Day 1: Packed and off we go leaving Chester Basin at 1:30pm Tuesday August 10, 2010.
Beautiful conditions in Mahone Bay, things looked great. A few sailboats coming in for Chester’s Raceweek. 4pm hits, I take the wheel, Chevy has a nap as we have a long night ahead of us planning on running through it up to Canso.
4:30 Boyd and I hit a wall of fog that wouldn’t lift until the next day. They called for fog patches, but as Chevy put it, they should’ve called for clear patches. I think we found one at around 1am while Boydy was driving. We were able to use a star in the sky to help keep on course for about an hour there. Before and after that, we just had to feel the waves and try to keep us straight. Autopilot wouldn’t work with a following sea that was pushing us around from the South. We all had a lovely workout spinning the wheel vigorously to fight the swells.
Couldn’t wait for daylight, counting down the minutes until we could see more than 10 feet in front of us. We had the gps and radar on, so nothing to worry about… Maybe that’s why Chevy decided to worry about running out power. He thought it was too easy heading out into the fog all night long with two rookies. Maybe I’m exaggerating. In the end, we made it
So we showed up in Chedabucto Bay around 9am and it was finally nearly flat calm. Pulled into Port Hawkesbury at around 5pm after a straight 27 hours out at sea. Had some lovely drinks, dinner, and watched a beautiful sunset. So nice, I only got off the boat to tie it up. None of us felt the need to waste time with showers either. Dedicated.
Through the lock at canso, out off the coast of cape breton now. Looking good, though the seas are a bit rocky pushing into us, but the forecast looks good.
-Jay