Sitting here at the dock of the bay in St Peter's sipping on sundowners and watching the sun go down, Dave and I can safely ask ourselves "does life get any better than this?" ... especially now that we're on the flip side of the adventures of the last few days, that, in retrospect, were a little too real to seem real.

We left Shearwater Yacht Club bright and early Thursday morning, in the fog, provisioned and with a few whoops of joy... bring it on baby the vacation has started!! The seas were calm and bringing us nowhere but we didn't care, we were on our way. Then by mid-afternoon and off in the distance, we saw the line. The line of dark clouds, the line of an approaching squall... actually you could see the line on the water as well... from calm waters to agitated seas and then once we were in the mess... the seas started to build and pound. Didn't look good.

We crossed the line and fought the choppy seas (or rather I should say, Dave did, for I bravely fed the fish a few times) and the winds were hitting 20-25 knot winds easy. We were violently going into 6-8 foot seas and life was not comfortable at all. We gave up around supper time where we found refuge in Sheet Harbor (a mere hour and a half car drive away but a whole day's sail in those conditions in our case) and after licking our wounds we found ourselves "stranded" for 3 nights unable to go anywhere because of the horrible weather conditions "out there".

So what does one do when stranded for a few days? We enjoyed some (ok, lots) of quiet time, sleeping our afternoons away (unbelievable how much one can sleep when one finally starts relaxing), watching DVD's ("Pirates of the Caribbean" LOL), BBQ'ing, chatting with fellow adventurers on Rum Runner and Hallelujah and getting things done on our lovely Illihee II. We even found ourselves ashore one night at the local restaurant, where one table of approximately 10 Australian and English guys (who looked like they'd been working on the oil rigs) each, no word of a lie, ordered about a dozen hot dogs for supper. Each. And beer. To each his own?

We tried to leave Saturday night after hearing the weather reports, but Hallelujah broke down with an impeller problem after only about 30 minutes underway so Rum Runner towed her right back to our "home" and there we were, right back to where we started... To top things off, poor Rum Runner, who had towed Hallelujah, ran aground not 15 feet from the mooring ball, and had to wait for an hour for the tide to come up to come join us for a chili supper ! Imagine being that close yet that far LOL.

Dave and I sailed around Sheet Harbour (that took all of a few minutes) and saw the rushing falls which was kinda neat... (check out our pictures in the photo gallery !). All in all, not much to see and do but wait it out...

Bright and early Sunday morning (4:30 to be exact) we were up and at 'em once again, leaving the comfort of our home of the last 3 days to attempt a sail up the coast, "for real" we hoped.

It was a difficult sail up, the winds not cooperating at all, and we valiantly and uncomfortably sailed with the winds behind us, wing on wing, in seas that were still confused. We opted to keep going past Liscomb, and should have entered in Whitehead or Canso, but once again, opted to keep going instead. All or nothing mentality right ? WRONG !!

We learned a few do's and don'ts. We hit fog as dense as pea soup barely seeing Rum Runner who was only a few meters away, and by the time we rounded the Canso corner and into Chedabucto Harbour, the seas were merciless and we were being pounded as we tried to cross the channel. When they say that conditions get rough in a second, they weren't joking. In the blink of an eye, I got sideswiped in the head with the boom sheets, we're out of control as the main is still up and Dave climbs up to attack the mainsail! He wants me me to steer while he attempts to get the main down before we lose it completely (it should've been reefed to begin with !!) In the next blink of an eye, we lost sight of Rum Runner (who was fighting a similar battle and actually went through more problems than we did as his boom derailed)... and we found ourselves alone, in the dark, in the fog, in pounding swelling seas totally disoriented and at the mercy of the winds and water. Yeesh... Every thought imaginable went through my head, namely, what you see in THOSE movies, is what we were going through. Dave is asking (aka) "yelling" at me to steer her into the wind except I had no idea where the wind was as it was too dark and too foggy to see the weathervane. And even going by the feel of it, everytime I turned into the wind the conditions got worse... Shit. I know I invented a few swear words last night, and I'm sure he did too !!

All in all, what an experience. Lots learned & lots still to be learned. Long story short we made it across and into the Bay, found the entrance to St Peter's Canal and all I can say is thank god for my partner in crime, as in total we (he) sailed 22 hours before hitting the entrance to the St Peter's Canal at 2:30 in the a.m. There were quite a few unlit buoys marking the channel (??), and Dave is pointing out how beautiful the stars in the sky were... well, at that point, yes it was beautiful, but the day had been just too long to really appreciate the moment :)

I do need to question Rum Runner's antics here. In the middle of the above detailed mess (ie: fog, wind, mist, night, zero visibility) he's trying to get close to a buoy in the middle of the harbour, to determine gawed only knows what, as it didn't appear on his chart plotter, and he was curious. I tried to tell him that Curiousity killed the cat, but I think in this case, it only satisfied the cat.

I don't know if we'd be foolish enough to sail into an unknown harbor during the night in conditions such as these. We tied her up and made sure she was safe and sound, met some fellow travellers that had been sailing the same route as us (Rostral), and then the radio comes on... Rum Runner is "lost" !! (Weren't we suposed to be following them??). Dave signalled with his flashlight and offered a few pointers and shortly thereafter we saw them come sailing in.. helped her get tied up, and all of us crashed only to be up at 8 the next morning, with the sounds of the Theodore Tugboat jingle coming through the locks at us. LOL. I guess Theodore had been up to Port Hawkesbury with the Tall Ships...

St Peter's is famous for its canal... a lock system that joins the Atlantic Ocean to the Bras d'Or Lakes. Going through the locks, which have been in existence since 1869 was pretty interesting... I guess it took 15 years to dig and blast an 800 meter long passage through the granite hill... In one of the pictures you can see the old timber planking... The Canal became a National Historic site in the early 1900's and is now run by Parks Canada, in operation between May and October.

The locks have two double gates on each end that form a "V" shape. Not much of a difference in water level, only about 4 feet, but an interesting passage nevertheless. As we exited under the swinging bridge, we made a hard left and there was St Peters marina !! We'd arrived, safe and sound, and a lot exhausted.

The next few hours had us cleaning up, showering, doing laundry, and here we are, recovering from the last 22 grueling hours, enjoying a most lovely BBQ dinner and glass of wine, watching the sun go down... which brings me back to the beginning - does life get any better than this ??

On a side note: St Peter's marina is a beautiful facility. There are 5 showers, all well equipped and very clean. At least 5 washers and dryers so doing laundry was effortless. There's a lounge there for clients to enjoy with a computer to use (although we also had Wi-Fi) and even a few BBQ's sit out on the patio for clients to use. It was easy to fuel up and top up the water. The grocery and liquor store are not even a 10 minute walk away, and the grocery store will even drive you back to the marina with your groceries (for free !!). Incredible.