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Published: September 3rd 2012
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Summer travel updates
In order to share some beautiful pictures with you, we thought we’d update everyone on our summer travels.
From about mid June to mid September, we live on board our boat- Rudder Nonsense. For the previous 25 years, we have sailed her in Georgian Bay, Ontario. Two summers ago, Mark decided he needed a change of sailing scenery.
In 2010, we left Georgian Bay for the east coast of Canada. In order to do this, we sailed from Midland, north in Georgian Bay to Tobermory. From there, we cruised down thru Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair into Lake Erie. We had to transit the Welland Canal in order to reach Lake Ontario. There are 8 locks between the two lakes- it takes about 12 hours to pass thru all of them.
Once in Lake Ontario, we headed for Toronto. We spent a week or so, enjoying the boat life in the big city. It was fun for a while, but the time came to move on. The end of that first summer took us to Kingston, Ontario, where we hauled the boat out for the winter. This journey was approximately 1000 nautical
miles.
Summer of 2011 we started in Kingston, into the Thousand Islands and heading down the St. Lawrence River.
All throughout the St. Lawrence, we had amazing westerly winds pushing us in the right direction and a 1 knot current in our favour as well. We practically flew!
We spent a few days right in the city of Montreal- in the heart of the old city. We had a great time visiting all the sites there!
We moved on to Quebec City, once again, staying right downtown. Great experiences- this city life while on board!
Now we get to some of the more memorable parts.
The Saquenay River. What an amazing fjord! As we sailed down the fjord, we kept pace with a pod of Beluga whales. We spent a week here exploring all of the little places up the fjord. Naturally, we had to find the one hike that goes UP the cliff! Enjoy the pictures! They say it all.
From the Saguenay we crossed over to Rimouski , Quebec. Our first freaky fog experience happened here. The fog descended on us early on in our crossing, but with radar
and the chart plotter- we had a good picture on our “cockpit computer” of where we were. When we reached the anchorage, it was very strange having only the picture on the screen to tell us that land was about 300 feet away. We dropped the anchor, having complete trust in that little screen. Soon after, the fog lifted and we could indeed see the land. Whew!!
We moved on the next day to St. Anne de Manse. Here, we were stuck for a week waiting for the bad weather to pass. It was strange to call home from here, as Toronto was experiencing a heat wave, and we were freezing with heaters on and full winter clothing! This was our first hold up due to weather, but by the end of the week, we were certainly ready to move on! Tourist attraction of note here- St. Anne hosts a driftwood sculpture competition each year. The ones we saw were incredible! I’ll include a couple of pics for you.
Travelling on, we rounded the Gaspe Peninsula. Stopping in the town of Gaspe, we had a unique experience. While walking on the street, we met two young women from
Australia who were back packing and looking for the local hostel. In an instants decision, we decided to invite them to stay the night onboard the boat with us. Our thoughts were somewhere along the line of, saving them the cost of the room, you know, back packers are usually hard up for a buck…….and also offering a unique experience to some non-boaters. They were thrilled. We had a wonderful evening with them, sharing stories- they were indeed amazed to learn about boat life- and we were amazed to learn about them. They were actually in their early 30’s, and employed in the Australian mines. They drove dump trucks for a living, making a very respectable????100 grand a year!!! So much for impoverished back packers!!!!
It was a great experience for both of us!
Next stop- New Brunswick. As luck would have it, we were arriving at the height of lobster season. This is good- and bad. Dodging the floats in the water from all the lobster pots is a challenging adventure! They have long lines attached to them, so you never know just how far away you have to be in order to miss it. BUT- there
is the reward of getting to eat fresh lobster. One of the locals at the marina called up his lobster fisherman brother , and lo and behold, at 2 pm we met him at the dock, where he sold us FRESH lobster right then and there. Mark carried home the lobsters in a bucket, and proceeded to cook them for dinner. What a feast! Messy, but good!
Summerside, Prince Edward Island saw a bad storm come in. We were held up at the dock here for a few days, while waiting for it to pass. It is a lovely spot tho, complete with a local theatre where we were able to catch a performance of ……Anne of Green Gables. Of course! PEI is definitely all about their potatoes and Anne!
Heading out, we passed underneath the Confederation Bridge. Quite the
engineering feat- that bridge. You do not realize how big the concrete supports holding it up are until you are sailing beside them!
And now are luck was to run out with the lobster pots! The first one we snagged, we were able to quickly release by turning the boat around. The second one-
not so lucky! We didn’t even see it happen, just heard a loud banging noise start up as we were sailing along in high winds and rough seas. It took us a frantic moment to figure out what the noise was. Once we knew, it was decision time. It might be hard to picture, especially for you non-boaters- but I will try to describe it. The line between the actual pot and the floating boy, was snagged in the middle of the line on the keel of the boat. The pressure of the water on the keel would slide the line down the keel, where it would gets caught on the next available snag- the propeller. If it gets wound around the prop, we cannot start the engine, making it very difficult to get into a harbour. SO-
Mark thinks he needs to get this line off ASAP, and suggest going swimming under the boat to cut it off. Looking out at the 5 foot waves, and the high wind speeds, I can see the headlines in the paper already. MAN DIES WHILE TRYING TO CATCH LOBSTER POT…….
NO way is he going in while we are out
here! We head for calmer waters instead. As we are on our way to a more sheltered area for him to dive in, we are suddenly greeted with silence. No banging noise. Just as we realize this, a lobster float pops up behind the boat. Yippee! The line has sliced itself on the propeller and we are free! Whew! Onward ho!
If you are geographically challenged, like me, you will need to look at a map to see exactly where we went from here, but there are two routes to Sydney. WE chose to go through a body of water called the Bras d’ors Lakes, in the middle of Cape Breton island. To get here, we passed thru the Canso straight and the lock there, into St. Peters channel, another lock, and on into the Lakes. At this point, there were warnings out for a hurricane that was supposedly coming our way. We decided the best place to wait out this threat was in the town of St.Peters, where there is a marina and good safe harbour for high winds. Not surprisingly, many other boaters thought the same thing, and so we all congregated there together to wait- and
Registering speed-11.5 knots
Includes the current and wind together to party. We enjoyed a great evening meeting new people and sharing stories.
At this point, our time was running short. We did a couple of quick hops and made it to Sydney, Nova Scotia, our final destination for winter storage. Upon reaching our goal, we had travelled another 1200 nautical miles, making the trip a total of 2200 miles in total We hauled the boat out here, and hopped on a plane back to Toronto. The following summer would be for exploring more on this east coast of Canada. Stay tuned!
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Stephen Sivell
non-member comment
Hello my friends!
Marc, Nerine: Well, I was wondering what you might be up to. Thanks for sharing your interesting, adventurous life. The pics are beautiful and you jogged a 50 year old memory in me of Perce Rock. I lived in New Brunswick when I was a child. The boat looks great, but you will need a bigger one when you decide to sail over here and I'll meet you in Phuket. God bless you in your travels, Stephen