Not a fun day

Sept. 3 - We left Escuminac at 7:10 a.m. and arrived in Bouctouche, New Brunswick around 8:45p.m. What a day! We fought 20-30 knot winds head on and waves as high as 8 feet under sunny skies. It felt as if the boat had become possessed by a herd of wild mustangs. The waves pounded us relentlessly and crashed over the bow, sometimes hitting the dodger (windshield) with what seemed like the force of a fire hose. To make matters worse, we had to navigate our way around a minefield of lobster pot buoys - hundreds of them - and it would be a very bad thing to get one tangled in our engine.

Our diligence in avoiding the buoys did not help us avoid engine problems, however. Three times it overheated, Wayne turned it off, let it cool down, and went down below to investigate. The first time he added coolant, the second time he extracted seaweed from the filter, and the third time he discovered that the intake hose was totally clogged with seaweed. He managed to dig it out with a wire coat hanger (one of his favorite tools) bent into a hook on the end, but this whole process took a long time, and with each engine shutdown the wind blew us more off course.

Keep in mind that as Wayne worked, lying on his belly on the floor, the boat lurched, heeled, and catapulted itself through the wind and waves, oblivious to the fact that Wayne had all he could do to keep himself from being thrown about the cabin while using both hands to complete his tasks. He finally decided to “heave to,” which, in simple terms, means to stall the boat by turning it into the wind so that it drifts (relatively) calmly. This made it much easier and safer for him to work.

He finally made the engine happy, but were our problems over? Oh, no, they were not. Claus radioed us as we neared Bouctouche; they had just docked and were calling to warn us that there were five miles of channel markers to navigate to get to the marina and that we needed to make sure we got there before dark. Wayne looked at the chart and determined that we would arrive around 8:00, just at sunset, so we continued to plug along instead of stopping short of Bouctouche. We reached the outer harbor at 8:00, then realized we still had five miles, 35-40 minutes, and countless channel markers yet to navigate with daylight vanishing rapidly! It wasn't obvious from the chart that we were as far away from the marina as we were. We had no other option but to stay our course at that point, so I grabbed the binoculars to search for the buoys and guided Wayne through them. They would not have been easy to spot under normal conditions  because they were small and easy to confuse with lobster buoys, which dotted the entire channel. Shallow water surrounded us, so if we strayed outside the markers, we would almost certainly run aground.

It was extremely tense and the markers were getting harder to see as we went on. Claus radioed us with explicit navigational instruction given to him by the harbor master ("Go towards the church steeple, now turn right," etc.) We followed blindly and were guided in by Claus, standing on the break wall with a flashlight. It was the only way we could have found the marina, much less found the entrance and docked.

By the time we tied up and turned off the engine at 8:45, we could have kissed the dock. Instead, we gave a silent prayer of thanks and gratefully accepted Rachael and Claus's invitation for drinks and snacks on Kyanna.