Author Archives: JH

We totally enjoyed the fireworks last night – considering Souris is a town of about 1300 people, they sure put on a good show! We were very impressed with the quality of the fireworks.

Today was the big day – moving day, I guess! We were scheduled to have the boat dropped in the water at 11:00 but because it was supposed to get windy later on, Peter (the man who is responsible for running the travel lift) suggested that we start a bit early. So, he quickly drove over to the boatyard with the travel lift and proceeded to bring the boat down to the water.

Here’s the video of the Split Crow moving down from the parking lot to the water. I’m entering the movie in Cannes next year.

Here’s a picture of it when he was picking it up.

He took the boat all the way down to the wharf. It is about 0.65 of a kilometre (I measured it on my bike). He was an excellent driver and really knew how to manoeuvre the travel lift. I took some videos of the procedure and will post that at a later date once I edit them to a reasonable length.

Here’s another picture of the boat on its way.

A few people came to watch and Tom made himself useful by hopping on the boat once it was in the water. I thought that this was pretty funny because of course I was busy videoing the whole thing and forgot about getting on the boat. I had to share this picture of Tom waving goodbye!

He and Dennis brought the boat over and here is a picture that Glen and Jo took from Parry Sound. They were watching the entire show on the web cam. Pretty neat!

Dennis is in green and I am the one with the red top. If you are interested in seeing the harbour in Souris, just click on this link: http://www.sourisharbourauthority.com/harbour-cam/

That’s all the excitement for the day!

So, we had a good time in Pictou, Nova Scotia. It is a very pretty town and we were able to meet up with our friends Sharon and Jim who are travelling to the Caribbean on their sailboat. They left Kenosha, Wisconsin (near Chicago) in mid June and they expect to be gone for two years. They are travelling with three cats and while they were in Summerside, one of the cats went missing and it took three hours of scouring the marina (many people helped look, including Guy LaFleur, who was on his boat!). Finally, Sharon went back to the boat as she was very upset and could hear the cat meowing. I guess one of the cupboard doors was left open and the cat climbed in and then kept going down further and further into the boat.
Anyway, it all worked out but I am sure it must have been a very unpleasant experience to lose your cat in a strange place.
Here are a couple of pictures – the first one is of Jim and Sharon and the second one is of Dennis and Jim – they are quite the pair!

While we were in Pictou, we had a bit of a disaster at the marina. We were sleeping and suddenly could hear a polite but insistent knock on our boat. It was Jim and he had unplugged the power from our boat as well as his because one of the electrical panels on one dock over had started on fire! The firetrucks arrived and doused it but it could have burned down the whole marina – yikes! I guess Sharon heard all sorts of snapping and crackling and told Jim to unplug the boat from the electrical panel (we had already had some trouble with it earlier) and then he saw the fire. The whole marina was shut down then – no power for anyone which was probably a good idea.

On Sunday, we parted ways and hope to see Jim and Sharon (with all three cats!) in the Bahamas…

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We had a good sail from Pictou to Souris – it was lots of fun! The wind actually went in the right direction for the entire day and varied between 15 and 20 (which is perfect for me) and we made good time, much faster than if we motored. It was a good way to end the summer. It would have been perfect had we seen a few dolphins and whales jumping by the bow of the boat, but it was not to be. I had to settle for a gigantic horsefly hitching a ride, some seagulls and a few gannets doing their dive bombings. On the crossing over from Pictou, I listened to an excellent podcast from CBC Ideas – The Mortal Sea. It is about the collapse of the fishing industry and if you have an extra hour, it is definitely worth listening to.

Here is a little video we made – it features Dennis on the guitar.

Once we arrived in Souris, we met up with a guy on a homemade boat from Duluth, Minnesota. He and he wife were going to the Caribbean. Here is a picture of the boat (the man made it himself).

We are now getting the boat ready to pulled on shore. I would recommend Souris as a good place to keep a boat here in the winter. The rates are good and the staff is very friendly and knowledgeable. They also have a webcam and so now Dennis can watch the boat all winter…
Here’s the link to the webcam – you might be able to see us! Souris Harbour Cam
Check out the picture below – I have red circled us.

