Saturday 28th June.

Woke up at 5:30am, and left the dock at 6:15am.  As we suspected our promised NW 10-15 knot winds did not materialize and so we started motoring hoping that they would appear later in the day.   Apart from there being no wind it’s a beautiful day – sunny and warm but not too hot.  Perfect for yoga on the trampoline and practicing some photography with our new camera.  We saw several whales, seals and dolphins on route. 

The winds never appears so we motored 56nm to Chéticamp, Nova Scotia, 46 37.94N 061 00.68W.  We motored around looking for a place to dock and were invited to raft with several Quebecois boats from l’Ilse de la Madelaine.  They were partying and were very sociable.  We went ashore for a walk and on our return we given some crab legs by our Quebecois neighbours.  They were difficult to eat, especially since we didn’t have the right utensils, but a delicious appetizer! 

Ships Log: 3643.1, Todays Log: 55.1, Seasons Total: 55.1

Friday 27th June.

Beautiful blue skies and the predicted strong winds.  However, the promised NW winds for tomorrow have fallen off the forecast.  We did a few last minute preparations for tomorrow’s first sail of the season and then went for a bike ride to Basin’s Head – home of the famous “Singing Sand” beach.  It was a nice beach, sunny but cool, and if you scuff your feet in the sand as you walk is makes a squeaky sound – hence singing sands.  The sand did sing, but not very tunefully!  You can also make the sands sing with your hands, but it's still not very tunefull, and least when Ron was doing it.

Back to the boat, and Tom came around with a few beers to bid us farewell. 

We bought take out pizza, ate on the boat and had an early night in preparation for a 6am departure tomorrow.

Thursday 26th, June.

Windy, rainy and cool, but it’s nice to be afloat and tied up to a dock.  We both putzed around doing jobs on the boat.  Ron installed 3 LED lights, which save a lot of electrical power, and estimated the time to be ½ hour each.  The first 2 took an hour each and the last took 3 hours – about par for Ron’s estimating skills.  Teresa stocked up on food and did the laundry.  Strong winds are forecast from the NE tomorrow, (the direction we plan to sail), and from the NW at 10 – 15 knots for Saturday, which is absolutely perfect for our first trip to Cheticamp, Nova Scotia.  So, we’re planning our departure for Saturday. 

Our “next door neighbours” when Quinita was ashore were a Canadian couple – Tom and Clarissa.  Our few conversations so far revealed that they had sailed from Northern Lake Huron to PEI, via the Gaspe Peninsular over the past 4 years.  Pretty much the same trip we have made.  So we invited them over for dinner thinking that perhaps we had had similar sailing experiences.  We had a very pleasant evening with them, but in terms of sailing experiences, we were totally outclassed.  It turned out that they had built their boat (a 34’ Van de Stadt steel sloop) 20 years ago in Australia, and had sailed to New Zealand, the islands of the South Seas, Hawaii and ended up in British Columbia.  Next season they are planning a circumnavigation of Newfoundland (no mean feat) and are considering a passage back to the West Coast of Canada and Alaska via the North West Passage – a trip few sailors would attempt.  Despite their obvious sailing prowess, a very nice and unassuming couple.  We hope to meet them later in the season on the Bras d’Or. 

Many pink, purple and white lupins in flower at the moment.  And a pretty lighthouse on Souris provided us with some nice evening walks.

Wednesday 25th June.

Rainy and cooler.  We launched today without any issues and now have a nice spot where we can reach the wifi from the boat.  After launching, the winds weren’t too strong so we took the opportunity of bending on our 3 sails. (Forecasts indicate we won’t be able to for the next 2 days).  So we finished the day in pretty good shape. 

And… I know I said I wouldn’t mention the telephony hell again, but I feel I must, at least to give a local guy here in Souris the credit he deserves. 

