Criss-crossing the Bay

Making water

Mark was the first one to get up in the morning to make it onto the bus into Halifax for his emergency passport appointment at the US consulate. He made it onto the 9am bus. I was having coffee in the cockpit and the rest of the crew went to a bakery. My interpretation of that statement was that they were going to come back in half hour or so with freshly baked goods. Their interpretation, as I found out later, was to have coffee and breakfast at the bakery. When I started to suspect that this will indeed be the case, I made myself a bowl of yogurt.

At the marina office I asked the attending person what islands he would recommend to explore in the bay. He mentioned MICA. Wow! Why didn’t I think of going to their page when we saw their signs on Backmans?! He also mentioned the Deep Cove on the other side of the Mahone Bay, which I was eyeing as the night anchorage. “Not sure if you can anchor there, cause there are lots of moorings.”

The guy also said that there have been great white shark sightings in the bay. Apparently last summer there were 150 sightings by different people, and one of his customers saw a shark swim around the boat while sitting on a mooring. Oh, maybe we will further reduce our swimming appetite. Not that the water temperature makes swimming appealing…

Back on Salty Ginger, connected to the marina WiFi, I looked at the islands under MICA’s stewardship and found a couple of candidates for the afternoon exploration. The crew were still “at the bakery”. Actually they went to explore the village and went into a pewter museum.

I was determined to figure out why the desalinator did not seem to work to its full potential. I saw it producing 14 gallons/hour at the dock in Portland, but then my output dropped to 10 or lower. I cleaned the strainer yet again, took a look at the 5-micron filter which still seemed to be in ok condition, because I changed it a couple of days ago, and went onto YouTube to find instruction videos. That helped me realize that I haven’t been doing fresh water flushes after using the system. This has the potential to foul the system and even destroy the membrane that separates salt from water. After the fresh water flush Spectra was much happier, so I was pretty sure we would be in a position to make water during the day.

Once we left the harbor, we were going through narrow passages between islands, looking at nature as well as residential build-up. We enjoyed the warmth of the sun in shorts and T-shirts. Indeed a heat wave for the region. Line-of-sight sailing was great! The GPS was still needed to go around the many rocks between the islands and to avoid shallow passages, but we could see exactly where we wanted to go, so this could have been easily navigated with a paper chart. To simplify things I only let out the foresail. We weren’t particularly fast, but the hydrogenerator + wind + solar provided enough energy to run the desalinator, so our tank water volume went from 1/4 to 1/2. Not bad!

Masons Island

The description of the island on the MICA page sounds enticing.

  — Masons Island is one of the ‘sand islands’ and thus the centre section of the cove and the northern end are comprised largely sand dunes. The big cove is a natural for anchoring, and the mostly sandy shore provides a large area for enjoyment by many.

I knew that the cove was on the more protected part of the island, but the waves were not that bad and I saw the yellow mooring balls labeled PUBLIC on the less protected western side, so we went directly for one of the buoys and were sitting in 25 feet of water about 200 feet away from shore.

Having finished a quick late lunch the crew hopped into the dinghy and rowed ashore. I swam to the beach defying the shark danger. Ashore we found a cobble beach which enabled Irina to go hunting for treasures: sea glass, amber, shells, … you name it.

Wading through the water was pleasant, but the walk wouldn’t be a walk without adventures. We saw wooden stairs up the hill which brought us to a house with a sign “No Trespassing”. We figured that only applied to the house and then saw a path that descended to the sandy cove. Raspberries were ripe, the view fantastic, and without the breeze from the ocean it would have been hot! The tricky part was now to cross the island to get back to the dinghy. There was no clear path, but it seemed like someone had attempted something similar in the past, so we carefully made our way through rose hip bushes. A bit scratched up we found the dinghy waiting for us on the beach.

Before leaving Salty Ginger, I attached a long line to the dinghy, so while David and I swam back to the boat, Peter was pulling the dinghy with Alla and Irina sitting in the back of it.

Mark has a passport!

While we were busy exploring the bay, Mark successfully got a 1-year emergency passport printed for him in Halifax and got onto the bus towards Chester Basin. We were delayed by our adventures, but he was delayed by the traffic coming out of the city.

Under the new Genoa we made good speed towards the basin. The further we went, the warmer was the water. In the basin itself the water was a bit murky (presumably dirt wash-off from the shore), but its temperature was now 25C! Inside the bay the wind was practically nonexistent, which made it easy for Peter and David to row ashore while I was making circles around the moored boats. With everyone aboard we were ready to set sail to the Deep Cove.

Since the wind was supposed to be on our beam or aft, testing the spinnaker repair seemed like a reasonable thing to do. With the crew instructed on who was responsible for what, the gentle giant beast went up, inflated itself and we were off! Once we cleared the islands, the wind was directly behind us, so we were only doing 5 knots, but once we could safely turn towards the inlet entrance and jibe, the wind was a bit abeam and we sped up.

Deep Cove

The cove is very narrow and its entrance is not visible from the western part of the bay. It was not until we were within half mile of the mouth of the cove that we saw the red buoys and a boat with a few people who clearly came out to enjoy the sunset. They ended up following us into the inlet.

Inside I saw an opportunity to anchor near the mooring balls, but then the boat turned around and went towards us. “Why would they do that?” Asked Alla. “You’ll see,” I responded. The captain told us that the buoys in the middle were all safe and if we only spend a night or two we are welcome to use any one we like. We thanked him for giving us the permission. Nova Scotia friendliness and welcome!

Before I turned the engine off, Peter pulled out the first mackerel. They were all around Salty Ginger and were “playing” with Peter’s lure. Soon Peter and Irina 6 reasonably-sized fish in the bucket. Peter proudly declared that he “won” — indeed fish were attracted to his lure so that he caught them by fins, top of their heads. Ridiculous!

Two bald eagles were flying from one side of the cove to the other in search of better hunting ground. It was so peaceful! There was only one snag: mosquitoes forced us to retreat into the cabin for dinner which was followed by playing board games.

Irina appreciated the bottle of imperial stout that I bought for her on Monhegan island (the others too, but it was her beer bottle). Sashimi mackerel and grilled mackerel, pork chops and corn. Delicious and nutritious.

Before going to bed we came on deck to look at the moon which was playing hide-and-seek between the clouds. Thank you, Nova Scotia, for such a wonderful day!