It was a little rainy this morning when we woke up, however Clark Cove was as pretty as ever and we really enjoyed our coffee in the cockpit watching the rain lightly falling. Our neighbors sailed up on their anchor and ghosted out out of the cove under main without a sound, pretty darn cool, sailors to the bone. We were soon underway ourselves and putted out of the cove until we found a little breeze just outside. It was full sail and no motor from that point until we came to the Barra Straight lift Bridge where we started the motor as a safety back up. once we cleared the bridge it was back to sailing all the way to the Washabuck River which is about three miles east of Baddeck in St Patrick's channel. This was our 1st time up the Washabuck which was recommended by the cruising club of America as a great sailing destination. The entrance is a little tight but well marked so no worries and we made it in with no problem, we were going to go all the way up the river but really liked the look of the first cove we saw "Deep Cove" so took a turn in to see what it looked like, Deep Cove opened in to a nice big Pond with room for a couple of boats but we had it all to our selves except for the wildlife. We saw a mother Deer and her fawn as well as a flock of Canadian geese and a few bald eagles, you would think you were a long ways from anything what a great place. I went move the dinghy around to the bow and noticed that the BBQ had leaked a little fat on the swim platform so I decided to give it a clean, one thing lead to another and I decided that this would be a great place to try out out stern shower since it was so secluded. I grabbed my shampoo soap and towel and made ready for a back to nature shower, now this is life! I had just gotten all soaped up when I heard the sound of a motor, oh, oh? A motor boat with a family aboard towing a tube with a few kids on it went whipping by the entrance to our cove, quick wheres the towel. Well they passed by and I went back to showering oh, oh, they turned around and came back quick wheres the towel again:). I finished my shower with no more boats, actually that was the only boat we saw while we were there, just my crazy luck:)  We were looking forward to a visit from Wayne and Gwen (Joyce's Brother and Sister in law) the next day, so we were pretty excited to have our 1st real visitors on board Rose Lee. We had a fantastic evening and a very relaxing sleep we will visit the Washabuck again for sure.

After braving the spilling rain last night to walk up to the pub for the jam session we decided to brave the rain again tonight and take the dinghy down to the Inn which has its own floating dock and was hosting their Wednesday night jam. We ran into Bernie who we had met the previous evening and he sat down with us to share a few stories and a few laughs. We had a good time and the rain let up long enough for us to get back to the boat. Tomorrow after getting a few supplies we are heading over to Clarks Cove situated near Marble mountain and there is talk of sun but we may not recognize it since it has been so long. On a positive note our sunscreen budget is way underspent so we are in good shape:)

We stayed in St Peter's again for another night.  Weather still not cooperating and we don't feel like sailing in the rain and fog again so here we are.  We decided to take in the night life in St Peter's and went up to the Irish Pub MacBouch's for their Tuesday night Jam Session which has been going on for over 40 years at this Pub.  Great crowd and a great time.  We stood at the bar and got to meet some of the singers and players while they were waiting to go on.  A great idea by the way.  We spoke to Steve who told us about Friday Night Square Dancing that goes on up Washabuck and we should go up with the boat and go for a lesson.  Should be fun.  Joyce decided to try out the mike and sing "Me and Bobby Mcgee"...Started out good but the words failed her and ended the song with "That's all she Wrote"...  That's okay.  It was all in fun .   

We left Canso at 0830 and set our course for Green Island on the opposite side of Chedebucto Bay. At 0930 we had the motor off and the sails up, sweet. This is the 1st time since our vacation started that we were finally able to sail with no mechanical assistance. We had a super sail all the way across the bay and never started the motor until the canal was in site. QE locked through St > Peters who were great as usual unfortunately I managed to drop my handheld vhf in the lock:( but it was ten years old so no worries it had long since paid for itself). We grabbed at mooring at St Peters marina at 1245 and got settled in for a few days of rain. After we got settled we headed in to say hello to Jerry and the crew and take a run up town for a bite and to buy buy some raid coils (lots of mosquitos this year with the wet weather.We had some great fish and scallops at the local irish pub McBoughs.It was nice to be back in St. Peters.

