I had big plans for sailing up to Canada. All that time! I could finally catch up some neglected school!
Yeah, that didn’t really happen.
What did happen was that we had a week of good sailing, then about three days headwinds. They weren’t all that comfortable. We weren’t seasick, but it’s amazing how your body just shuts down in a rolling sea . . .
Some time in the 11 days while we were travelling up the coast, we felt cold again! For the first time in one and a half years we could break out the beanies!!! ^_^ We had immense fun comparing thermometer readings from hour to hour, watching to see what time of night had the lowest reading. If the lowest reading had been on your watch, you made sure everybody knew the next day. 😉 Our lowest reading was 16.2 degrees Celsius. Not really cold, but for us coming from the Florida summer it was cold.
We fought the 20kt headwind for about three and a half days, constantly watching the GRIB files and counting off the time to when the wind would turn. In the end it did. Again blowing at 20kt, at least this time it came from an angle where we could use it!
There was only one major reason for us to use the engine: we were on a Schedule. (Capital letter fully justified.) Waiting for the wind to turn* would have cost us at least three days, but probably more. We had been delayed in Puerto Rico far longer than we had planned. As a result we only had a week in Nova Scotia that overlapped with the time the Knechtles were staying there. Three days would be half of our time together, so an ‘engine-usage’ exception was acceptable. If we hadn’t had a schedule, we would probably have pulled into a close harbour to wait until the wind changed, especially since we knew it would. As it was, we kept on moving in the direction of St. Peters, however much the wind and waves slowed us down. (Which they did. Tremendously.)
We spotted land the day before we actually arrived in Nova Scotia. That had us all a little bit exited. ^_^ The final stretch to St Peters lock where we entered the lakes was mainly covered during the night, so when I got up for the last half of my watch, we were already almost there!
We had to sail into a huge bay, and right at the very far side of the bay we entered the little lock. As we got nearer and nearer to land, we could just see pine trees covering the shore. There were a few houses dotted on little open plots between the trees, but looking over the land, there were mostly trees! All the houses that we could see from the water had sloped roofs. They reminded my parents quite a lot of some European countries they’ve visited. (Specifically Austria, I think.)
We radioed the lock to get permission to pass through. After they gave the go-ahead, we started entering the channel. All along the bank there were these tiny colourful little flowers set in wonderfully soft grass.
We had arrived in Canada!
*Which we knew it would – long live GRIB files! (Our weather forecast system)
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