Passage from Port Medway to Brooklyn

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novacadian250.4919 days agoHive.Blog4 min read

A little after 4AM a loud alarm sounded. Having been in a deep dream, the source and reason for the alarm was unknown to me upon awakening. After about 30 seconds, finding it was emanating from my phone, my mental lights came on. It was an anchor alarm app which had been installed soon before sleeping.

That realization had me out of the bunk and on my way to the cockpit in record time. For the alarm going off should mean that our anchor was dragging. The app had been configured to sound an alarm if the boat were to move more than 20m from where the anchor was set to be.

Pierre stopped me on my racing outside to say that his alarm's map looked fine.

It appears that the 20m setting which was chosen on mine was thinking the anchor was in the position of where the boat had been during its installation. When the boat moved to the opposite position of the circle of the anchor's reach, which it had, then the alarm had sounded.

In other words a false alarm! Grounds for the Admiral having me walk the plank. 😊

We tried getting back to sleep and managed to do so after some tossing and turning. It was 9:00 when we awoke to a lovely and incredibly calm day.

After breakfast we raised anchor and started heading out of the harbour. The next mishap falls to me again. When going forward to raise the mainsail the hoisting was begun without looking over the connected halyard. It had mysteriously unlatched from the sail, so as it was being raised it was raising unattached up the mast and beyond reach.

We headed back into port and docked at the Government Wharf. The Admiral looked things over and came up with a genius plan. He took a temporarily unused halyard which was attached to the same area on the mast and used it to raise the mainsail.

Pierre jury rigging the mainsail

While the Admiral was doing his magic an old gentleman, Mr. Stevens, and myself got to talking. He was a very sharp nonagenarian. He was from the area yet spent much of his working years in Ontario working in the Ford Factory; as one may have guessed judging by his hat in the photo below.

Mr. Stevens from Port Medway

It was in Ontario where he met his Scotish wife, dear lady, who had broken her hip just days before. They had taken her to Kentville and did a complete hip replacement for her. He said she was recovering nicely.

He had had a stroke not long ago and was disappointed that they had taken his driver's license and he was now reduced to a 3 wheeled electric trike which he had driven to the wharf. He said he could get 13kms/hr out of it. Far slower than the slant six Ford which was his first car in 1949.

Where Mr. Steven's got particularly interesting is when we started talking about his ancestors. There were a number of notables known to me but the crowning jewel was his Grandfather.

His Grandfather had managed the Trimmer Crew on the original Bluenose. He is mentioned in the Lunenburg Museum. The Bluenose won every schooner race it entered but one. His Grandfather was not in the crew of that one loss being on sick leave with appendicitis.

Once Pierre had the mainsail back in working order we bade farewell to Mr. Stevens and started out the harbour again. Once under sail we found it to be a stronger blow than yesterday and the swell all as bad. Add to that the wind was in our face and we tacked the whole passage in a zig zag fashion.

On the passage to Brooklyn, Nova Scotia

With so much tacking and the additional hauling in the jib from one side to the other, it was a good workout of a day. We were glad to find a nice port as Brooklyn. They have a non-profit community run marina service that is very reasonable offering all the mod cons. We also met a number of other visitors, some from as far away as Belgium.