After a good soaking whilst on watch overnight and being entertained for a few hours by lightning flashes in pretty much every direction, I go to bed at 2am and F takes over. We had been due to swap over at midnight but I let him sleep till 2 to get some rest. I had woken him up as I was worried about changing sail on my own when the wind died so he is kind to me and let us motor for a few hours. I had been warned by my sister Mairead that this was ‘not the sailing way’. It seems only fair to let him get some proper rest as I was being a sailing wus. Anyhow put-putting along in very light winds gets us closer to our destination albeit at only 4 knots and given we (by that i mean me) are on a schedule and days lost to bobbing around cannot be added back in at the end.
I am due on watch again at 5am but F lets me rest and I awake to find us slipping along at a healthy 6 knots. Excellent news. That breeze helps up for most of the morning but by midday it is all a bit of a wet fart and we are back to bobbing along chasing every little puff.
The sunsets at sea can be truly amazing especially when the sea is glassy flat. Not great for sailing but beautiful. It puts you in a really zen mood with just the gentle burble of the boat slipping through the water. Like a good mug of camomile tea…maybe. I have never had the stuff.
Another very calm night sees us just off the coast of the southern tip of NS. Winds are now very light and from exactly the direction we need to go so we try to sail to windward, For the non sailing community, a sailboat cannot sail directly into the wind, it needs to zig-zag (called tacking) at angles towards the destination. The tighter the angle you can make, the better your upwind progress will be. Typically an angle of about 45 degrees is accepted as a reasonably good tacking angle i.e. you make 90 degree turns into the wind as you turn. Unfortunately, it seems as our sails have lost some of the spring of their youth and we are only making 55 degree turns. This turns out to be a bit of a ball-ache in these light winds as we do-not really make much progress to our destination.
We spend an hour trying out various tweaks to the trim of the sails and fly some ribbons up the rigging to try figure out what our issue is but all ultimately to no avail. We have made precisely 3 miles progress to Halifax in 4 hours and so we decide to start the engine and motor to the nearest port of entry which is Shelbourne about 40 miles north of us. Our first entry into Canada needs to be into an official ‘port of entry and this is the closest one & Halifax is still over a hundred miles away. The weather forecast is for virtually no wind for the foreseeable future and bobbing around out here is a waste of time so we make the decision to light up the afterburner and head to Shelbourne.
The engine is duly engaged and after an hour, we notice the engine battery is not being charged by the alternator This is not good. We need a battery to run the engine and although we also have another ‘house’ battery to run the instruments and navigation etc, the engine battery is separate. Motoring to Shelbourne on a declining engine battery alone is probably not possible. The engine controls are also behaving strangely with odd alarms and the rev counter not working. This further raises the worry level. Shitty wind and engine not behaving normally.
Why the alternator is not doing its is a mystery to us and we chase down loose connections and look for wiring breaks. It all comes back clean. As the battery comes closer to its fully discharged state, we connect the house and engine batteries and then magically, the alternator kicks into life. Woop! The relief is palpable.
This completely changes the calculus on where to head and I suggest to F that we just bite the bullet and motor sail to Halifax. We now have enough fuel and power to get to Halifax and going to Shelbourne would only delay the overall trip schedule. F nearly bites my hand off accepting the suggestion as he is thinking exactly the same way. We are mightily relieved to have a clear plan and head off across the still glassy sea with a beautiful sunset.
Overnight, the stars are amazingly clear. There is no light pollution and I can see the Milky Way. I can’t remember seeing it recently and it is an amazing sight. The sea is so calm, i can snap a picture of the plough constellation and the pole star. That’s pretty cool. And the engine goes on and on….eventually you don’t really hear it….like when you live next door to a train track. You come to miss it when it’s not there.
And all next day….we motor sail most of the time with a couple of short interludes of wind power but it never really gets going. We inch our way close to Halifax and as we approach to within 30 miles we deliberately slow down so as to arrive in daylight. This make slow going even slower as we drop the boat speed to about 2.7 knots but it is necessary. F considers a bath but even though we both identify the other to be the chief source if the odour problem aboard, I think the North Atlantic a step too far
F goes to sleep and I have the boat until midnight but we make a simple but critical error by not stating clearly what the approach plan is. I have a different interpretation to F and whilst he is asleep, I plough on my merry way and take us towards a channel marked by a series of red and green navigation lights. The channel is well marked and easy to follow. F thinks we will go outside these and approach by the main shipping channel.
We don’t have a paper chart for the approach and are relying on iPhone/iPad and have different apps with different chart applications. In theory, they are the same but the visibility of shallow points is more highlighted in his version. The current drifts the boat to the right of the main channel red markers and I check my chart and see no danger… but I make a serious error. I cannot see the 1.3M shallow close to us at the zoom level that I am using. By now, I have roused F for his turn on watch and he hears water breaking on something and and quickly steers away. I am oblivious…..it’s a scary moment as I am unaware of the danger. Shit. It is close but I don’t really know how close until I grab this screenshot later.
We navigate away with me now paranoid and spotting navigation marks for F for the next 2 hours and then I retire to bed. Our plan is to anchor up outside Halifax main harbour and then motor up the left hand channel to a Marina right at the end.
In the end, F skips the anchoring outside a continues up the left hand branch of the harbour whilst I doze. I wake to find us beside the Marina on a glorious sunny morning and we congratulate each other on getting here.
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