Now that Arthur was behind us and we had a few days of vacation making this weekend an extra long we decided that another trip down to the SW shore of NS was in order. We departed our Dartmouth Yacht Club mooring (DYC) at about 1100hrs bound for Rouges Roost where we planned on meeting up with a few of our friends (John & Rita) in their sailboat. The weather was nice however the wind was non-existent so this was strictly a motor the whole way. Joyce played with “Bobby Lee” our auto helm a bit to adjust the heading so that it would line up with our compass. We also experimented with our chart plotter a bit setting up routes etc.. We arrived in Rouges Roost and dropped anchor just about 1600hrs. Our friends arrived on “Island Girl” a short while later and we noticed that “Eye Spy” from the DYC was also in the anchorage. What a relaxing evening beginning with a delicious BBQ with our friend from Island Girl who were rafted up with us followed by boat drinks with a visit by our friends from Eye Spy. During the course of the evening I invited Island Girl to do some buddy boating the next day over to Princess Inlet and since they didn’t have any other plan they jumped at the offer. Nice. A perfect end to a perfect day.
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Well it was now confirmed that Arthur would make landfall in Halifax as a cat 1 or post tropical storm so we began to prepare Rose Lee for some big wind. we added one extra set of 3/4 inch bridles covered with fire hose to guard against chafe which we ran through my bow roller (after removing the anchor) which seems to keep the boat from sailing at the mooring that gave us almost 50,000 lbs of breaking strength providing they all held. After securing these to our two bow cleats we then ran second of 5/8 lines through their eyes and back to my mid-ship cleats in case a cleat let go. We then removed the sails, dodger, bimini and full enclosure and stored everything below. After we completed the preparations we then made a video of everything we had done for the insurance company just in case. It sounds like we over prepared but a few hours on a Friday seemed like a good investment to us (after all this is our dream boat and future retirement home). Now we just had to wait for the wind. We finished our preparations on Friday and the storm was coming in on Saturday, its always surprising looking around at other boats, some owners took precautions while others never came down to their boats at all. The wind came as predicted on Saturday and it really piped up to about 60 knots in the mooring field. I spent the day at the club helping fend boats off the marina, adjusting spring lines and fenders to prevent damage. Only one boat broke free and two boats lost their genoa's so not too bad for a major system I think even this damage could have been prevented. As far as Rose Lee goes everything went well until the storm surge and wind peaked..... and then she started dragging. We were pretty helpless because it wasn't safe to attempt getting out to the boat so we watched and waited. Rose Lee stopped dragging after moving about 100 feet whew.... These mooring are 2000lb of concrete which are sunk into a mud bottom and have never dragged with much larger boats then Rose Lee. A Tartan 4600 next to me also moved about a 100 feet. No harm done this time and boy we were sure glad when the wind and tide started dropping. This was no fun but all of our lines held and we zero chafe and no damage so this was a good day.
Here come the kids:) Our daughter Kate and our three grand daughters Alana (4) Abbey (3) and Mayme (6mnths) joined us on the boat around 7:00. Our son Josh was unable to join us as he was busy working at the opposite end of the country in Alberta (maybe next time). This was the 1st time on the big boat for the girls so we were all pretty excited and maybe a little nervous. When Alana came aboard her first question was "Nanny why is the boat moving"? Sweet. Joyce and Kate were well prepared for the kids and had lots of little games and activities for them below and above that they thoroughly enjoyed. Mayme eventually hit the hay in the aft cabin while we slowly motored around the harbor. It was a really nice evening but started to cool off as the sun started dropping so we had part of the enclosure down which kept everyone pretty comfortable with a few blankets to boot. Halifax is a large harbor and they situate a barge in the center for the fireworks which draws a lot of boat traffic it looked like there were more than 500 boats of every shape and size, some with skilled skippers and properly equipped boats with navigation lights and some without (row boats you name it). The fireworks were a little late due to boats crowding the barge and after the coast guard chased them away the sky began to light up off shortly after 10:00. Our sleepy grand kids seemed to enjoy them even thou it was way past their bedtime (troopers for sure). Now that the fireworks were over the real excitement begins trying to get back after dark with running over any small unlit boats or getting run into by skippers who were a little over indulged. Joyce suggested we wait for some traffic to clear so lit up the boat spread light anchor lights etc.... Joyce and I have blue tooth head set so that we can talk to each other bow to stern regardless of the wind or noise. Joyce kept a sharp look out on the bow while I slowly motored home at about 4 knots even at this speed and with all of our lights on we still had unlit boats cross directly in front of us, go figure. We were back on our mooring by 12:00 and our tender operator Scott was good enough to stay an extra hour to wait for us. All in all a great 1st experience for us and the kids.
We made an early departure from Lunenburg 7:00am since we had a pretty long passage ahead of us of about 45 miles and wanted to be back home in time to hook up with Kaitlin and our three grand daughters who were joining us to watch the fireworks from the boat. The day was sunny with a light breeze and I slowly motored out while Joyce made a yummy breakfast. By 8:30 we had shut down the engine and were under main & jib with a nice sw breeze of 12-14 knots and were making our way back home at about 6.2 over ground. By 11:20am winds were up to about 18 and we were making great time until...... bang!!!! We lost "Gypsy" our 11' rib we were towing. Definitely an owner error I "Scott" mistakenly tied off the tow line to the ss eye that is glued to the front tube (not realizing there was another ss u through bolted into the fiberglass bow. Needless to say it was pretty crazy rounding up with some wind and under full sail trying to grab Gypsy with nothing really to grab hold of. Eventually after two tries decided to fired up the engine and powered into the breeze and managed to get a line rigged and were back on our way:) The wind held up nicely and we continued under full sail until we hit Sambro channel and furled the jib as a precaution since it is a bit tricky to navigate. We also decided to furl the main since we had about 22 knots of wind and were still getting our feet wet (navigationaly). We got through the channel without incident and had a nice breeze so we attempted to unfurl the main but it became jammed so back in it went and we returned home with just the genoa flying in about 25 knots on the stern quarter nice. ( I have since learned that the furling main is pretty easy to unjam and a jam is normally due to either a poor furl or a bagged main and on this occasion we had both) We were back on our mooring by 5:30pm just in time to grab a quick bite and head back out in the boat for the fireworks.
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https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/RoseLee
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