Driving Miss Mosey: Miss Mosey is going for a boat ride

Port aux Basques - May 21, 2024

Finally, after leaving FnEJ's Hideway on March 13, 2024 we are ready to board the ferry from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. The faint dashed blue line in the above picture shows the route the ferry takes from North Sidney, Nova Scotia to Port aux Basque, Newfoundland. This is a first for us, but we have read and watched everything we could find about taking your RV on the ferry. The journey is about 112 miles and takes roughly 7 hours.

Our Garmin GPS shows the Nova Scotia Highway 105 running right into the water. The ferry is the substitute for the highway across the water becoming the Trans-Canada Highway 1, or TCH-1, in Newfoundland.

This is the ferry we will be driving into, the MV Highlanders. We will be driving up that ramp that starts in the center of the picture through that door in the center of the bow deck. Contrary to what some people have heard, there is no backing up involved at either end of the journey. One fellow we spoke with had unhooked his towed car from his motorhome just because he was afraid he would have to back up at some point.

We approach the entrance to the ferry staging area where we are asked for our license plate number, our reservation confirmation, and the length of our rig. We gave them the required information and proudly announced we were 57 feet long. We knew this because EJ and I had carefully measured the length with a 12 foot tape measure several weeks ago. Well, they informed us we were wrong, that we were 58 feet long. Oops, I guess there was some slippage. Fortunately no more money needed to change hands as we were still under 60 foot mark which is when the price goes up. Once all that was squared away, we received our boarding cards and cabin key. Without a boarding pass, your RV will not be allowed to board.

Once we managed to get past the entrance gate gauntlet, we got to wait. Here we are in line with all the other RV's anticipating the boarding process. We had purposely arrived 2.5 hours early hoping to get a good spot on the ferry.

We receive the notice to board and begin entering the bowels of the ship.

Here we are being guided into our very skinny spot. I kept trying to pull to the right and he kept telling me to pull to the left. My drivers side mirror was mere inches from that Maritime trailer.

So we are parked within the yellow lines, but the passenger side mirror hangs out over that line bine by a good 6-9 inches. But what can I do? The mirror won't budge, I've already tried that. We hope that we still will have a mirror when it's time to leave.

Because we don't want to be schlepping our belongings around for 7 hours and because we thought we would get some much needed showers and maybe a nap, we opted to get a cabin for the journey. The cost was about $56 Canadian which was a steal.

I wish we had gotten pictures of the parking deck on Highlanders as we tried to find Miss Mosey. First of all, we used the steps going down from deck 8 (where our cabin was) to deck 3 (where Miss Mosey was parked). When we arrived, we used the elevators to get to our cabin. There were tractor-trailers parked everywhere. We couldn't even see Miss Mosey. Plus there was barely room to squeeze between all the trailers without getting road slime all over your clothes.

We finally found Miss Mosey and we still had a passenger side view mirror. Yay! But, a semi was parked next to us and our mirror and his mirror over lapped. Ohno! But the parking guides knew what they are doing and extracted us with no damage to our home on wheels.

We have arrived in Newfoundland-Labrador which we will call Newfoundland from now on unless we actually venture to Labrador on another ferry.

For our first night we arrive at a large parking lot about 30 minutes north of Port aux Basque where the ferry docked. On Google maps this lot is known as "Arret pour une nuit". (What that means, I have no idea) There are mountains in front of us.