 We got up at 4:00am and left Chandler at 4:30, headed for Shediac, New Brunswick. Au revoir, Quebec & hello New Brunswick! After being out on the water for about 45 minutes we were greeted by another beautiful sunrise—how lucky are we! Once we were underway, Chris went back to bed to catch a few more zzzzz’s and Joan and I stayed up and keeping an eye on our course. |
| We could see the sun rising and Percé rock off in the distance behind us. Our objective today was to take a straight line from Chandler, across the Baie de Chaleur and then “hang a slight right” when we got to the middle of the track leading down the Northumberland Straight. |
| This route would take us out on to the ocean for a bit & we could not have had a better day for it—light winds, a gentle swell behind us and no worries at all about shoals or reefs. Chris got up about 8:00am and we set up the main sail to help us along a bit and to help take a bit of the rolling motion out of the boat. After that it was my turn to grab a few zzzzz’s. The sun was shining & it was warming up nicely so I assumed my favorite watch post on the bow and had a great snooze for about two hours. |
| When I awoke it was interesting to see that there was no land in sight anywhere. For as far as we could see there was only blue water and some clouds over the land way off beyond the horizon. We continued in this manner for another 6-7 hours. It was amazing that during that whole time we did not see one other boat or even an airplane in the sky. It was like we had our own private ocean, with a few seagulls and a couple of small whales or porpoises thrown in for good measure. |
| We had many hours yet to go as this was an 18 hour passage and I thought about working on the blog or taking on a small boat job or two, but the day was so fabulous that the little bit of inspiration that we had faded quickly and we sat there for hours marveling at where we were. We had the wind at our stern, so when we were on the deck it was perfectly still. Great cigar smoking weather, so we broke out a couple of beautiful “La Aroma de Cuba” cigars compliments of Brent Temmer—thanks buddy, they were awesome—the only thing that could make them any better would be if you were here too, to help us enjoy! |
| We finally sighted land about 4:00pm. Our first sighting was a wind farm on Prince Edward Island (PEI), which was off our port bow. It was an interesting perspective because the first thing you can see are the windmill blades but no land underneath them. Gradually more and more detail appears and we start to see the land underneath. We now made a course adjustment to take us south into the Northumberland Strait and towards our destination. |
 The wind began to build and the swells got larger but it did not make our ride at all uncomfortable, we just had more of a sensation of sailing and of being on the ocean with the large gentle swells. Each swell was 2-3 times as wide as Ananda is long and when we were in the “bottom” between two swells, we could see that the wave that had just passed under us was at least 2 meters high. We were continually rideing a gentle up and down motion which was very rythymic and peaceful. |
 As we got further in to the Northumberland Strait we began to see New Brunswick on our starboard side—now we had land on both sides of us. About 7:00pm the sun was showing strong signs that it was headed to the horizon over New Brunswick and it was a fabulous view. However, little did we know, but we would soon be paying a high price for our leisurely day and the approaching sunset! We had about an hour’s light left when we saw our first lobster pot floats on the water—how quaint! Fifteen minutes later we were in a “field” of hundreds of lobster pots and we had to start paying very close attention to them because if we ran over one there was a strong chance that we could get the float rope wrapped around our propeller—and that would pretty much be the end of our trip for the day—or perhaps even longer! |
 The traps were far enough apart that we could easily maneuver away from them as we saw each one but once the sun set it was going to be an entirely different story! Chris moved to the outside steering station while Joan and I gathered up some spotlights to help us when the sun finally disappeared. I stood on the bow and pointed out approaching markers buoys—three sets of eyes are better than one in a situation like this. As soon as the sun went down it got very difficult to spot the buoys and we still had 2½ hours to go to our destination. This was not going to be any fun at all. Thank goodness that water was very calm and there was only a bit of wind or it could have been very messy indeed. |
 I set up a routine where every minute or so I would wave the spotlight in our path forward and look for any reflection from a lobster pot marker buoy. When I spotted one in our path I would shine the light directly on the buoy so Chris and Joan could see it clearly and then call out “port” or “starboard”, for Chris to adjust our course to go around the approaching buoy. This worked pretty good except for a couple of times when a buoy suddenly appeared out of nowhere and I would frantically point to starboard and yell “port” to Chris. Needless to say, it was more confusing to him than helpful, but we got lucky and managed to avoid getting tangled. |
