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We made it through the night! Definitely not a comfortable night for sleeping or for a worrying captain, but everyone was good about clipping in, which at least lessened the worries about losing someone overboard. We saw a max speed down a wave of 11.6 knots, which I'm glad we only saw once, and through Nathan's creative plan of taping a pen to the galley cabinets and a piece of paper to the gimballed stove, we recorded our max heeling angle, which was around 45 degrees. Our

Today started out with what continues to be my biggest area of concern on this trip: docking. We needed to fill our water tanks, so we needed to dock up somewhere, but there was quite a lot of deliberation on my part as to where and when, so as to ensure things were as easy as possible. After having spent the better part of the morning worrying about it, we managed to dock up pretty smoothly in about 30 seconds and got to filling water. After we filled with water, Helene took

Today was a surprisingly sad day. Today was the day we had to say goodbye to Dexter. Despite the brevity of time which he was actually here, and the fact that Helene and I had only just met him, there was definitely a slump in anticipation and morale after his departure in the crew. This slump was only partially lifted after we sat down for some of the best Latin American food any of us had had outside of Latin America (Nathan and Helene having spent some significant time the

Night watches went well and we made our way into Halifax as soon as the sun came up. On our way into Halifax, we saw two warships and a cruise ship, all of which were good reminders that we are not the biggest boat in the ocean—with the cruise ship being 280 meters long. We sailed into the Northwest Arm looking for the anchorage at the end of the arm and were blown away by the fanciness of the houses on the shore. Once we put the anchor down, the crew went ashore to explore,

Today was lovely. We got up early and moved over to Lunenburg where we officially checked into customs. This involved some docking, which is definitely the aspect of handling this boat that makes me most nervous, but the conditions were nice and we made it work. Once we checked in, we walked around town, went for a hike, and played some frisbee, and most importantly, got ice cream! After we frisbeed, we came back to the boat, I took a nap, and everyone else ordered Indian tak

Today started at 4 a.m. as we wanted to make it all the way to Lunenburg, which is a historic little sailing town that we could check into Canada at. The day started very foggy, but the fog cleared just enough for us to pick up the anchor and get going. At the start of the day we had nice wind and got to spend most of the morning with the motor off. Despite the nice wind, the fog was still quite thick, and as we were jibing back and forth in the fog, we took the stern of a ca

The 9th was the day we first laid eyes on Nova Scotia, but I forgot to write in my journal that day, and, coming back to it the next day, I could remember almost nothing of import. The weather was fair, we motored around Cape Sable and, as seasickness was still affecting some of the crew and the idea of another night on the go was met with groans of disappointment, we ended up anchoring at a small island near the cape. Nathan and I having what I can only image is a riveting c

Today we set sail for Halifax around 9 a.m. We started with nice skies and big swells straight onto the bow, which meant we got to play the classic game of jumping on the swells. However, the swell also meant that Kaia and Dexter both got to find out that they do, in fact, get a bit seasick. To break up the motoring and slamming into the waves, we tried a few sea drags, which are when you jump off the bow of the moving boat, have to swim out of the way of the boat, and then h

The first leg of our trip was from Maine to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The crew for this stint consisted of five crew members of varying degrees of experience, from myself, having done two previous trips on this same boat (which isn't tons of experience), to Dexter, for whom this was his first sailing trip. The full crew was myself; Helene, a friend I made in Edinburgh and an experienced coastal sailor; Nathan, one of my oldest friends who sailed from Halifax to Maine last summer;

This trip started not with any voyaging but with getting the boat ready after it had been sitting for three years. For sitting for three years the boat was in very good shape thanks to the way it was left but the engine still needed an overhaul, the bottom painting, and to be stores to be fully stocked along with lots of other odd jobs. All in all this took about 4 weeks of work and a mix off different people including some old crew, some new crew, and some friends who just w