As you may have surmised from the picture, we are NOT in Maine...No, we seem to be having great difficulty leaving Nova Scotia. Yesterday was a brilliant attempt, though!

We fired up the red beast right on time, effortlessly shifted into reverse using our spiffy new shift cable, and left the dock. Eleven hours of beautiful sailing and motoring later, we made the turn around Brazil Rock, almost perfectly timed to catch the tidal flood into the Bay of Fundy. With Anne and Evelyn resting belowdeck, Leslie and I navigated the Cape Sable Express making 8 knots over the ground thanks to the current boost, passed through the fog bank and headed for the Bay of Fundy. By 10pm, We were out of the fog, still making more than seven knots, and only four miles from the pass between Seal and Mud islands, after which it is a straight shot to Maine....

Suddenly there was whine from beneath the boat, a jerk and a thump and the engine suddenly had no load on it.! It took less than a minute to determine that the engine could no longer propel the boat, in either forward or reverse, but that the prop shaft was still in place and not leaking and that the engine was turning the prop shaft. We were in a hundred feet of water so we hadn't hit anything stationary and we hadn't seen anything floating so we're all a little uncertain about what exactly happened but nobody volunteered to swim under the boat in the dark to find out!

Now, having chosen a wonderful weather window for this passage, the seas were flat calm and there was very little wind. We were able to sail, but only at one or two knots....and the forecast was for those very light winds to continue for the next 24 hours: Sailing to Maine would have taken days, and we'd have to get towed in when we got there. Also, being in an area with lots of islands and shoals to avoid and which is famous for its tidal currents of four or more knots when we could only sail at half those speeds was disconcerting...we could sail enough to stay clear of hazards, but not really get anyplace. After a conversation with the Coast Guard, one of their resque boats came out (after a few hours) and towed us in to Clarks Harbor on Cape Sable Island.

So now we're looking for the local diver to take a look at what's happened and we'll figure out how to fix it and sail on when we can. In the meantime, we're in a very nice, snug little commercial harbor rafted three and four deep off the floating dock with the fishing boats...No tourist ticky-tack at these wharves!