Colin
8 July 2006, Shelburne, NS

We have arrived safely in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. After the firedrill yesterday, the rest of the passage was uneventful and fun. We got lucky with the tides and caught the "Cape Sable Express", screaming by making 8 knots over the ground at midnight. Then a couple of hours of slow, but very pleasant sailing while we closed the Shelburne entry and waited for daylight. This is the lighthouse that welcomed us...The night sail was really nice: I could smell the conifer forests and hear the whales breathing! Now we are docked and working through the Customs process...then we sleep!

(43 45.460'N 65 19.378'W)

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Colin
7 July 2006, At sea...

We are still offshore, still underway for Nova Scotia...Expecting landfall around midnight and, with luck, docking in Shelburne in the morning. The weather continues light winds (we actually only sailed about 3 hours so far) and gentle seas, although the occasional 6-foot swell passes by.

The excitement today was my first Mayday call! Evelyn was on watch and the rest of us were snoozing belowdecks when Evelyn called me to the cockpit and pointed to the engine ventilation outlet which was dischargeing a massive plume of smoke. I looked at the engine temperature guage and it was off the scale! We quickly shutdown the engine and suddenly smoke started pouring out from under the sink cabinetry accompanied by a nasty burning smell...uh-oh! Fire on a boat is a very bad thing: I sent our DSC distress signal and called a mayday first, then we grabbed the ditch kit and the liferaft and got everybody into the cockpit with PFD's on, THEN I looked for the source of the smoke.

To be brief, it turned out to be relatively benign: Our engine belt had self-destructed (producing the burning smell) and that meant that our engine cooling pump wasn't working anymore so the engine overheated and then blew a gallon of superheated coolant into the bilge, which led to steam (not smoke) coming out everywhere. Once the engine cooled down, we only had to replace the belt (that's why we carry spares!), refill the coolant, and gently test everything again.

Meanwhile, Tahu Le'a went to afterburners and arrived on scene within a half hour and, to my surprise and great pleasure, a US Coast Guard jet appeared and circled us while they made sure we were okay. Considering that we were more than 100 miles from any land, and not in a very popular stretch of ocean, I was very impressed that they could respond so quickly....I guess that emergency equipment works!

So, although it was a rather intense day, things appear to be under control now and we are continuing towards Shelburne.

(43 04.507'N 66 29.316'W)

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Colin
6 July 2006, At sea...

We are finally underway on the passage to Nova Scotia: With luck, the next land we see will be the southeast coast of Nova Scotia, sometime saturday....We started off about 1130 this morning, after letting a large area rain move off and, so far, we haven't had any showers since we've been underway. The winds are very light and we are motoring along with Tahu Le'a about a mile off our stern quarter. Evelyn and Leslie are on watch and Anne is finishing dinner so I thought I'd post a quick update. The big news is that we saw whales! Humpback whales, to be precise.....Leslie was ecstatic.

(42 17.052'N 69 30.698'W)

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Colin
5 July 2006, Provincetown, MA

Well, we are in Provincetown...The northernmost tip of Cape Cod. From here to Nova Scotia there is nothing but water. We arrived here at about 1000 after motoring across Cape Cod Bay in light fog and occasional drips, and Tahu Le'a came in a few hours later. We are both making final preparations for a departure late tomorrow morning for what we hope will be a quiet, 2-day crossing of the 250 miles between here and Shelburne. The weather outlook continues to look reasonable and so we continue to prepare...

(42 02.945'N 70 10.990'W)

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