Summer closure

The summer is soon coming to closure and thoughts turn to what to do for the fall and winter season.

Most of the summer has been spent in and around the Bras d’Or lakes taking in the music, time with friends and new acquaintances and enjoying the fine summer weather of the east coast.

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It’s time to go though. Plans were in place to store the boat in Gold River, NS but a call from Quebec has stalled our plans. The call from Quebec has come as a result of Sage being advertised for sale in Yachtworld. Remy has come to Baddeck to take a look at Sage but he has already flown to Grenada to look at a very similar boat there.

The season is moving on and the only concrete decision we have is to store Sage in Gold River. Just as we start to plan to leave a low appears several hundred miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. It’s one of the first tropical disturbance to appear on the NOAA site for August. It’s not a hurricane as it’s far enough north but it has a significant northerly wind for which we druel over as a possible opportunity to get to Halifax.

With an anti-clockwise spin the winds should be good to get to Halifax quickly. It’s not really the speed we are concerned about but rather using the weather system to avoid having to tack down the east coast against the prevailing SW winds normal for this time of the year. The SW winds would have given us the opportunity to see some of the incredible anchorages to explore along this coast but the sails would have been tough with big seas and strong winds which we weren’t keen on experiencing. The water is cold, the coast rock strewn and if there are communities they are very small and lacking services for people without land transportation. I will say the coast is a cruisers dream with lots to explore and few people and/or boats to tangle with.

Our last stop was St. Peter’s which is just inside the lock into the Bras d’Or lakes. A small community but with a wonderful marina run by the local Lions Club. Has a good anchorage, mooring buoys if needed and docks for luxury. We wanted a bit of luxury after alomst 6 weeks of being ‘on-the-hook’. We took the opportunity of plugging in, filling the water tanks, washing off the salt water and storing things away for the SW swells of the North Atlantic awaiting us outside the locks.

St. Peter’s is a collection spot for all boats heading south at this time of the year. There were boats from France, United States, various areas of Canada and Germany. Always a time for sailors to sit around the table with a bottle of wine and tell stories of where they have been and where they are planning to go for the coming winter season.

There is only one lock to go through. Getting an early start we went through the locks in the afternoon and tied up on the Atlantic side. With a promised northerly sector wind everyone had left the tie-up by 0700hrs.

And what a wild sail it was. We managed to follow the red buoys down the east coast and into Halifax with a rip roaring wind and pretty flat seas since we were on the lee side of Nova Scotia. There were periods of waves breaking into the cockpit, fishing boats to avoid and a beautifully clear night sky to guide us along the coast.

In 24 hours we sailed 145nm sailing into downtown Halifax at first light starting the engine only 10 minutes from the docks. An absolutely magnificent and exciting sail.