Carter’s Beach Port Mouton NS Canada

Shelburne anchorage

Despite all the fun, we both felt that it was time to move on from Shelburne.  So, at 0850hrs on 1^stAugust we fired up the engine to leave the beautifully still anchorage.

However, before we left Shelburne behind us, we had one more task and that was to fill our tanks.  The pilot book for this area highlights that fuel is not available in every port and the message between the lines was to ‘get it whilst you can’.  Given that there was fuel here, it seemed silly not to top up the fuel tanks and, whilst we were at it, fill up with water too.

We finally left Shelburne an hour later which we hoped would have given a bit more time for the forecast wind to build. Sadly, not so.  We headed out of the estuary and, after passing through a little bit of fog, turned left along the coastline.  Finally, at midday the expected wind arrived and we were able to get the mainsail and the MPS hoisted to make progress under sail.  With light winds but an extremely smooth sea, the MPS set well and we were able to make 6.5 knots through the water, and a GPS speed of just over 7 knots with a bit of help from the tide, in about 13knots of wind.

The scale of this country is vast. There are long stretches of rocky coastline backed by pine trees, sometimes long sandy beaches and, every now and then a house, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  Most are wooden, similar in style to the those we’d seen further south and often very large.  But, we also saw the odd unusual really futuristic one such as the house pictured left.

Approaching the shallows in Port Mouton

Carter’s island

By 1515hrs, we had arrived at the entrance to Port Mouton and had stowed the MPS.  Port Mouton is more of a large bay than a port but it does have a few scattered islands on the western side and inshore of them some shallow areas. Going around the outside was a lot further and, we felt, a bit defeatist, so we picked our way carefully past the rocky bits through what turned out to be surprisingly deep channels (5 ½-6 meters). In one of the channels our chart suggested a 6½ft depth, which is what BV draws, but on closer examination that was for an isolated rock just to the side of the deepest part of the channel.  It the creek crawling certainly added some fun to the end of the passage.

We tucked ourselves in behind Carter’s Island and dropped the anchor at 1615hrs.  To the west of the island is the very sandy Carter’s Beach which was surprisingly busy with holidaymakers.  The air was warm but the sea was not.  During the passage we had seen the sea temperature vary wildly and in the approaches to the anchorage it was down at 12 degrees Celsius.  Not surprisingly, whilst there were lots of bathing costume clad sun worshippers on the beach but none was swimming.

On board BV the drop in sea temperature caused us problems in the form of condensation.  It was warm in the cockpit and also down below and warm air can hold plenty of moisture in gaseous form. However, on many of the cabin surfaces that are below the level waterline the moisture in the warm air started condensing out on the cold surface.  In particular we had condensation at floor-level around both heads, on the cabin sole in both the forecabin and the aft cabin and on the woodwork on the side of the hull under the chart table and under the cooker.  And that’s what we could see.  We later found that the locker under the basin in the forward heads was very wet with condensation and, though we haven’t fully explored yet, there are likely to be other lockers, such as the ones under our bunk forward where condensation may have formed.  After 16 months in very warm climes this was a bit of a change for us though, to be fair, this amount of condensation is apparently relatively unusual even here in Nova Scotia and in Maine because the air temperature is usually a good bit cooler.

Despite the condensation issues we had, Carter’s Bay was a beautiful location to stay in and we were blessed with clear blue skies to provide the perfect backdrop to the picturesque location.

And as befits a lovely anchorage, we were spoiled with a great sunset.

After several days sailing from the USA to Canada and then some fun days in Shelburne we felt that we were a bit behind on email and blog admin.  As a result, in the morning we decided that we would stay 2 nights anchored off Carter’s Beach.  The decision was also influenced, to a degree, by the fog bank rolling in and out of the Port Mouton – what a difference a day makes to the weather!

By day we got the blog up to date and wrote some overdue e-mails and in the evening we even found time to read; with everything going on and keeping BV fettled it seems a while since we have done that.  The amount of condensation was a concern though, particularly since the sea temperature had dropped even further to 10 degrees C.  The air was still warm but in the mornings, and throughout the day, we needed to keep mopping the cold areas below the waterline to stop/minimise puddles from forming.  What would it be like when we sailed further north we wondered?

Carter’s Beach, Port Mouton, NS, Canada