Hey guys… we finally have internet access… (which is rare for us).
So since this site is for friends and family and followers I am assuming you have already been following our videos on You Tube.
Right now we are in PEI in the Woods harbor ferry port just south east of Charlottetown. Things are not going very well now… the nasty weather is coming.
Two days ago we left Summerside PEI and started heading for the Canso Straight in Nova Scotia. The winds were bad the night before we left and the Northumberland straight was pretty wavy with 4-5 foot rollers. Coming out of the entrance to the Summerside harbor was very rough as the rollers got lifted into cresting waves by the shallow bottom. We had to power out with full sails and the motor at full blast just to break free.
So the Sail two days ago started rough but mellowed out as we crossed under the confederation bridge. Then the winds died and we were mostly rolling and bobbing in the swell. An hour later though the winds came up nasty on the nose and we had to close haul into it.
The winds shifted a bit to come around from shore a bit on our port side and the wind angle opened up to around 60 degrees port side tack. Our speed got up to around 7 knots with reefed sails so we were making progress. It was only a 42 nautical mile sail to Charlottetown PEI which would have been our next possible safe harbor. When we came around the island at the mouth of the bay though it was very wavy (rough). The wind was coming from the direction of the port mouth so we would have had to tack a lot straight into the wind and the 6 foot waves to get in there.
We couldn’t get in and conditions out in the ocean were getting worse by the minute. At about the middle of the bay I made the decision that it was no longer safe to be out here and with conditions building we had to seek safe harbor.
The nearest possibility was on the backside of the lighthouse at Prim point. There we might be able to anchor on the lee side and at least get a break from the waves. It took another hour and a half to get there as the wind started coming a bit closer to the nose and the wind angle closed to 40 degrees.
Wild Child is a good girl though and she points great so we close hauled the sails leaned her over in the 6 foot waves slamming into the port side beam and just hammered on. It was wet bouncy and rough but eventually we made it into the lee side of the point and got our much needed break from the waves.
The anchorage was not so good and we had a hard time getting the anchor to bite into the rocky bottom. It took a while but we are a good crew and we know what we are doing. Eventually it set as the sun was going down and darkness descended upon us.
We were in a bad position though. We only had protection from that one wind angle… if the wind shifted in the night we would be in trouble fast. I was nervous and very uneasy with our situation. I checked all our wind apps to make sure the wind would not shift overnight and they agreed but they have been so inaccurate I just couldn’t emotionally trust them
I ended up calling in our location to the coast guard to make sure they knew where we were. If things turned in the night we might be needing a rescue fast. They are wonderful and I could never say enough good things about the Canadian coastguard… awesome people doing an awesome job. They even called me back later to give me their updated forecast info and the phone number of the marina manager in Charlottetown to get local knowledge about where we were.
I called Connor and he was so amazingly kind and helpful to us (complete strangers). He looked up weather and wind info for us on his computer and assured us that we were not in a shipping lane so we should be safe there for the night.
We had a terrible night Tuesday September 18th 2018 and I didn’t sleep very much. It was cool though that we saw beluga whales beside our boat at sunset. By morning our position was bad… we had strong winds running along the coast towards us from where we wanted to head but somehow the waves were rolling in from the south west (New Brunswick). So the boat hung on the anchor facing south east and was getting rolled pretty badly by waves from the south west (how the waves built from there is a mystery to me).
Just after sunrise we knew we had to get out of there… but where to go? If we went backwards (from whence we came) we could run with the wind into Charlottetown and safety there or try and run forward into the wind to the next nearest safe harbor Woods Island ferry terminal.
So we ran to Woods island trying not to lose distance towards our goal of the Canso straight. By the time we got here 4 hours later (to go only 13 nautical miles into the wind) the yacht was getting completely washed over by waves. It was raining cold and miserable. We needed safe harbor.
When we got here the protection is good but the area is much shallower than the chartplotter said it would be. We couldn’t get into the fishing docks or even to the pier. We had to anchor just on the edge of the ferry path (the only part that gets dredged). We had 8 foot 2 inches under our boat at low tide and we have an 8 foot keel. We only had about 30 feet of swing room until we either hit shallow bottom or went into the way of the ferry beside us. It was what we officially refer to as un-fun.
By 5pm yesterday the tide was coming up, and we had dragged our anchor almost into the pathway of the ferry, in the rain we lifted anchor and slowly and gingerly made out way towards the nearest pier. We made it. We tied up safely for last night with 14 feet of depth (10 feet at low tide) but we cannot get in or out at low tide as there is an underwater hill between us and the open bay.
We got a good nights sleep at least.
Cheers…..