08/12/2008, Grand Mannon, NB, Can
We spent an extra day at Grand Manan. Interesting thing about Canada: Stamps for letters and postcards are 96 cents plus the 15% blended (federal and provincial) tax!!. The bakery here is spectacular and the people have been quite friendly. Folks wave as they drive by and often let you cross the street when they don't have to. Larry went off with the cutter to help the boat with pot warp wrapped around its prop. Last night we had dinner aboard Stardust. Howard is a great cook. It poured all day today so we did boat chores, napped, and read our books. It is chilly but will get warmer on the St. John River. Water temp is in the 50's and air isn't much different. Ergo, more fog. Tomorrow we go part way to St John and stop in Dipper Harbor on the New Brunswick shore. Here is the little hitch hiker who came into a croc to get out of the rain.
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08/11/2008, Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CAN
Talk about FOG!! We cast off our rafter, Stardust, and raised the anchor at 7AM Atlantic Time (6AM EDST). It took about 15 minutes to shower off the Anchor and rode with the terrific shower. Susan could have made her pots out of that clay-like mud!! Then we sounded our way through the dense fog and out into the waters off the Downeast Maine coast. We cannot imagine how people did this without GPS and Radar. We were able to follow our GPS chartplotter track right out of the channel and past the nearly invisible lighthouse. Other Flotilla boats were asking where we were and giving their positions. It didn't take us too long to realize that we were the first sailboat. There are 9 powerboats in the group of 26 boats. We knew a few were ahead of us but couldn't see anything until we came to the coast of Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada. The striated granite cliffs rise straight out of 60-degree water that is about 300 feet deep! What a sight! We saw adorable little black and white ducks and a school of about 8 dolphin. Larry saw a pilot whale off of aptly named, Whale Cove on Grand Manan (accent on the 2nd syllable). We pulled into North Head Harbor and picked up a mooring assigned by the Harbormaster. Some others went into the inner harbor and tied to floating docks near the sardine fishermen. Then we checked in at customs and answered the questions: No, we don't have more than $10,000 in cash. We're BOATERS! We do have some liquor on the boat, but not much. Define much. We're BOATERS! The walk into (not) town yielded a great bakery, a lovely gift shop, and a drug store that also carried groceries.
The attached picture will give you an idea of the tidal range of over 20 feet. To work on their boats the fishermen just float it dry and prop it up as the tide goes out.
At Bernie's meeting on the dock we found out the Pilots at Reversing Falls are dealing with flooding and that St John's River control has loosed the flood gates. The crossing tomorrow will be impossible as slack is almost nonexistent. We will stay here another day and then see what happens.
I made the spicy hot cheese dip, Susan made Mexican tacos, beans, and burritos, and Larry made Sangria. What a feast. We are eating entirely more on this boat than we do on Evensong. Tomorrow will be a lay day here. We will be helping Stardust get some lobster potwarp off their rudder. It was a painfully slow and worrisome trip for them yesterday.
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08/10/2008, Cutler, ME
It was 6AM when we pulled out of the slip at Dysarts Marina, having met the previous day with the Bernie, our "cruise director" from Points East Magazine and the crews from the other 25 boats and enjoyed an excellent buffet at Southwest Harbor's Main Sail restaurant. All of these harbors are just too picturesque and "Mainey" with multitudes of lovely boats, lobster boats and docks, pointy evergreen trees surrounding the harbor and granite hills not far off. We had a mixture of sun and then mostly fog...This IS Maine, y'know .... And could hear the other boats checking position in the fog while we couldn't see much of anything except the upcoming lobster pots. There were plenty of those. After motor sailing for 9 hours in mostly ¼ mile visibility we saw fog lifting over the coast. At one point all we saw was the top of a lighthouse??"Paula would love that. We passed Double Shot Island (Just below Scotch Island J) and came to Cutler light, weaving into the (as usual, quaint) harbor past the sardine and salmon pens and around the lobster traps. Elixir's big Bruce anchor with all chain rode sank into the clay-like mud and held like cement. The double masted Ketch, Sunset, with Sid and Howard from Camden ME rafted alongside and Naptime was declared followed by cocktail hour. Then we all piled into the dinghy and went to shore for lobste dinner (steak for Gene) at the Methodist Church. What a fundraiser this must be! What volunteers! It made all that avoiding of lobster pots worthwhile. The evening ended with the 4 of us watching a CD of Spaceballs on Elixir's TV. There are a few (read innumerable) more creature comforts on the 47-foot Bristol sailboat than there are on our 36-foot Beneteau, Evensong.
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