After a relaxing morning and a trip into town for breakfast and a walk we hauled anchor around 12:00 and were headed off to Lunenburg. We motored out of the anchorage and were under sail again with a light breeze that was sure to fill in SOG was about 4knts, but we really like sailing. The wind did fill in a bit but was pretty fickle causing us to eventually motor sail the majority of the 20 miles to Lunenburg arriving around 5:30. Lunenburg is a very picturesque town with an amazing history of ship building and is now a UNESCO world heritage site. The town has lot of art stores and crafts, not to mention restaurants and B&B's. The anchoring is fair and can get easily fouled because of the bottom having lots of left over debris from the ship building and fishery. The Lunenburg boat locker 1 902 640 3202 a local chandlery with a great staff has showers available and rents a few moorings and its best to call ahead since Lunenburg is quite busy. We were lucky and a local pointed us to a spare mooring which we rigged our own bridle to. We had a nice walk up town (this town is great for walking so much to see) and went for a nice meal at the Salt Shaker Deli. We had a relaxing evening on the boat and prepared for an early start. We wanted to be back in Halifax for July 1st Canada day celebrations which included fireworks in the Harbor. We were pretty excited to see the fireworks with Kaitlin our beautiful daughter and our three beautiful grand daughters from the deck of Rose Lee (best seat in the Harbor). We also had hurricane Arthur on a collision course with Nova Scotia and wanted to have some time to prepare Rose Lee for the worst. The last big hurricane to come ashore was hurricane Juan in 2003 and it pretty much leveled the marina we are in along with several hundred boats., Any way I am getting ahead of myself, more about Hurricane Arthur later.
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After a great sleep we awoke to a beautiful morning and had a relaxing breakfast after a nice hot shower Joyce and I really hate this luxury....not:). We hauled anchor around 11:00am and headed for our next destination about 25 miles further down the coast. The wind was really light but after clearing the cove we shut down the engine at 12:00 and lazed along at about 4knts (silence at last). what a nice day relaxing on the foredeck while our auto helm "Bobby Lee" quietly guided Rose Lee along. The winds finally started filling in around 2:30 and the remainder of our sail we averaged around 6 knots arriving in Mahone Bay at 5:30 pm and only motoring the last half hour, sweet. Mahone bay is a beautiful little town known for its three churches and history of wooden ship building. The town was founded in 1754 and today is a destination for boaters and tourists alike. There are lots of town mooring and tender service for $25/night. You can also anchor outside the mooring field and the tender will pick you up at anchor as well. Lots of great artsy shops and good food. We decided to go in and grab something to eat at the local pub and a had a nice meal and a cold draft overlooking the water. We ended the day in the cockpit with red wine and a red sunset "life is good". After a few sails around the harbor earlier in June we finally had a week of vacation and decided it was time to take Rose Lee out on a bit of a cruise and get to know her a little better. For our 1st leg we chose to take a short ssail down the coast to one of our favorite anchorages on the south shore called Rouges Roost (formally a hideout for privateers back in the day). We had a pretty calm passage with little wind so the yanmar pushed us along with a little help by the genoa. As you leave Halifax Harbor and turn right you have to navigate through Sambro channel which is full of rocky hazards but well marked. It took a bit to get back into chart work after being out of it for eight years. I know it sounds pretty old school when you have a chart plotter but what can I say I like keeping my skills up, particularly in the fog bound coast of Nova Scotia. Once we cleared the channel which is about five miles in length we turned right again for anther 5 mile down the SW shore to our 1st destination. The wind came up a little so we rolled out the jib and had a really nice run albeit short, arriving at our destination around 2:30pm. The Roost is a great hurricane hole with excellent holding in mud however make sure you get some local knowledge before entering. The channel is only 50ft wide between submerged rocks and the plotter doesn't accurately represent where you need to be to get through, We have been there a lot so no worries. This is such ab great spot and we enjoyed a nice bbq and a great sleep. 1st passage Woo Hoo! Joyce and I are so happy to be out sailing again awesome.
Safety has always been a prime concern for us when boating. Our kids started when they were infants so making sure everyone came home safe and not traumatized was paramount. Our plans for Rose Lee are to live aboard and migrate south each winter via the offshore route to the BVI,s. In Nova Scotia we have some very challenging conditions to sail in lots of rock shoals wind and fog. We decided a life raft was a must and had one on our previous boat, however with the number of thing s we were doing this was going to wait for a few years do to costs. Enter my Dad. I have to explain a few things about Dad, he is a bit of a romantic about the sea and a life long sailor. I grew up reading Dads old issues of rudder magazine and Gam to name a few. I remember Dad ordering plans for a Tahiti ketch and we spent hours going over those plans and dreaming of maybe one day building that boat which could take you down into the trade winds. Like many things life sometimes gets in the way and the ketch was never built, however the seed was planted in an 11 year old boy that one day I wanted to follow the trades and visit palm trees by boat. When Joyce and I had decided that we were going to retire on a boat my Dad was one of the 1st people we shared our dream with. He was our biggest supporter (likely pretty skeptical like everyone we told). When the boat landed in NS many years later the dream was pretty solid. Dad was the 1st one to jump in a car and come over to check out the boat which was several hundred miles. Fast forward I was updating Dad on the progress of the boat prior to launching and he asked about a life raft. I explained that the life raft was on the list but not at the top. Dad responded that he would like to help us out and would like his contribution to be the raft:) How nice is that, the raft went to the top of the list and we purchased a new 6 person solas offshore raft with mounting frame. The installation wasn't difficult but I did have to drill four through hole in the cabin top. What an excellent gift a bit of my Dad will always be on deck with us where ever we go. The existing traveler on Rose Lee was very stiff and in order to move it from side to side without a load a winch was required "not good". I disassembled the traveler cleaned and lubed all of the sheaves and attempted to removed some of the friction from the unit. After I re-assembled the traveler it worked a bit better was still very stiff. I did a bit of research on the 470 site and found this was a common problem on the earlier 470,s, however there was a fix. Garhauer had designed a traveler upgrade for the 470 that would fit over the existing line organizer where the old traveler was mounted. I gave Guido at Garhauer a call and a new traveler was made and shipped. Installing the new traveler was not complicated however it did take time and precision. I had to drill and tap 16 new holes in the existing deck organizer to accommodate the new traveler (I,m not going to lie this was the worst part). Once the holes were completed it was simply a mattered of bolting the traveler on and securing everything with lock-tite. This new addition works very well and runs as smooth as butter.
Jim Wohlleber a very experienced Catalina 470 owner a very interesting and an all around great guy had flown in to help me replace the four main salon windows that had started to show their age. I had contacted Jim through the 470 owners group and asked him about the procedure for replacing the windows, Jim's response was well when do you want to do them I,ll fly up and give you a hand. Jim is a commercial air line pilot and said "heck I've flown over Nova Scotia about 300 times and would like to see it from the ground":) I had received the new windows a few weeks earlier from Catalina and had the necessary tools and materials that Jim recommended so we were good to go. Jim had assisted other 470 owners on quite a few boats so he had it perfected. We taped and bagged everything on the inside while we were removing the windows to prevent a mess. After the windows were removed we thoroughly cleaned and prepped the area for the new windows. We then dry fitted the 1st window marking the outline in pencil after doing this we removed the window and masked everything to prevent the 795 dow corning mastic from making a mess. Once we had masked the area the window was firmly pressed into place and lightly compressed with a temporary holder to prevent the window from moving. We the repeated this process on the three remaining windows and after four days I was able to remove the holders and clean-up the windows. What a slick project and all thanks to my new friend Jim.
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