Finally! The ferry to Newfoundland

Finally, after nearly two weeks on the road, it was time to board the ferry to Newfoundland.

We made it to Sydney, a community on the northern tip of mainland Canada on Cape Breton Island. It’s a sizable town with a few Canadian Tire locations, grocery stores. It’s the main ferry port to reach Newfoundland, and also a cruise ship port in the summer.

Our ship was to leave at 11PM, so we had most of the day to spend with last minute organizing and preparations. We found a city park in Sydney and basically unloaded everything from the car and camper, reorganizing and getting rid of stal bread and unnecessary items. We also did a bit of car maintenance – new wiper blades, and some minor repairs to the camper. We also purchased some epic bug hats at Home Hardware to take along the way after the horrible bugs we encountered at Cheticamp.

Even after spending most of the morning prepping the car and Louise, we had most of the afternoon to relax at Breton Brewing Company. This was a great spot with a huge patio and an extensive beer list. It was a great spot to spend the afternoon!

The ferry to Newfoundland

Depending on the time of year, there are two ferry routes to Newfoundland. Both routes are operated by Marine Atlantic and generally require advance booking We found discounted rates and booked our passage in about March. If we’d been traveling later in June, we would have had to book at least a full six months out.  The year round route goes from Sydney, NS to Port Aux Basques, NL, which is on the southwestern corner of the rock. This sailing takes 6-8 hours to complete.  The second route is from Sydney to Argentia, a town not far from St. John’s on the Avalon peninsula. This route takes 16-18 hours to complete, and only operates in the summer months.

Our ship was scheduled to leave at 11PM, and passengers were able to start queuing up at 7PM. We got to the security gates and presented our documents (ID, tickets, etc.), received our boarding passes and proceeded to our que. There were about a dozen lines of vehicles – many, many semi trucks, passenger cars and RV’s all lined up according to vehicle type and size. You pretty much just parked your vehicle and then had to wait for hours to board. We had a picnic in the car of tuna salad, cheese and crackers.

The ship was massive. Three layers of car parking – and parking large and tall enough to fit about 5 rows or cars or semis across! We took an elevator up to our deck, and found our cabin.

There are lots of options for seating or sleeping areas on the ferry. There are large lounges with general seating and reserved seating – most seemed to be large lounge chairs. There is an outside deck area (it was too cold for me to explore!) and private cabins. There’s also a kennel on board for animals, and animal friendly cabins. Pet owners can also choose to leave their pets inside their vehicles or RVs, but humans can’t stay in their vehicles.

We decided to reserve a cabin for the crossing. The ship has two and four bed cabins, each equipped with a tiny bathroom and a TV. We ended up in a four berth cabin, and boy was it cramped! Not really tall enough to sit up in the bunk bed (top OR bottom). There were only two of us, and I can’t imagine four adults in one of those cabins! We had brought a carry on bag each with shower stuff, PJs and a change of clothes, and there was no where to store it except for on the top bunks.

We also brought a small cooler on board with a few beers and snacks, and quickly settled in to try and get some sleep, deciding to bypass the shower in favor of more zzzzzzzs.

Sleep was quite limited though. A few hours into the journey, the Northern Atlantic started to rock and roll. Huge swells nearly rolled us both out of bed, and I think I caught air a few times. It was a pretty sleepless night. We had set alarms, but didn’t need them because the captain’s announcements were quite loud in the wee hours of the morning (6AM-ish). We were one of the first vehicles off the ship, and immediately found a Tim Hortons for the required Tim Bits and coffee for the road!

WE MADE IT TO NEWFOUNDLAND!