WE had a pretty busy week at work catching up so we took last night off and spent an enjoyable Friday evening on the balcony at our apartment. Saturday was go day so after fueling and topping up our water we departed at 1400hrs bound for Rouges Roost; I know it seems like a habit; however the Roost is an easy sail that allows you to leave late in the day and it is beautiful. There are locals who spend every weekend at the Roost, it’s that kind of place.
Today was pretty typical and the prevailing SW wind was on our nose as we motored out of the Harbour. If we were just going out for the afternoon we would have enjoyed tacking up the Harbour but when you have a destination and a bit of a time constraint we wanted to get outside the Harbour sooner than later so motor it was. At 1630 we entered Sambro Channel and the wind seemed to turn against us or at least the sea did for sure. Wow this was a pretty uncomfortable crappy passage through Sambro channel heading directly into the big seas with no ability to take them on an angle due to the confines of the narrow channel. With each wave we hit Rose Lee would slow down considerably and pick up speed as we got over it. The best thing about Sambro is that it’s not very long and we were through in about 60 minutes.
As we got out of the channel and turned we had the wind on our port beam so we rolled out the genny and got moving. We decided to motor sail since we only had another 4 miles until we would make our turn into the Roost and our starter had caused us issues when we were leaving so not taking any chances with the wind up and a lee shore.
As we made our turn just before Betty’s Island to head into the Roost the wind was up to 20 and we were running along at 8.5 knots. Joyce asked about getting the sail in but with the wind and sea we decided to wait until we could get into the Lee of Betty’s Island where things would be less crazy. We hung on and flew into Betty’s Island at 9 knots and made our turn to get out of the wind. Wow that was better with little wind and sea we furled the genny and proceeded into the Roost (that was a crazy ride).
At 1830 our Anchor dropped and so did we, that was exciting, a little scary and tiring and we were glad to put it behind us. Had a BBQ and relaxed for the evening. We are looking forward to Mahone Bay tomorrow.