Yankee Cove NS Canada

The previous evening Chester had told us that the thick fog we had experienced over the past few days was most unusual for the time of year.  He also said that it was unusually hot and muggy – the 2 are doubtless related. Almost as if the weather gods had been listening, the morning of Thursday 16 August dawned bright and fresh with not a hint of fog or mugginess in the air.  We still had a number of jobs to do, not least fill up the water tanks and take out the rubbish, so we didn’t actually leave Liscomb Lodge until nearly 1300.  The motor down river was much improved by a good view and the promise of a decent breeze and as soon as the river widened out we set the sails and switched off the engine.

Sailing past the lighthouse at the entrance to the Liscomb River.  When we had arrived the day before we had passed about this close to it but had only been able to hear it moaning away – it had been entirely invisible in the fog

We had about 3 hours of great sailing – bright sunshine and 16knots of wind from just behind the beam – fast and fun. Nicky went up on the foredeck to adjust something, got enthused and returned there with the camera to try to capture the moment.

Unfortunately, it was not to last.  Thunderclouds built behind us so we reefed down in preparation for powerful squalls. In the end though, we needed to switch on the engine to keep moving as the anticipated wind did not materialise. But there was plenty of heavy rain and a lot of lightning much closer than was comfortable.  To try to reduce the risk of a lightning strike taking out all the electronics on board, we put my iPad, our nth back-up electronic nav system, into the oven [Ed: the oven was off!!] in the hope that the oven would act as a Farraday cage.  Happily, we did not need to find out whether or not that yachtsman’s theory actually works.

Final approach into Yankee Cove. The photos make it look a lot darker than it actually was – we actually got settled on the anchor exactly as the sun set

Eventually, the thunderclouds passed by but the wind never returned so we kept motoring, a bit of a mad dash against the approaching sunset to reach Yankee Cove before it got too dark.  Yankee Cove is another place with a relatively narrow, shallow entrance and this one is complicated by official Canadian charting that suggests that the entrance has just 2m of water at chart datum and that there is a line of 3 rocks across the passage.  On the other hand, the pilot book says that this is not the case, that there is a minimum of 3m in the entrance and that 2 of the 3 rocks have only appeared on the chart relatively recently, and that the pilot book’s correspondents have not been able to find them.  However, the pilot book does acknowledge that the old charts didn’t mention a ledge that pushes out from an island into the channel and suggests that this might be the genesis of the 2 additional ‘rocks’.  Conscious that (again) we were making an approach at low water, Nicky took things very gently in the final, twisting entrance into the cove.  Yet again we were pleasantly surprised finding a minimum sounding of 7.2m in the entrance (between the ‘rocks’) and 6.2m a little outside that.  Once inside the cove, the water deepened considerably and the area of aquaculture was easy to spot.  We anchored in about 10m of water literally as the sun set.

It’s a beautiful cove and as the last vestiges of the sun’s rays disappeared, the wind died entirely and we had the end of a beautiful sunset to enjoy……….right up until the huge squadrons of enormous mosquitoes appeared moments later.  We had to beat a hasty retreat into the cabin, closing up the mosquito nets behind us and enjoy the remainder of the sunset from behind the cabin windows.  Note to self: arrive earlier next time!

Yankee Cove, NS, Canada