Early July found Windarra and crew reaching for the Gulf Stream in conditions varying from dead calm to Force 7 with 50+ knot squalls. The last few hours of the seventy-eight hour sail to Cape Hatteras found us racing a summer gale into Masonboro Islet at Wrightsville Beach , NC. We anchored out at our favorite anchorage near Banks Channel for a few days and waited for the frontal system to pass. While in Wrightsville Beach we bought an old car in anticipation of our summer land tour of New England and Nova Scotia. Along with the kids Becky drove the car to our Marina in Beaufort, NC while I spent the next 20 hours single handedly tacking into near gale conditions toward the same destination. By the next day wet and exhausted I had delivered Windarra snug to her dry dock at Bock Marine in Beaufort, NC. After a few days of readying Windarra for summer storage we headed for New England to spend some time with family and friends before heading on to our ultimate destination, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
A 12 hour drive from Southern Maine found us rounding Heffrance hill in Smelt Brook Nova Scotia. My childhood summer home. The view of Aspy Bay framed by the Cape Breton Highlands National Park and The Cape North Mountain range was just as we remembered; breathtaking. Rebecca and I had not been here in 5 years. We were pleased to find that nothing had changed. The folks were just as friendly as ever, the scenery just as beautiful. The only change was that old friends were now older friends. I guess time marches on for all of us. For Sofia and Balke it was first glimpse of my childhood summer home and we were pleased to see that they made fast friends just as I had when I was their age.
My parents have two beautiful log cabins on a wooded hill overlooking the water and Rebecca and I were pleased to have our own cabin for the summer while Sofia and Blake stayed with Oma and Opa in their cabin a few hundred yards away. Our days were filled with beautiful hikes, fantastic diving, lots of exploring and visits form old friends. My mom, the quintessential chef, kept us well fed with all manner of fresh local seafood and game readily available. We consumed a total of 650 bottles of fresh homemade beer in the six weeks that we were there. The weather for most of the summer proved to be sunny and warm. Sofia and Blake had a blast exploring the endless beaches, rivers and forests on the island.
Toward the beginning of September the weather turned cooler and it was time to head back to Windarra and begin her annual refit. We had a series of wonderful visits with friends and family on the way South. We spent a bit of time in Becky’s childhood home of Hummarock, Ma where she lived when she was Sofia’s age.
An additional month and a half in dry dock was required in order to put Windarra back in shape to satisfy our level of offshore sailing. Despite the hard work our “boat yard’ neighbors made our life on-the-hard not only bearable but enjoyable.. Happy hour every night and group cookouts a couple times a week helped the time fly.
Our first weather window South happened toward the end of October. Despite an all clear by NOAA and our weather router we caught the tail end of a frontal passage and got bashed by Force 8 conditions the first night out. Those conditions combined with squalls, heavy vertical rain and winds to 50 knots plus kept us up most of the night and made for an uncomfortable bash to windward. After the weather settled and the winds shifted off the nose we had an excellent and quick passage the rest of the way to New Smyrna Beach.
