Hopewell Bay to Britt

The winds didn't die down until 4 am in the morning, but they did, indeed, die. We'd planned to have anchors up by 8. We left without a hitch.

Once we traversed back out to the Bay we were greeted with much calmer waters. Still not placid, mind you, but sooooo muuuuuch better.

Even though we fixed the davit (a bit of a jerry-rig with a soft shackle but you do what you can in Canada!), we had to limit our speed. While en route Russ came up with a better plan: Put the dinghy on the bow of the boat. The right answer is to get a new davit system, but that will have to wait until we get to the US to fully explore. We can even put the dinghy back in the old system once we start down the rivers, since big splash isn't much of an issue there. For now, it's on the nose. And we can move fast if we need to.

Our Navionics (kind of a Google Maps for boats) plotted the route you see in the picture. I pointed out the head scratcher there. You can't really tell but that was a very sharp turn, one which was surrounded by rock so there wasn't much room for error. We managed -- by having to nearly stop the boat and put one engine in reverse -- but we both put it down as a "stupid human trick."

Lighthouse at Pointe Au Baril, just before the bay

Once we got to our marina we pumped out first. The wind was getting a bit strong, around 10 mph according to our instruments. After, we had to park Cat-n-Dogs on a pier that already had a boat on it. Stern in, port side tie. A parallel pier had 2 boats on it, so we were setting her in a fairly narrow space, with a decent wind pushing me into the pier. 

Sometimes the dogs don't want to come in
once they get out.

Six months ago, my heart would be racing, my legs would be shaking, and I'd be flustered to make such a maneuver. It was similar to my experience at the Pink Shell in Ft. Myers, where I took out the neighboring boat's Christmas reindeer. But this time I just eyed the space, lined myself up with the boat next to us and, as I backed into the spot, let the wind pushed me right where I needed to be.

It was almost flawless, except the nose got pushed a bit, making a teenaged dock worker struggle to keep it off the pier. Once I saw the issue I twisted the bow to give him a hand.


So close to perfect.