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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We started at sunrise in Montreal today. While leaving the Old Port, we hit a personal speed record of 11.2 knots in Saphira Blue as we passed under the bridge at Pont Jacques Cartier. Essentially this means the current was almost 4 knots benind us. Either that or there was a bunch of Mermaids helping us along. Today was supply day. After a stop for fuel we hiked into Longueuil for groceries. Paroisse Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue was just around the corner so we…
Lots of waiting around again today for bridges and locks. During a 2 hour wait for locks, we explored the Lachine rapids. Montreal Old Port is beautiful at night. The lights dance across the bridge while images light up the clock tower.
An early start to try and get to Montreal ahead of schedule. It started out with us breaking a speed record as we hit 10kts through a narrow section with a strong tail current. We were soon foiled by the lifting bridges. We waited a total of about 3 hours for 2 bridges to open. They open the bridges as needed for commercial traffic but pleasure craft have to wait until commercial traffic comes along. We made it through the…
We made awesome progress today through three locks (Iroquois, Eisenhower and Snell) despite a significant sailor’s bane. AWA – Apparent Wind Angle – the angle of the apparent wind with respect bow…. ie. standing on the bow. AWS – Apparent Wind Speed – the speed of the wind when standing on the bow – 0.0 is a BAD number for sailing TWS – True Wind Speed – Wind speed with respect to the water you are floating on (which may be moving…