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I will be coming home on Wednesday – Eric, the marina manager, is lending us his "rig" so that Dennis can drive me to the Charlottetown Airport. The boat is coming out of the water on Thursday (weather permitting) so hopefully Dennis will be home on Sunday.

That's all the news for today!

Yesterday, we headed off from Wood Islands to Montague intending to stay for a couple of days but the weather report did not look very favourable for traveling to Pictou, so we only stayed one night as I didn’t want to be going against a 30 knot wind for an entire day. I know, pretty wimpy…

Montegue has many mussel farms along the river. Here are a couple of pictures of the machine that is used to harvest them:

As we went down the river, we spotted Glen’s favourite boat the Sandpiper (well, Dennis spotted it – I wouldn’t have recognized it from a ferry boat!). Here is a picture of it but I am fully expecting Glen to post a comment! 😉

We left Montegue at about 10 this morning and saw quite a few seals. They are actually quite annoying because you can see them pop their heads out of the water and check things out for quite some time. They seem to like swimming on their backs and generally have a good time until you have the camera finally zoomed in enough. Then, they duck under and resurface several minutes later in the distance. This is the only picture I got of one:

We arrived in Pictou and checked it out. It looks very nice and there seems to be a lot to do. I managed to finally get Dennis to see the error of his ways after he spent some time in the stocks.

The pipers were out tonight – here is a photo of them:

I also took a video of them:

This is a picture of the sky just before we got back to the boat!

That is it for tonight!

Well, sadly we left Summerside with a rather ungraceful exit yesterday. We didn’t hit anyone, but it was hard getting off the dock. The wind had died down considerably so we felt that we could leave. The minute we left the dock, it picked up to 15 knots and it became a bit of a dicey situation with everyone poking their noses out of their boats to see who we would hit.
Dennis managed to get the boat under control and decided to back out of the marina (kind of like taking an exit bow) and off we went to Port Borden.
We sailed, literally sailed, under Confederation Bridge and actually took a turn under it because it appeared that we had caught a lobster trap. Luckily, when we turned around, it fell off and we were able to continue.
The second lobster season began on August 9th so you really have to be careful and make sure you dodge the little floating buoys. We were pretty lucky, generally speaking, and only caught the one. If a line caught in the propellor, it would require Dennis to dive down with his knife and cut the line.
Of course, during the little episode we had, he mentioned that it was my turn to dive but I could do it in Port Borden – the place that has the mussel factory and dumps the overflow into the harbour (very smelly and the water is full of lovely beige specks as well as foam).
Anyway, I didn’t have to dive as we lost the trap under the bridge!

Today, we are at Wood Islands and had a long day of motoring in the zero knot winds – it was actually stifling hot – the first time this summer. We arrived on the dock and went over to their museum. In the museum, there was a display of sea glass – glass that had washed up on shore. Here are a couple of pictures of it:

I also took a picture of the information about the ice boats. I can’t imagine going across the Northumberland Strait in one of those boats!

We climbed to the top of the lighthouse (of course!) and I got these shots:

We also walked over to the osprey nest and it appears that one osprey is missing. As well, they are foolishly building another nest right on top of an active telephone pole, so PEI Hydro is not going to like that!

We had the lobster rolls for supper from Crabby’s Seafood. They were excellent!

Here is one last picture of some lobster traps on the wharf. Off to Montague tomorrow for a couple of days.

It looks like we are staying today. The sun has come out but the winds are pretty fierce and we wouldn’t even be able to get off the dock without causing all sorts of havoc, so we will stay today. Our weather is not as bad as Jim and Sharon’s – our friends who are in Gaspé. Here is their marine forecast – yikes!

Summerside is a good place to get stuck as there is a lot to do. For example, Dennis discovered the Saturday Farmers’ Market and bought some really good molasses cookies (we really need them too!) 🙂

There were many different vendors and you can get all sorts of fresh produce, eggs, bread, etc. as well as having a good variety of craft people too. The market is open every Saturday for the entire year. Here is a video of one of the vendors – she made socks from a machine that was built for the ladies to makes socks for the First World War soldiers.

Here is a picture of some of the socks that the lady made:

Well, not much else is new – I am somewhat hopeful that tomorrow’s post will be from Wood Islands and I’ll be able to get an update on the ospreys – last week, the parents were teaching the little ones how to hunt, so maybe they’ll be onto a new skill!