AVAST AND AWEIGH

The tuna wouldn't fit in the frying pan, anyway.

Bon Voyage, fmj! May the spirit of Henry Cabot and Joshua Slocum go with you.

McT

Oh its one more time
I will sail the Northwest passage
To Find the hand of Franklin reachin for the beaufort Sea
Tracing One warm line
in a land so wild and savage
And make aNorthwest Passage to the sea..

Not quite like Stan Rogers song but its a little adventure

We were going to take our little cat Lucky along. Now were having second thoughts since the railings dont have good footing unless you use two points of contact and when We took lucky down to the boat to acclimate her, she immediately started to run around the fore cabin top and was batting the anchor chain in the chocks. She has absolutely no fear, which could be dangerous. "Fear begets respect, which begets
l seamanship"-Piloting and Navigation by Johnson.

Now our boat has been gone over by the CG auxiliary and declared worthy, all we have left to do is fuel up and pack the vittles. Were going with mostly dried foods and some canned. Our fridge is rather small and will hold eggs and milk and butter and a few other things . We must have fresh onions and potatoes for any fish or lobster we can buy on the way.
Lots of sea sickness meds just in case. Nothing makes a voyage a total drag than when you are so sick youre afraid that you wont die.


McTag-thanks for the Josh Slocum ref and wish. Youve got us way wrong , dont think Cabot or Magellan with us, instead think GILLIGAN. I really hate to go sailing with people whoare so into their sport that everyone else on board is seriously considering murder.


I promise to take a photo journal and Ill pass them along on return. (Our web server has allowed us some hosting space for this kind of stuff, so I can send good qual pix from a CD )

Weve been watching the tropics forecasts and , everything looks real quiet for at least a week out, so even if a major storm would kick in this week off the Azores, itd take another 2 weeks to catch up into the maritimes. Our only nemesis is fog, which can throw our schedule into a pot and cause major delays. Often , the only way to lose the fog, is to steer way out in deeper waters , then where the only challenge is high seas. Its a mix of travails.

cav sings "Northwest Passage" because I can, with farmerman's edits, and wishes well for the journey! Beautiful goddamn melody in that thar tune....

AARRR_well send ye a parrot dere matey. If ye promises not ta cook im. ARRR. Gee , I thought that nobody cept me liked Stan Rogers (course in the US we need to be told whats good music)


WHY THE HELL IS THIS IN RELATIONSHIPS AND MARRIAGE?

True enough, perhaps a move to travel....Stan is revered here among the folk music fans.

Bringing a kitty! How cool. I hope he stays aboard.

Beth has it right, paul-lama-eyes <swoon>!

Stan Rogers. Ahhhhh, he was a fine musician. His music lives on.

Farmerman - it sounds great!

I love being at sea - except for the near-terminal seasickness. I get passed the time where you hope you're going to die, to the state where you're afraid you're not going to die. After that, though - it's just magic.

Take care (and I worry about the kitty!)

For most of the trip, we will be just outside of the view of land, and one leg where we will be really out to sea. So For about the first day , passing from Grand Manan to Nova Scotia, it will be ,hopefully, a smooth sail and pretty much in sight of lands, so our seasickness will be tempered by the sight of land , by the time we reach Mahone Bay, I hope well be sealegged.

Im having some trouble with the radar , , the CG gave me a target to calibrate and Im getting ghost reflectors . I need to tune it , and the only radar guy is over on Lubec , so I guess Ill taker er over and have it worked on today . Cant be too careful .

Well, everythings ready and were starting to stow food and light gear. We leave at 1pm Maritme. Have to admit, Im kinda nervous, this is a hefty cruise and its foggy as hell now.
Well, see ya all i n September . If anything neat happens, Ill relay farmerboy and he will post. Hes a decent writer (hes won short story contests 2 years running, so I think he might make an account more interesting)

Two sea-faring thoughts: the back of the boat is always the most stable, if it's choppy waters, and a kitty is a good thing to have, especially if you run out of food. Tastes like rabbit, I hear.

I'm sailing on this boat this saturday! With Captain llama-eyes...... oh yeah, and my sister, her husband and their child. AND with a private charter group of god knows how many people.

well, made it most of the way. Wse had to cut short the Newfie section because of terrible weather. The trip (actually called path-finding), brought the Charlie Manson quote to mind.
"Fear begets hyperawareness" or something like that. We had many encounters with very tall seas (for us) and fog banks so thick that radar was even damped. The whales were spectacular and we only suffered a single mishap. I backed into a sunken spar and tore up t he prop shaft and the centralizer spool. we wasted a day just drifting while I reinstalled a new splined shaft section to give us a wobbly side trip to a Dartmouth NS boatyard where e they did real repairs..

Taking a trip like that made us really respect the deepwater fishermen who travel hundreds of miles further out beyond .
Days of beautiful boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terro.r .

Great description. Glad you're safe

Glad to hear you're back safely.

Sounds like some interesting writing could come out of this trip.

Congratulations and welcome ashore!

Good job you had the spare parts to do the repair. Well done, fmj. Pictures? Would be nice, for us armchair sailormen.

McT

Welcome back, glad your safe.
I'm convinced fogs around Newfoundland are both sentient and evil. I spent a terrifying day off Labrador once on a boat that was dodging in and out between icebergs and freighters in a fog that always appeared or thickened at just the right (wrong) moment

Have you read any of the sailing/ exploration books of Bill Tilman? Marvellous man.
He voyaged under sail to the polar regions, and talked about 'bergy bits' to describe broken ice in the water. You just reminded me of that.

the solid ground is still rolling and weve been back for a day already

Unc-Newfie fogs had us huddling in the pilot house making believe we were doing important little tasks, when all we were doing was listening for anything coming through the thick cold soup. As I said, the fogs got so thick that the radar had to be squelched and frequncies diddled to even sense anything ahead. Stephen King should have our log . We spent a 3 day fog leg, led only by GPS, radar and occasional ship horns.
The fog was drawn to a close by a 20 ft sea blow "A net buster" we only had to do about 30 miles in that one befoire we hit the lee side of Nova Scotia. We spent a few days in Sydney getting my prop shaft tuned with new centralizers and we had a little moped in the hold , so we were petty mobile.

Hooked big tuna but cut im loose , I didnt want a repeat of the Old Man and the Sea.
We were not as lucky in the whale department. while we saw some, they were not as plentiful out in the deep stretches as we were led to believe. Maybe they began migrating already and were on their way south by the time we came out.
I have to return to Pa by the 20th of Sept, so we will be putting the boat in the yard, cleaning up camp, and rolling the RV homeward.
Im really into Pathfinding as a way to enjoy the ocean. Ive said to Cicerone that I dont like cruises cause ya sith there like a veal and just get6 fatted. Well, opening water trail in a small boat is excitem,ent, joy, fear, and just plain back breaking. But We love it. Youre entire comfort and safety is in your hands, .
Id like flying much more if I could fly the plane. Of course that would require effort to learn , and all my effort is already spoke for.

Wow. Welcome back. I had no idea you'd be in such danger. (Did the Farmerwife go along on this willingly?)

Sentient and evil fogs??? <shiver> I once spent a lifetime (well, OK, one morning) out in the Straits of Juan de Fuca when so much fog descended that we couldn't see the bow of the 18-foot boat we were in. The ship horns warned us they were in the area, but we couldn't tell where and wondered if they'd suddenly appear towering above us. I was so thankful when they'd finally recede back into the quiet. Never again will I go out into the big water in such a small boat, not that an extra 32 feet would have made a lick of difference. It would just be a bigger target.