Moving on from Hubbard's Cove

Well, we got Maggie's nose fixed in Bridgewater last Tuesday and it was time to leave. We needed a good short trip to shrug off the spell of bucolic Hubbard's Cove. The people that we met there were, without exception, wonderful. We could have easily stayed longer and enjoyed the hospitality of the folks there and the companionship of our friends down the road, but it is getting cold and it is time to move on if we still intend to follow the warmth.

Lunenburg from the harbour

Lunenburg was the perfect destination: far away enough to make us feel that we covered some ground and very picturesque. We had been there earlier in the summer with our friends, Terri and Drew, but we hitchhiked from the town of Mahone Bay, where we were docked. Lunenburg is so pretty that we had to stay on a wharf so that we could easily disembark and walk around.  

We figured that we would have to spend a couple of days in Lunenburg to wait for some decent weather to get us down the coast. It is getting tricky because gales are blowing in the north and hurricanes are still passing in the Atlantic.

Earlier on we had met some cruisers who had said that they remembered seeing us in Whitby, which was a mystery because we never stopped there. The confusion arose because there is another Corbin sailboat on Lake Ontario called HOBO II, and it had left this summer sailing down the St. Lawrence. Not a half hour after we docked in Lunenburg, HOBO II docked alongside us with its crew of one – Jim. He left Penatanguishine and sailed to Newfoundland for a family reunion and is making his way down to Panama bound for the Pacific Ocean. Seeing us cleared up a similar confusion his friends who were tracking his progress on ShipTrak were having. They were seeing us, H2OBO, instead of him and were insisting that his boat name was wrongly spelled. A good chuckle was had by all.  

Jim had told us that he had met another solo sailor, named Roger, on a boat called REBOOT in St. John's, NFLD. Roger pulled in the next day in his Catalina 42. We all got together and agreed that we would buddy boat down the eastern seaboard together.  So together we will be for the next few weeks.

After three nights in scenic Lunenburg, we had a chance to leave and we set out for Brooklyn, N.S. We are currently at the Brooklyn Marina and enjoying the warm hospitality of the folks here. On the western shore of the cove is the Bowater Mersey pulp mill; check out how they unload the highway tractors carrying wood fibre!

That is a highway tractor hauling two trailers!

Our little flotilla will likely be here for a couple more days as we wait for a weather window to head down the coast and then to cross the Gulf of Maine. Maggie and I are using the time to do a little maintenance and to make a few changes on the boat. Sophie also went to nearby Liverpool for a visit to the vet to get her rabies shot so that she can enter the U.S.

We just finished a supper of freshly caught mackeral that a young fellow named Brandon caught for us here in the cove. Later Maggie and I will be rocked gently to sleep as a 30 kt wind blows H2OBO at its mooring.  What bliss!

Branko