BFWs

We will start by saying that the boat still floats and we apologize for the delay on these posts, but connectivity, time and other circumstances have intervened.



Monday, July 20th



0615: We cast off from Lance au Beaufils (Perce) in a somewhat apprehensive state, because we had chosen to go on the outside route of the the Baie des Chaleurs, instead of the inside route from Chandler to Shippegan. Our choice is more exposed, but the weather forcast stated 10 to 15 knot winds and clear skies. Wrong again... We were met with rather hostile conditions and had one of those challenging times. The winds of the day and the seas from the previous day had built up a very confused and very large wave system at the mouth of the bay. We guess at about 6' waves coming in all directions, but mostly from our starboard bow. The waves were in a short choppy period and the winds were 20 to 25 knots, way more than we had hoped for. Incidentally, when you rise up 6' on one wave, you go down 12' into and through the next one. We got bashed around pretty well and a lot of water found its way into the cabin. Once we found ourselves in this situation, there was little point to turning back because we were already invested. We were impressed with the way the boat held up, although we were not sure how long it would take with that treatment for something to break leaving us with a very difficult situation. We suppressed our own personal visions of cracked fiberglass, torn sails and popped stay fittings. All went well for about 5 hours of this, nothing broke and we anchored on a beach on Miscou Island later to wait out the strong winds and to dry things out in the later day sun. Everything had been tumbled inside the cabin and lay in a wet heap. We were not interested in this sort of challenge again, alas...

It must be said that Miscou and Lameque islands are beautiful from the water and we would recommend visiting them, perhaps by car.

We sailed on to Shippegan later and tied up in a very tricky harbour with millions of very tricky mosquitos. Sleep was welcome. I hope you understand why there are no pictures to post for today.

donandjohn