It was time to leave the beloved small town of Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, the weather was right. We greatly enjoyed our 13 day stay in this quaint and extremely friendly place. The contrast of culture was surprising, we were in Newport for 2 years and found it difficult to connect with people, aside from a few exceptions. People we met in Lunenberg were so giving it was astounding.
After a 3 days battle installing our new autopilot, which does not come with amateur instructions, I suppose they assume a professional will be doing the work, Jay was close to loosing his mind, he thought it was too similar to a motor and nearly gave up. He, as usual, persisted and we were finally ready too leave, actually a day late according to the navigators good weather window predictions. We woke up at 8:30, early for us Coconuts, on Sunday, and headed out the harbor. We did a few tacks to check the rigging and make a couple of adjustments. We tried calibrating the auto pilot but the boat wasn't flat enough, I suppose you have to have a motor so that the boat can be flat when calibrating it, all too high tech for us. I made breakfast burritos, toast, oatmeal, coffee and tea as we headed out to sea. All 3 chicas feel fast asleep right after, we don't see much of them the first 6 to 12 hrs of sailing.
Winds were SW at 20 knots, we beam reached until the entrance to Halifax and then turned running down, straight towards our destination, a lovely sunny sail. Well, it didn't last long and our beautiful sail turned into a hell of a sail. The toughest passage on our, las chicas, log book. The winds picked up to 30 knots sustained, gusting up to vomiting speeds, seas got rough and stormy weather rolled in for the next couple of days. It was unbearable to be on deck, the wet and rocky conditions made it a torturous work out to be out there. Bellow deck was damp and not very pleasant to the stomach. There was a lot of upwind sailing during those couple of days and thankfully Messenger can sail well alone with the tiller tied up which speared me having to drive and gave Jay plenty of time down bellow to rest and dry up. Everyone, except for Caribe and Jay, got sick on this one but they were both also on the verge. At one point Jay laid down on the windward deck and he nearly drowned when a wave engulfed him and filled his napping wide open mouth with water. Tactfully the Captain did great and got us to our destination in a little under 3 days.
It was rainy when we arrived early on a Wednesday morning, no one answered on the radio when we called and had no idea where to go but we saw a couple of douane gentlemen waiving us down from a pier so we sailed up to it and tied up. After a worshiped shower and a nap came the immigration agents and then down went the yellow flag and up the French flag, "où pouvons-nous trouver une baguette?"
After a fancy dinner out we had all forgotten about our kick in the butt passage and it all seamed so worth it!
