This year, rather than sailing the classic route by the Azotes to come back to Europe from the Caribbean (well, actually from Colombia), I decided to detour via the East coast of Canada.
There were a number of reasons for this. I have already been to the Azores four times, and I wanted to see something a bit different. And a Canadian sailor I had met in Guadeloupe had spoken very enthusiastically about this home cruising area of Nova Scotia. Another advantage of this most northern route is that the crossings are shorter. So when a Canadian crew turned up in Colombia, wanting to sail home, the decision was made, and the two of us headed North, close-hauled in strong trade winds, towards Ile a vache, south of Haiti, where we stopped a few days, checking out the Low Tech Armada project.
One of the aim of the project is to help local fishermen, who still use sails to go fishing, and are very skilled at it!
From there, we continued North across the Bahamas (anchoring at a couple of deserted islands on the way).
Our anchor chain got caught in a coral head, and it took us an hour to free it up!
The plan was then to go straight to Nova Scotia, but the weather gods decided otherwise, and we had to stop in the US for a few days, sheltering from north-easterly gales, but we eventually made it to the small and delightful harbour of Linenburg in Nova Scotia,
Having spent much time on various islands in the Caribbean clearing the boat in ant out, the entry formalities in Canada were refreshingly simple: a 10-minute phone call and we were cleared in for three months. No fees, no visit by custom or immigration officials, just a number to quote in case anyone asked questions (no one did).
But the best thing about Nova Scotia is that it offers a perfect combination of plenty of beautiful, remote and perfectly sheltered anchorages where you can spend days without seeing a single soul, small and friendly coastal communities, and well-equipped (if somewhat expensive) marinas. Distance between harbours or anchorages are small, so you’re never far from shelter.
The navigation along the coast is challenging, with plenty of rocks and enough tides to keep it interesting, without being overly difficult. Fog is a frequent occurrence, and I was glad that Apsara is equipped with a radar, for although there are usually plenty of buoys to mark the many offshore dangers, and the sometimes intricate entrance to harbours, we found that some of the buoys weren’t in their chartered position 🙃 and in visibility of less than a 100 m, the radar offered a way to double-check the information from the GPS and the AIS.
