Saphira Blue

We are safely moored in Lunenburg waiting out the passing of a strong cold front interacting with the remenants from storm Phillipe.   Storm Phillipe started in the Western Caribbean and has moved up the eastern seaboard. The cold front pushing southeast interacting with the warm most air from Phillipe has caused  widespread stormy conditions. The nice thing about a storm like this is the north breeze on its tail as a high pressure zone fills in its wake, perfect…

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We are enjoying the summery weather in Halifax (18-22C the last few days), tinkering with boat equipment and making new friends as we wait for an appropriate off shore weather window.  There are several low pressure zones bubbling off the east coast that will bring us some unkindly winds early next week that we want to avoid so we are waiting that out to perhaps leave on it’s tail next week. In the mean time, the SSB radio is installed/working,…

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We made it to Halifax!  The passage from Canso was….. Well….. exciting.  Weather predictions called for an approaching gale that will produce produce 35kn winds and 3-5 meter waves Sunday evening though Monday so we decided to get an early start to Halifax and raised the anchor in Canso at 1am Sunday morning. We made the 120nm journey in 24 hours with a mix of no wind in the morning (using the diesel powered iron genny), great sailing West breeze…

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As we made our way from Gaspé Peninsula to Prince Edward Island we had some exciting winds reaching 30 knot gusts.  This section of the seaway is known for its wind monsters waiting to blow at the nearest sail boat.  We managed to lose our wind vane on the top of the mast and one of our less than secure fenders to one of the gusts.  These small token sacrifices must have appeased the wind monster since he settled for…

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Whales, dolphins and seals are all sea mammals that live in the St. Lawrence (E.g., Humpback Whales, Atlantic White-sided dolphins and Grey seals). Blue Whales are the  biggest animals on earth but they are extremely rare to see because they were being hunted too much and now it is illegal to hunt blue whales. Blue whales are about 25-31 m long and weigh about 80-130 tons. A blue whale back and underside in blue-grey. The diet of a blue whale…

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The village of Tadoussac definitely captured our hearts.  It is a very small town of about 900 people that is focused around the whales of the St. Lawrence. During our visit we visited the whale museum which was more like a whale information and preservation centre.   It was full of information on the whales of the St. Lawrence and ways we can change to reduce our negative impact on their existence.  It was quite enlightening as we learned about the…

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The charm of Quebec City is 2nd to none.  From the European style old city to the street musicians, it is simply a remarkable city.  The city was right into spirit with Haloween just around the corner. No trip to Quebec is complete without a trip to a Gelato or a Chocholate shop.  In our case, it was a combination shop with some of the best gelato and chocholate we have had.  It was sad to leave but the docking…

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We arrived in Quebec City as planned and wow, was it awesome.  First order of business was to go though the locks at Vieux Port Quebec (Old Port Quebec) and find our assigned dock.  Given it was our first time, it was probably pretty obvious to the locals that we were tourists in their city trying to follow procedures in a non-native language (translation by our French immersion children).  None-the-less we managed to monkey our way past the locks to…

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We made better than expected progress today due to narrow channels and faster currents.  In fact we broke our speed record again at 11.5 knots which means the current was around 5+ knots at that location!  It would be a real bummer trying to go the other way! Although this also meant some of the big boys were pretty close…… and not all of them want to share the channel with small sailboats nicely. We also found a bunch of…

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