First Sail of the Season

We may have been a little too confident. The plan was to have my Daughter and Son-In-Common-Law stay on the boat last night so that an early morning departure to Lunenburg could be commenced by Pierre and myself. We eventually settled on, what we affectionately referred to as, a fine Sea Trail.

It took us until noon to get all the wrinkles out of ship systems and overlooked chores, like procuring some deisel, completed. Pierre dedicated a good piece of the morning to getting an inverter set up properly to be able to run StarLink and my Daughter's laptop from the ship's battery bank and she was able to do some graphic work while we were totally under sail. Great addition to the floating condo.

With the water tank topped up and engine oil checked we decided we would head out and see where things took us; be that Lunenurg or back to the club for the night.

It was like we had the North West Arm to ourselves. Pierre, who hails from Ottawa, is surprised how late in the season our local boaters are getting out on the water. It appears he is correct.

The tower in the pic above is called the Dingle, named after a town in Southwest Ireland. The Dingle Tower was built to commemorate Nova Scotia's achievement of representative government in 1758. It is situated in a 95 acre park which was donated to the people of Halifax by Sir Sandford Fleming.

Constructed between 1908 and 1912, the Memorial Tower was erected during the same period of building other commemorative towers in the British Commonwealth, notably Cabot Tower in Bristol, England (1898) and Cabot Tower in St. John's (1900). - wikipedia.org

Sailing was a new experience for my Daughter and Son-In-Common-Law and a nice, moderately windy, day for them to experience it for the first time.

We raised the sails and followed a broad reach out of the North West Arm and then into Halifax Harbour. Makina was doing 4.5-ish knots at most. After sailing out of the harbour on a broad reach we decided that we would return to the club as it was now late in the afternoon. We then planned to continue our passage to Lunenburg in the morning.

Coming back down the Arm to the club the wind was at our back and Pierre brought us almost to the dock under sail power.

Pierre seemed pleased to be back on the water.. My Daughter and Son-In-Common-Law seemed very pleased with their first time sailing experience. Not a hint of sea sickness among the crew. Although it was well short of Lunenburg, it still was a great Sea Trial for not only Makina but the crew as well. Both passed with flying colors.

Hopefully tomorrow we will venture out into the Atlantic and down Nova Scotia's southern coast on our passage to Lunenburg.