Wow the difference a day makes. We got up this morning to clear weather and I started looking at the weather forecasts for the next few days. It looked like we had a little window of clear weather with no wind today but fog and rain tomorrow with wind in the right direction. We decided to go today and take advantage of the clear conditions we were getting worn down a bit by the constant rain and fog. Thirty minutes later we were on our way for Canso at 1000 hrs with a long 50 mile trip ahead of us. We had a long but great trip to Canso our big concern was making it Andrews passage before it was too dark. With some extra help from the jib we made it to Andrew passage by 0630 just in time for a quick trip through. We got in too Canso without inscident and attempted to anchor and after two tries grabbed a mooring supplied by the Canso Marina they gave us the night on the house since we had no means of getting to shore with launching the tender etc... It was nice to be it shouting distance of Cape Breton it had seemed like it had been quite a while since we had left Shelburne. It was a nice evening in Canso with not a bad sunset and we were excited about finally making it to Cape Breton the next day.   

Today was a rain day and we caught up on our regular chores laundry, blogging, boat clean up, naps, you know all the important stuff. We made reservations for supper that evening in the Lodge and were not disapointed with the excellent planked Salmon they served. With our bellies full we headed down to the boat for some red wine and a few games of crib before bed (Joyce won:(). It was nice just relaxing today and it looked like we might be there for another day with the current weather picture.

We left Owls head as soon as we finished having a shower and headed for Liscombe. Liscombe lodge is at the head of the Liscomb river and is an undiscovered gem. The lodge has very helpful staff who cant't do enough for you and you can take full advantage of the lodges amenities if you are there by boat (kayaks, canues, paddle boats, bikes etc...). We had another good trip to Liscomb motor sailing the 40 miles but we have become used to that by now. It was great to get on the wharf at the lodge and plug in since the weather was pretty foggy and cool it would be nice to leave the heat on 24 hrs a day to dry out the boat a bit. The weather wasn't looking great for the next few day so we made plans to stick around and enjoy the lodge for a little but. It was great taking a little break since we had been going almost every day it seemed so we deserved a bit of down time. We had a few laughs up at he lodge that evening with the bartender who showed us some amazing video of her swimming with a sunfish, those things are huge and look like alien beings (I,m still not convinced they aren't). This was a ice ending top the day and it was grreat to see Chester the Marina manager again.

After getting our charging issues sorted out yesterday we left Lunenburg this mooring around 0830 and headed for Owls head which is about 60 miles up the coast towards Cape Breton. We had a very nice trip with warm fog and enough breeze to fill the genoa and help us along at about 7.5 knots. Joyce saw a large tuna jump out of the water on our way so that was a bit of excitement for our trip. We came into Owls head about 1800 hrs and got some food into us and went to bed early. This was a great day and we made some good time jut a very pleasant trip.

I brought David Evens out to the boat the 1st thing this morning in the rain and fog. Once on board David asked a series of questions to determine where to start. We quickly eliminated the batteries as possibly being bad since they had been holding a charge up until now, W soon determined that the alternator was not charging the batteries at all and found a ground bolt on the back of the alternator had come loose. After disconnecting the ground and re-seating the bolt and reconnecting the ground we tested the alternator again. Upon start up we had no initial charging but David quickly determined that the alternator had to be initially excited with a shot of rpm's to get it charging and we were back in business. We also checked out some issues with the AC power panel and how it was configured and made a decision to get David back in the fall to bring it up to date and and to re-wire our house bank and add a starting battery. I asked David if he knew anything about radar so with a few quick checks we were able to determine that my cable to the radome was fine and it appeared that we had a hardware issue. We couldn't go any further with the radar issues due to the rain and fog doesn't mix with sensitive electronics. When David was checking out the alternator he also discovered that my high water temp sensor had been ripped off the engine when my alternator belt shredded so he ordered on of those and will also be installing it on his next visit in the mean time we would keep an eye on the temperature guage because there would be no warning if it over heated.  All in all we had a great visit with Dave and learned a lot he is very patient at explaining what he is doing and why. I gave David a lift back to shore and we relaxed a bit before heading up town to get a new spare belt and a few fuses etc... our daughter Kate was coming for a visit today with the grand kids so we were pretty excited to catch up even though we had been only gone for a few weeks. Kate arrived arrived around three and we had lots of fun touring the fisheries museum the kids loved the touch tank and we finished off with a delicious supper at the fisheries museum. A very productive day.