SV Footprint (Begonia): Grand Manan (It’s fun to say, like Bananarama), New Brunswick

Saturday, July 27, 2024

Grand Manan (It’s fun to say, like Bananarama), New Brunswick

[Kyle]We left Shelburne in time to get back into the cold waters of the Atlantic by sunset. For the first time since leaving the St. Lawrence, we had wind from astern to push us along.

Of course, that was because we were in the tail end of a Nor'easter, which meant that it was NOT warm. It started to turn back against us as we approached Seal Island, at the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia. That allowed us once again to turn away from the wind to head north towards Grand Manan Island.

Another sail with plenty of fog (thank goodness we have a reliable radar)

During my New Moon night watch, I was enjoying a beautiful trio of tailwinds, following current and flat seas. Near the end, as we were zooming up to the southern tip of Brier Island, things started to get a little funny.

The first thing I noticed was the unmistakeable sound of surf to port. I checked the charts and our backup charts and we had no shoals nearby, but it was hard not to notice that sound crashing through the darkness.

Then the wind started pulling way too far forward for the spinnaker we were flying. It collapsed and I had to turn directly at Brier Island to keep it filled.

It turned out the wind hadn't really shifted at all, it had just died. The thing that changed was that now we were being swept sideways by a current that was accelerating through five knots as it swept toward the Bay of Fundy.

At the ledge that drops into deep water, the current spread out and abruptly stopped. At this interface was a big line of standing waves. That was the surf sound I had been hearing. Unfortunately, we were now being swept towards it at five knots, with no way to avoid it.

Well, here we go! We got broadsided by two waves which gave two big shakes to our previously gentle evening. It was as if we had been waked by a big power boat (I'm looking at you, Andy Soto!) Poor Maryanne got flipped from whatever side she had been sleeping on to the other. She emerged, wild-eyed, and asked if everything was okay.

By then, we were back on flat water, with a spinnaker-filling tailwind. I had just climbed back into the helm seat and was able to act like everything had been fine all along. “What could you possibly be worried about?” I asked, “Did I you have a bad dream?”

All of the stuff that had been thrown onto the floor belied my little ruse.

The remainder of our Bay of Fundy crossing was uneventful. By the time we arrived at North Head at Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, we were back to being enshrouded in the ever-present fog. We broke out just in time to find our public mooring at the far end of the bay, where we hunkered down for the rest of the day.

In the morning, we emerged to find that all of the clouds were GONE! It was a bright, blue, sunny day. We piled ourselves into the dinghy and rowed ashore for a day of hiking from viewpoint to viewpoint. Grand Manan is surprisingly hilly and dense with scenery for being an otherwise compact little island. We both enjoyed it there very much. We undoubtedly would have stayed longer had we not been facing an unusual stretch of tailwinds for our further push westwards.