August 7 – Sept. 2
We are headed to Norfolk VA to leave the boat for a bit and fly back to Colorado. We left Baddeck on Monday because we knew bad weather was making its way North and didn’t want to be stay another week in Lake d’Or. We got through the locks at St. Paul and ran into some big waves and water splashing over the deck shortly after. We were in the middle of a current coming out of the Straight of Canso and swells coming from the South. We weathered the rough ride and stayed in Tor Bay once again. We had a well-earned rest after a tough day of traveling.
We arrived in Halifax in front of the bad weather and stayed 5 days waiting for a weather window. We caught up with a yacht we saw in Southwest Harbor called the Ann S. Pierce. It is a converted fishing and training vessel now a luxury yacht. The Bowdoin docked in front of us is a sailing vessel from the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine that was on a training cruise. We also saw a US Coast Guard ship showing the flag and the sailors saluting the Canadian flag as they passed by. Very cool. On the way to out we saw the ARC Gloria coming into Halifax. It is a Columbian training ship coming for a visit.
Leaving on Monday we, once again, had a beautiful evening in Pourt Mouton.
The plan was to do an overnighter and go directly to Portland. I am not patient when I’m waiting to leave so we ended up getting ahead of schedule. This is usually not a big deal but we were heading back to the land of lobster traps which are really, really hard to see at night. I had timed it out that we would have daylight by the time we got into Maine waters. Fortunately, we only had to kill about 45 minutes until we had enough light to see them in all their glory. We had seen Portland enough times we only stayed one day and then lit out for Boston.
We did stay an extra day in Boston because I was looking forward to a meal in the North End. Unfortunately, the restaurant we chose was just OK.
Not letting moss grow under our feet we did another long day and went through the Cape Cod Canal and planned to anchor in Buzzards Bay. The wind and waves were blowing pretty good so we went around the corner into Woods Hole and had a nice quiet night.
Instead of retracing our steps through Long Island Sound, we decided to go someplace new. Montauk is a vacation destination on the northern tip of Long Island. We had fun looking through the shops and had a very nice dinner overlooking the ocean and inlet to Lake Montauk.
We did another overnighter to Cape May, NJ and spent the night. The marina was fairly shallow so I got us up early to catch the end of high tide and slowly went through the Cape May Canal in the dark. We headed up Delaware Bay fighting the current all the way. Luckily, there were no large ships coming through the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal so there was no stress getting to Chesapeake City, Maryland for the night. We stayed at the Schaefer’s Canal House and had a great meal and great night’s sleep after a very long day.
From Chesapeake City we traveled into Chesapeake Bay and anchored for a couple of days in the Magothy River. It was nice to relax a little before we went to a place I wanted to visit last year, St. Micheals, Maryland. St. Michaels is a nice vacation destination and managed to find a great place to eat once again. We do have our priorities.
After leaving St. Micheals we anchored in the Great Wicomico River just above Ingram Bay.
We couldn’t get into our slip in Norfolk right away so we stayed in Hampton VA for a couple of days. Hampton and nearby Langly Air Force Base was the birthplace of NASA so we visited the Virginia Air & Space Science Center.
Finally, we are in Norfolk, VA. It has been an incredible summer of fun and adventure, but it is time to be home to see family and friends. We will pick up and head to Florida next. Stay tuned.