Arctic Solo Sail

Daybreak brought a gentle wind…dead on the nose. Time for a change in tack. I had hoped for one more day of fair wind and following seas but it was not to be. There are two Straits between me and the Atlantic Ocean, The Strait of Jacques Cartier and the Strait of Belle Isle. I want a fair wind. I need a fair wind. But sometime I get neither what I want nor what I need.

Now there is a gale blowing across the north of Anticosti Island and of course from due east. I take a page for the “Captain Lem’s Verbal Handbook” and run-hide at Latitude 49° 48’ 44” ~ Longitude 064° 21’51”. From what I can tell of the chart plotter, it’s called Port Menier just inside of Cape Henri. The holding ground is lousy. I was blown out of my anchorage twice before giving up and coming in to moor in the barge basin. There is one other sail boat tied up in here doing the same thing. Kelp was the problem. It tangles with the flukes and does not let them bite.

Captain Lem was a hurricane fighter. This little blow in nothing like he would battle just about every year the last 20 years of his life. It seemed as if every hurricane that came up the east coast came looking for him, but he had his “hurricane holes”, places where he would take the TONI AND DONNA and just wait them out.

I remember him telling me about Hurricane Floyd. It came ashore around Georgia or South Carolina, I don’t remember all the details, and then turned to head back out to sea across North Carolina right where Captain Lem was hiding. Captain Lem was all anchored down in his hole when the eye of the thing went right over him. But Ol’ Floyd was a strange one because when it didn’t get him the first time, it went out to sea, stopped, revved up, reversed course and came back ashore for a second try at him. The eye passed right over the top of him again. Then, when it didn’t get him a second time, it reversed course again and went for him a third. The Cap told me he was getting pretty tired of Floyd by then so right in the middle of the third pass Captain Lem went out on deck, looked Floyd in the “eye” and shook his fist. Well, that was all Floyd could take, so he huffed and puffed and blew all the water out of the bay so the TONI AND DONNA just sat on the bottom as stable as a rock while Ol’ Floyd moved out to sea again and by the time the water came back into the bay, Floyd had blew himself into a nice summer breeze. Then the Cap said this, “Every hurricane has an eye, but they don’t see worth a dang.”

Well anyways, that’s the way I remember Captain Lem telling it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Saint Lawrence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.