 After 2½ hours of this “fun” we were finally approaching the marina and now we had a new challenge. The Shediac area is very built up along the shoreline and our view ahead was simply a mass of lights. It looked very pretty but it also made navigation to shore extremely difficult. We contacted the marina on our radio and asked for instructions and the marina manager gave us a few tips how to navigate our way in. Following the marker lights, his landmark tips, and with the help of our TIKI navigation system we managed to get to the marina entrance. The light around us was still very confusing but the marina manager was kind enough to hop in his little outboard motor boat, come out in to the last bit of the channel and lead us to our slip. Now that’s maritime hospitality at it’s best! |
 We finally tied up on our dock at 11:00pm local time (we are now in the Atlantic time zone). As soon as Ananda was secure on the dock we had high fives all around, breathed a huge collective sigh of relief and said “time for a drink!”. As I was registering our boat for the stay in the marina the manager told me that we were lucky—lobster season has just started and the pots just went in the water last Monday! |
We got up at 4:00am and left Chandler at 4:30, headed for Shediac, New Brunswick. Au revoir, Quebec & hello New Brunswick! After being out on the water for about 45 minutes we were greeted by another beautiful sunrise—how lucky are we! Once we were underway, Chris went back to bed to catch a few more zzzzz’s and Joan and I stayed up and keeping an eye on our course.
The wind began to build and the swells got larger but it did not make our ride at all uncomfortable, we just had more of a sensation of sailing and of being on the ocean with the large gentle swells. Each swell was 2-3 times as wide as Ananda is long and when we were in the “bottom” between two swells, we could see that the wave that had just passed under us was at least 2 meters high. We were continually rideing a gentle up and down motion which was very rythymic and peaceful.
As we got further in to the Northumberland Strait we began to see New Brunswick on our starboard side—now we had land on both sides of us. About 7:00pm the sun was showing strong signs that it was headed to the horizon over New Brunswick and it was a fabulous view. However, little did we know, but we would soon be paying a high price for our leisurely day and the approaching sunset! We had about an hour’s light left when we saw our first lobster pot floats on the water—how quaint! Fifteen minutes later we were in a “field” of hundreds of lobster pots and we had to start paying very close attention to them because if we ran over one there was a strong chance that we could get the float rope wrapped around our propeller—and that would pretty much be the end of our trip for the day—or perhaps even longer!
The traps were far enough apart that we could easily maneuver away from them as we saw each one but once the sun set it was going to be an entirely different story! Chris moved to the outside steering station while Joan and I gathered up some spotlights to help us when the sun finally disappeared. I stood on the bow and pointed out approaching markers buoys—three sets of eyes are better than one in a situation like this. As soon as the sun went down it got very difficult to spot the buoys and we still had 2½ hours to go to our destination. This was not going to be any fun at all. Thank goodness that water was very calm and there was only a bit of wind or it could have been very messy indeed.
I set up a routine where every minute or so I would wave the spotlight in our path forward and look for any reflection from a lobster pot marker buoy. When I spotted one in our path I would shine the light directly on the buoy so Chris and Joan could see it clearly and then call out “port” or “starboard”, for Chris to adjust our course to go around the approaching buoy. This worked pretty good except for a couple of times when a buoy suddenly appeared out of nowhere and I would frantically point to starboard and yell “port” to Chris. Needless to say, it was more confusing to him than helpful, but we got lucky and managed to avoid getting tangled.
After 2½ hours of this “fun” we were finally approaching the marina and now we had a new challenge. The Shediac area is very built up along the shoreline and our view ahead was simply a mass of lights. It looked very pretty but it also made navigation to shore extremely difficult. We contacted the marina on our radio and asked for instructions and the marina manager gave us a few tips how to navigate our way in. Following the marker lights, his landmark tips, and with the help of our TIKI navigation system we managed to get to the marina entrance. The light around us was still very confusing but the marina manager was kind enough to hop in his little outboard motor boat, come out in to the last bit of the channel and lead us to our slip. Now that’s maritime hospitality at it’s best! 
We finally tied up on our dock at 11:00pm local time (we are now in the Atlantic time zone). As soon as Ananda was secure on the dock we had high fives all around, breathed a huge collective sigh of relief and said “time for a drink!”. As I was registering our boat for the stay in the marina the manager told me that we were lucky—lobster season has just started and the pots just went in the water last Monday!