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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
The thirty-two hour passage from Portland, Maine, to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia was spent mostly under power. "Don't NOAA" called for winds in the ten to fifteen knot range. Yet again we were disappointed in their predictions, seeing winds in the five to ten knot range. We were only able to sail for about an hour during the first afternoon and another hour on the second morning. For the rest of the trip we were motorsailing.
The Scotia Prince is a passenger ship that goes between Portland, Maine, and Yarmouth. She departs Portland at 2100, arriving in Yarmouth at 0800. She then departs on the return at 0900, arriving at 2000. Her course is the rhumb line between the two ports, the same as our rhumb line. We thought we'd stay a bit south of that track to avoid the Scotia Prince, but didn't get far enough. She passed us the first time around 1600, the second time in the middle of the night. Her captain didn't respond to our calls on the radio, but did alter course to pass about a mile or so off.
Another boat makes a regular run to Yarmouth, The Cat. The passenger vessel runs at sea at an incredible 55 knots to and from Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island. The captain of The Cat has been cited several times for wake damage in port. And on one of her first arrivals into Yarmouth a fishing vessel was caught between the twin hulls, crushing the other captain in his pilothouse. To avoid this vessel at sea we only have to make sure we're several miles away from the rhumb line between Bar Harbor and Yarmouth. To avoid it in the approaches and in the harbors, we just have to make sure we're not transiting during her scheduled arrival or departure times. Our passage plan took this in consideration, so we didn't see The Cat until after we were securely attached to a mooring in Yarmouth. Given the black paint scheme, her size and her ugliness, we think the boat is misnamed. It should be The Bat, as in "...out of Hell."
Shortly after 1800 our first afternoon, I had just gotten off watch and was lying in the saloon when I heard Kit call out, "A whale!" Jumping up to take a look, I could see the ripples left behind where a whale had surfaced only about twenty yards off our starboard beam. Damn, I had just missed it - our first whale viewed from Volant. Peering through the pilothouse windows, I hoped for the animal to surface again. And I was not disappointed. It was a beautiful creature, about fifty feet long and dark gray in color. He dove again, surfacing for another breath a minute later just a hundred yards away. For a third time he surfaced and dove, making his way southeastward. There's only one word I can think of that comes close to describe what I saw: MAGNIFICENT!
What kind of whale did we see? We were in the summer feeding grounds of the right whale. Humpbacks and finbacks, similar in structure to the right whale, are also often found in the region. My guess? A humpback. But I'm no expert.
As the trip progressed, we watched the sea water temperature. It fluctuated according to the tides. It started out in Portland in the mid 50s at the top of the flood, got as high as 61.5°F on the ebb, dropped again to the mid 50s on the flood. But as we approached Yarmouth in the last six hours, it began to fall. Eventually it got down to a very, very chilly 48.6°F. I tell you, I'm very glad there were not a lot of lobster pots out there. It wouldn't be a whole lot of fun to go into that water to clear a fouled propeller.
The air temperature wasn't much better. Although the wind was light, it had a crisp bite to it. We're both very happy to have a pilothouse in these conditions. Having been in tropical climes for the past several years, we were just not used to the cool weather. Wearing wool sweaters underneath our foul weather gear, we were relatively comfortable outside but would still begin to feel chilled after a relatively short time.
The sun rose on our second morning, shrouded in a thick, moist fog that had rolled in about an hour earlier. Visibility was down to less than fifty feet. It was so thick that the sun was not much more than a slightly brighter spot in the grayness. It was so moist that everything was wet. The sails were dripping wet. The halyards, sheets and reefing lines were dripping wet. The pilothouse windows were dripping wet. The lifelines and jack lines were dripping wet.
As the sun climbed higher the air warmed slightly, enough that things began to dry out. But the fog itself didn't clear until we were on our final approach to Yarmouth Harbor.
Clearing Customs and Immigration turned out to be more of a chore than we had expected. I had written to the Canadian Government for a CanPass Identification Number. The paperwork for this requires providing details on the boat and her passengers. When we called Customs and Immigration on our arrival at Yarmouth, we spent about half an hour on the phone answering many of these questions. Then we were told to wait for two Inspectors who would come out to the boat. Since we were on a mooring we had to bring the boat into a dock so that they could board her. Once that was accomplished they spent another half hour or so, sitting in the cockpit asking again many of the same questions. They stamped our passports, examined the boat documentation and the CanPass document. And then they went below to examine our liquor cabinet and to glance around. All the agents were very courteous and polite, but they were also very businesslike. When I mentioned that I thought the CanPass ID was supposed to expedite the entry proceedings, they said that even with that number they randomly examine vessels entering and we just happened to get selected.
After returning Volant to the mooring we took showers and celebrated our arrival with a lobster feast ashore.
The mooring field is next to Doctors Island, a small outcropping of rock, bushes and dead trees. It's home to what seems like maybe a billion sea birds, mostly gulls and cormorants. Their raucous calls pierce the air all hours of the day and night. It's a wonderful ambience... as long as they roost and leave their droppings on the island instead of the boat.
We've enjoyed our stay in Yarmouth. It's a small town, perhaps less than 10,000 residents. But it is quite rich in heritage. At one time she had more registered tonnage of shipping than any other Canadian port. Her captains were in great demand. In just about any major port of the world at any time one could find several ships captained by Yarmouth men, even if the ship were not a Yarmouth vessel. This heritage is reflected and well represented in the County Museum, a place we visited several times.
On Tuesday we rented a car to see more of the region than we could afoot. We went along the west coast of Nova Scotia along the Bay of Fundy, dawdling along and enjoying every mile. We got as far as Margaretsville, the birthplace of my great-grandfather. He was a shipwright there in the 1850s when it was a major shipbuilding town. I still have some distant cousins who live there, and got the chance to look them up. The icing on the cake was when they took us out to the cemetery where my great-grandfather's parents are buried, and I got to see their headstones.
I had thought we'd sail into Margaretsville, but after viewing the harbor I'm glad we drove here instead. Given the high tides of the Bay of Fundy, Margaretsville is lucky to have only thirty feet of tide, drying the harbor out at low water. At one time there were two wharves, with the longer one extending far enough out into the bay to provide a good secure dock for large boats. It's gone now, and the shorter one is even shorter than it used to be. Consequently there's room for only a few small fishing boats to tie up and rest in a relatively deeper trench alongside that has water in all but the lowest tides. While Volant can take her own bottom, this harbor would not be a good choice. The bottom is loose stone. Resting on those stones would seriously damage her bottom paint.
Tomorrow morning we sail to Westport, where Joshua Slocum spent his youth. Then it's on to Digby, our final stop in Nova Scotia before heading to Saint John in New Brunswick.
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