After resting in our comfortable anchorage at Canso on Friday night, we decided to make further progress toward Halifax. We raised anchor in the sunlight mid-morning on Saturday and set off.
Some of our route took us through a series of narrow channels that protected us from the sea, but when we were fully exposed โ wow! The swells were about 5 feet high on average, but some of them were more like 15 feet high. Because we were beating straight into the wind, the sails weren’t up and we bobbed like a cork on the sea. Fortunately, we only had about 2 hours of that exposure on our journey before we reached Tor Bay. Tor Bay gave us great protection as we set the anchor for the night, and we were treated to a beautiful sunset and sunrise.
The weather for Sunday into Monday morning was forecast to be mild with some good wind overnight. The rest of Monday was forecast to be strong winds right on our nose, which would lead to more swells like we had encountered on Saturday. Based on that, we decided to sail all day on Sunday and overnight into Monday so that we could get to our destination before nasty seas developed.
Sunday, we had almost no wind and calm seas during the day. We motored along nicely and took turns napping. Late in the afternoon on Sunday, we had our first encounter with the famous Nova Scotia fog, which became very thick. With modern tools like GPS and the electronics on Guidance, the fog did not impair our navigation, but it brought home how disorienting thick fog must have been for sailors in the past.
As the sun set, we continued on under motor. Finally, the promised wind arrived and we were able to set sails and turn off the engine. It was a pleasant sail for about 2 hours before the wind died again, and we resumed motoring. Then the rain came. It rained buckets on us for several hours. There were never large winds, and the sea stayed mostly calm, but so much rain!
As we made our final turns into Mahone Bay (about 25 nm west of Halifax), the rain ended and we had an easy motor to East River Shipyard, located in the far northeast corner of Mahone Bay. We were happy to get tied up and were impressed by the scenery.
We spent the rest of Monday resting and relaxing, and enjoyed dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Today, we got Guidance ready to be hauled out of the water. This was mostly packing up our personal gear and making sure the boat was tidied up so it could be worked on by the shipyard. With the help of Thibaud and Alexandre, the entire process went very fast. Huge thanks to both of them!
Thibaud and Alexandre headed on their way for a little sightseeing in Halifax and then their flights back to Minneapolis. It was a privilege to get to spend this time together, and Jim hopes we can sail together again sometime.
Jim was at the shipyard to witness Guidance being hauled out of the water. Guidance will be at the shipyard for about 10 days to get some routine maintenance items addressed, and some additional equipment installed.
It was interesting to look at Guidance out of the water. She looked in very good condition. Amusingly, there were weeds from the St. Lawrence River wrapped around the prop shaft and the rudder posts! They were easily removed, but quite the reminder of the weeds we had encountered earlier in our journey.
