After steaming and the sailing through Northumberland Straights which separate the province of Prince Edward Island from the mainland of Canada in the form of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in rainy blustery weather the Picton Castle finds herself sailing north for the Gaspe Peninsula. Gaspe is a stunning gorgeous and remote part of Quebec. Maybe we can put in on the way home to Lunenburg. Right now we are steaming close to Bonadventure Island all covered with sea birds and we have seen some whales close up to the ship.
All is well onboard. Our veteran world voyage crew insist upon running around bare-footed in spite of the fact that we are half-way to the north pole and that they have sweaters, long underwear, knit caps (yes, toques) and oil-skins on and then they remark that it is cold…go figure. Along the coast here the sun has burned away the fog and we have light cool breezes. Dark blue seas and clear blues skies, you know, sky blue. We are motoring in order to make up some time we stayed at anchor letting some minor gales blow on by. A few fishing boats are puttering around nearby trailed by circling gulls. All very pretty.
We went under the huge Confederation Bridge that now links Prince Edward Island to Canada yesterday. Some piece of architecture it is!!! A ship 150 feet high can pass underneath the center span. Kinda narrow, a wonder it doesn’t blow over but they probably figured on all that, most likely. We got the best view of this extremely long bridge from the water, the only vehicles that we saw poking out above the cement sides were large trucks and buses. Too bad for all those folks in regular cars, they miss out on quite a sight.
And before the bridge we went through Canso locks; our first of about a thousand locks we need to go through to climb up into the Great Lakes. Our passage through the Canso locks was fast and smooth, all hands responded quickly with dock lines and fenders. Hopefully a sign of good lock passages to come…
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