Sheepscot River, ME to Shelburne, NS

We left the Townsend's dock on Saturday, July 4th and motored down the Sheepscot River headed for Nova Scotai. About an hour into the trip, Corning called to say we left our binoculars at his house. We arranged to meet him back at a marina in Ebencook Harbor. The side-trip took us only an extra half hour. We thank you again, Corning, for taking the trouble to endure holiday traffic in the town of Boothbay Harbor to deliver us our binos.

Later, about 20-25 miles off the coast of Maine, we heard reports of severe thunderstorms heading our way. We were still in range of our Verizon broadband so, we went to a weather web site and saw one tracking right towards us. We took our sails down, turned off all the electronics and went below for safety. After about 15-20 minutes and a lot of rain, we realized that the worst of it was on either side of us. We did not get a direct hit. We got underway again and had no weather issues after that although we saw lightening far off in the distance.

The wind was directly behind us for our trip across so we tacked downwind for a more comfortable ride. It was the best long-distance sailing we had in all our recent passages. On Sunday morning we were treated to the sight of the silhouette of whales, breaching in the path of the morning sun.

We didn't try to time our arrival at Cape Sable Island to catch a favorable tide but we lucked out and had it with us. We were doing 9.1 knots at one point. And, although there were many large commercial fishing boats in the area, none posed a real navigational problem for us. They all seemed to be working in a predictable fashion that allowed us to drive between them without getting in their way.

We arrived in Shelburne Harbour around 7AM safe and sound. We took a mooring at the local yacht club, checked in with Canadian customs and then went to sleep.

It's Tuesday evening and we are now anchored in Lockport Harbour, just up the coast from Shelburne. Just us and the loons.

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