After Bell gave me misinformation, I went to see a guy in a local telephone store.  He initially spent an hour trying to get my phone to work, even though it wasn’t his problem.  He said he’d charge me $10 for his efforts so far and I'd pay him next time I was in the store.  I went away to try a few things and promised to return the next day which I did.  He tried a few more things, including selling me an $11 replacement sim card.  That didn’t work either.  I went away to talk to Verizon (who sold me the phone), and returned the next day.  We discussed options.  I had an old phone which we had planned to use on the Bell network (much better data coverage) but couldn’t get to work.  I also had a new phone which we had planned to use for voice via Verizon wireless (much cheaper).  The new phone would probably work with a Bell sim card enabling us to switch sim cards on the new phone to get voice and data.  BUT the physical sizes of the sims were different.  So you’d expect him to sell me another sim right?  No, he got his snips out and trimmed the sim he sold me 2 days ago to fit the new phone.  And it worked!!  And he wouldn’t take anything more for the time he spent.  So the long and the short of it is that he spent about 4 hours of his time, sold me a sim card, and fixed a problem that wasn’t his making.  My total cost:  $11.  Welcome to PEI Hospitality!

Monday 23rd, Tuesday 24th June.

Another 2 nice days.  Can’t remember exactly what we were doing, but we were busy and made good progress on the boat and got her ready for launching.

Sunday 22nd June.

Happy birthday, Heather!

It looks like summer has started a day late – it was sunny and warm today.  T shirts and shorts weather.  Teresa finished the polishing and Ron commissioned and started our 3 engines. 

Dined aboard again (on yummy leftovers).

Saturday 21st June.

Last year our chartplotter would intermittently refuse to start.  We took it home for the winter, returned it to Raymarine who found nothing wrong.  And to be fair, we tested it at home by turning it on every day and it worked perfectly.  So Ron re-installed it on the boat and guess what? – it wouldn’t start.  After  disconnecting all the other instruments to simulate precisely the conditions at home we had a beer (glass of wine), and started to think.  As we were thinking, brrr it’s cold tonight we realized that it misbehaved at the start of last season (when it was cold), and in the middle (when it was cold…).  So we, at last, have a hypothesis – we cannot go sailing when the weather’s cold!  (More on this hypothesis later…)  Ron also installed our new AIS Transponder (ask Mr. Google) and Teresa cleaned, organized the boat and unpacked our remaining stuff from the car. 

Having filled the propane  and water tanks, we dined aboard for the first time this season.

Friday 20th June.

Teresa started polishing the boat and got most of it done.  Ron started ‘telephony hell’.  Way to boring to document here, but suffice to say that neither Verizon (our US phone provider), nor Bell (the Canadian company) delivered what they said they would.  ‘Telephony hell’ was to last the next few days, enough said.  Ron drilled a hole through one of our hatches in order to fit the new handle that broke last year, only to find that the replacement part didn’t fit.  Another 45 minutes on the phone to Lewmar, who admitted they had sent the wrong part and promised to figure out how to get a replacement to us in Canada.  Meanwhile, Ron modified the part we did have so that it would fit – watertight, but ugly. 

We dined at Sheltered Harbor for the 2^nd night in a row.  Obviously we enjoyed it. 

Thursday 19th June.

Arrived, Souris, 46 20.82N 062 14.96W at about 1pm.  After some wet weather on the drive, we were glad that the rain held off while we unwrapped the boat, setup our berth and got her ready for living aboard.  It was pretty chilly though.  We had been warned that most boats up here don’t launch until mid or late June, and in fact we had checked the weather at Souris about 3 weeks ago – light snow showers, 35°F!  So 55°F didn't seem too bad.  The boat was in great shape.  No dead bugs or cobwebs – we’re guessing that was a benefit of it being so cold. 

Wednesday 18th June.

Left Vermont, planning to enter Canada and spend the night at St. John in New Brunswick.  We had also planned to buy some last minute nautical goods in St. John since Google didn’t reveal many chandlers in Canada – strange, since there are a lot of sailors here.  Anyway we spoke with the chandler in St John and he arranged to meet us at the Information Centre, which he did.  He didn’t carry what we wanted, but presented us with a catalogue from a chandler in Charlottetown, PEI who did.  Welcome to New Brunswick hospitality!  We also picked up a Canadian sim card so that we would have internet access on some of the more remote parts of our upcoming trip.  All this went very smoothly and so we pressed on to Monkton where we spent the night, only 250 miles from the boat.