Captain Watson

40nm SW of Yarmouth
Co 280 M / speed 5 knts

Evening All,
Pea Soup for supper!!! Actually it was stew, (and a great one at that!)the pea soup is on deck. We haven't much more than a cable (608 feet)visibility all day. The horn grinds away blowing every two minutes with the air compressor huffing and puffing to keep up. This makes conversations very jilted and awkward. The expression we have is that no story takes more than two minutes.
We did manage to see one small dragger as he closed in on us to see who we were. We could hear the crew on deck as they came out of the fog saying, "It's the Bluenose!!" We must have been quite a sight to them ghosting along at three or four knots with the white sails blending into the fog.

We managed to sail until 1930 tonight when we had to admit defeat and start an engine. We were still making 3.5 knots but we were headed off up the Bay of Fundy. So after 26 hours of sail we struck the fisherman, flying jib, main and jib and are motoring away from Nova Scotia towards the Maine Coast. We sailed 135nm with a top speed of 9.3 knots and a low of 1.3knts. We will try again tomorrow morning!

How many generations of Nova Scotians and Newfoundlanders made this exact trip? Every time we head this way I am reminded that one in four people in Boston have a connection to Nova Scotia. Have you ever read, "Blue Water" by Frederick William Wallace? It's a great yarn about a boy growing up on the Bay of Fundy coast and his adventures fishing out of New England. As a movie it would be right up there with Rudyard Kipling's, "Captain's Courageous". Both would be great books to read before the Tall Ships event in Halifax.

That's all for tonight. Hope you are all well,

Phil Watson
Bluenose II