loaded up and we were heading north to the ferry at around 1pm. We stopped around 3pm for a late lunch and rolled into the PEI ferry loading line at around 5pm. We were 3 bikes behind Jerry.

The ferry arrived around 6:15pm. We rode up into the ferry, strapped down the bike and went upstairs for the 75 minute ride to PEI.

The ferry ride was pretty smooth but we still inspected the life raft situation and views.

Once the ferry docked at PEI, we had a short 1 hour ride to Charlottetown to the Sonata Inn. The sun was beginning to set and the light made for great photos.

What a difference 24 hours makes. Through the extreme generosity of the residents of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, we managed to make it to PEI on our planned arrival day so that our vacation adventure continues!

Tomorrow we will explore the third Canadian province of our trip, Prince Edward Island.