31 Jul 15

The alarm shrieked us awake at 03:45, so we leapt (or was it crawled) out of bed and got under weigh at 04:27. The wind was light southerly, but a nasty swell persisted from yesterday’s winds, so it was a very lumpy ride, with which the Admiral was not pleased. But, she is a trooper, so we persisted, in hopes that the forecasted westerlies would finally start up. They never did. We motored the entire distance with foul wind and tide the whole way. About 09:00, just as we had finished the crossing of Baie de Chaleur and had a brief glimpse of the lighthouse at the north end of Miscou Island, a pea-soup fog descended, with visibility down to 200 m or less for a while. The only other boat we saw all day long was one that passed us a mile off going the other way in the midst of the fog; I never actually saw the boat, but had a good, hard radar contact for 30 minutes. The fog finally lifted about noon, and then at 14:00, a thunderstorm loomed up ahead. We tried to dodge it, but you cannot out-run a thunderstorm doing 20 knots in a boat doing 6 knots. We closed up everything and shortened sail and got hammered by torrential rain and 23 knot gusts for about 10 minutes, but no close lightning strikes, thank goodness or Neptune. The storm and wind shift knocked down the adverse swell and after the storm passed, the wind backed far enough to the SE that we got all sail up and motored sailed along at 8.0 knots for a couple of hours. We are now in New Brunswick, so have shifted forward 1 hour to Atlantic Daylight Time (ADT). About 18:00 ADT, the wind veered back to the S and dropped to 5 kn, so I furled the jib and we motored along with the main for a while. We started out headed for Escuminac, but at 17:00 decided to divert to Baie du Vin, as it is only 4 miles further today and is 15 miles closer to tomorrow’s target of Newcastle, up the Miramichi River. At 18:20, I perceived a gust of wind coming up from the SW, so shortened the main down to the 3rd reef; just as I finished, the wind shifted 90 degrees to the W and gusted up to 35 knots. It persisted about 25 for the next half hour, by which time we were through the gap in the islands and into Miramichi Bay. Another hour saw us into Baie du Vin, where we thankfully dropped anchor at 20:40 ADT. 103 N-m on the log in 15.5 hours; LONG day, but we burned through the 48th parallel and nearly made it to the 47th. It is warm down here and the water temp is up to 72 degrees F and I would have gone for a swim, but there were lots of jelly-fish in the water. Had a quick drink, cooked dinner, had a shower at the stern and went to bed. And that’s it for July.  

The time-lapse of this long day follows - I finally figured out how to adjust the playback speed during the progress of the film, so we can go slow during the interesting bits (typically, the start and finish, and in this case the thunderstorm that we went through in the middle) and speed up during the long, boring bits:

http://youtu.be/CcB6b1O-4PM

47-05.157’N, 065-06.630’W