Leg 9 of our 2022 cruise up north
(to read Leg 8, Now in Canada: Harbor Island to Thessalon, click here)
I’m getting a little worried about the weather on this trip. For much of our delivery up here it’s been fairly cool. This morning, however, it was cold (50?). We actually ran the heat at the dock to warm up! This doesn’t bode well for swimming or stand up paddle boarding in the next few weeks!
Prior heading out, we brought the boat over to Thessalon’s fuel dock for another pump out. While we didn’t need it right away, we didn’t want to make any more marina stops for about another week. Thessalon’s fuel dock was a little challenging for us… it’s only about half the length of our boat in an otherwise tiny, shallow, weed filled space. On top of the maneuvering challenges, their pump out hose wouldn’t reach across our deck, so we had to leave the dock, switch fenders to the opposite side, and tie up on the port side. We had to dock there twice!
Eventually we got underway by 10:20am, and motored in very light air for about an hour and a half. Then I noticed we were converging with a sailboat that was sailing. I thought of the comments I had made earlier in this trip (and blog) about sailboats motoring in nice weather, and now I was “that guy.” We dutifully raised sails and secured the motor.
It became a nice sail. Eventually we sailed 30 miles, the last 26 of which was with the spinnaker.
As we progressed farther east, the scenery got more interesting. First some shoals to clear, then some islands, then some rocks, then lots of all that together! We took our sails down at the western edge of the Whalesback Channel (the North Channel has many smaller channels, some with pretty cool names). We finally had reached our first goal of the trip… Beardrop Harbor.
I’ve written about Beardrop before, but for us it marks the end of the “deliver the boat” phase and the beginning of the “enjoy where you are” phase of our trip. Today we covered a little over 40 miles, and may not sail that many miles in one day until we head home. We’ll probably be here in Beardrop two nights to “slow down.” It looks like the weather should be dry… we just need things to warm up again.
