The provincial registrar general is looking into how a property sale last year turned what had been a Crown-owned waterfront into a private beach.

Mark Coffin, who heads the province's land registration system, ordered an investigation after a beach in Cape Breton, which was a piece of provincial Crown land, was included when the land adjacent to the beach was purchased last summer.

Eugene MacKinnon, 14, was shocked recently when he tried to go to the little beach near his home in Big Harbour only to be told he was trespassing.

"Well, me, my dog and my brothers were going down to the beach and this girl said that she owns the property," said MacKinnon. "She said you can't come down. She said get off the property."

The new landowners, an American couple from New York state, have also posted "No Trespassing" signs along the trail that leads down to the beach near Baddeck.

Area residents decided to look into what was happening, and learned the beach was included in the sale, apparently by mistake.

"We got a hold of a local surveyor and started looking into this," said local Jim O'Brien. "It turns out, in fact, that from the surveyor's point of view, this is an incorrect migration of title."

Now O'Brien and his neighbours are worried that an administrative error has cost them access to the popular beach for good. They've started a petition to ask the provincial government to intervene and return the right of way to the Crown. So, far, they've collected 30 signatures.

"It's sort of a place where people would go for a swim on any sort of summer's day. It's a nice beach," said O'Brien.

"We ran a little regatta there and actually, you could get on it from either side, so if the wind is from one direction, you're protected or the other direction, you're protected so it's a very pleasant little spot."

O'Brien is concerned that returning the beach access might be difficult. In 2003, the Nova Scotia government brought in a new Land Registration Act that replaced the old paper system with the new computerized one.

O'Brien believes that once a property has been migrated to the province's new computerized land registry, the title is guaranteed and virtually impossible to change.

But Coffin said the land transfer error could be corrected, that there is a process to investigate some cases and the disputes are resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

In the meantime, Coffin has ordered an investigation into the land transfer of the beach at Big Harbour, which means the property could not be sold until the issue is resolved.