We radioed in to the harbourmaster on the VHF. Annie, the harbourmaster, answered back to say that she could see us approaching and that she would meet us to assist docking on the dock she assigned to us. And she did. She welcomed us in English with her excellent command of the language. She explained that she hardly ever had visitors from NS but today there was also another vessel in the harbour from NS and she pointed out the sailboat to us. She gave us he scoop on the marina and we saw her later in the office. We settled in, secured the boat and prepared for the following day’s departure.
Later in the afternoon when I saw activity milling around the other NS boat, I went over to say hello. The 2 gals aboard were sailing their boat from Dartmouth to Montreal and I was as anxious to get information about their trip thus far as they were to find out what they could from us about the waters we had crossed. We chatted and decided to meet for a glass of wine later. But later didn’t materialize due to the weather upset. The next morning, as I was on my way to the laundry room , an older gentleman 3 slips away from ours sitting in his cockpit reading under an umbrella and dodger called to me in partial English partial French as I passed that he too was held “captive in Chandler” due to the weather. The forecast was upsetting and we were bound to Chandler for the next couple days while the front passed. It rained and fogged and rained and fogged and rather than have her visitors grumble Annie called for all those holed up in the harbour to meet in the clubhouse for a get together later that evening.
Once our chores were completed, Keith and I rode into town on bikes that Annie lent us to buy some groceries and a few supplies. We rode in the rain but it was fine. I kept my mind on the warmth of that bottle of wine that Ellie had given me upon our departure from Waupoos. It’s the one that I really love, Baco Noir, from a wonderful little Prince Edward County winery called Sandbanks, and was about to share with the girls later that evening. And the girls did chat.
Annie is somewhat of a kindred spirit, similar to me in that she is an ``outside the box`` individual but she is young - 38 years old. She is single, speaks 3 languages fluently, owns her sailboat that she lives on in the harbour where she is the harbourmaster, spends the summers working in her home town of Chandler as the harbourmaster and the winters in Venezuela. She is well spoken, kind and has a bubbly personality. She admitted that it was difficult to be a free spirit in the small predominately Catholic staunch home town that she loved so much. Her family and friends and local people expected that she would fit into the mould of their community that she found difficult to squeeze in to. But she also talked of a fellow, a psychologist, whom she had recently met from Perce that was interesting. Annie told me that the morning before, she had driven Becky, whom Keith and I had met in Riviere au Renard, and her kayak to NB to meet her husband. Becky had arrived two nights before and her husband had arrived in NB to meet with her to cross the Northumberland Strait to PEI. Annie had offered to drive Becky the 2 hours there to meet him and she had reluctantly accepted.
Judy and her partner from Dartmouth were en route to Ottawa and were leaving their boat in Montreal. Jeanette, a flutist with the Stadacona band, had received a promotion to Ottawa where they were moving and had purchased a house. She was returning to Dartmouth to return to work the following day. Judy was sailing the boat singlehandedly from there on to Montreal where she would leave the boat, head to Ottawa for business dealings with their house there, fly back to Dartmouth to pack up their house which had sold in Dartmouth and move its contents and them back to Ottawa before fall. We talked of our respective travels and Judy offered us charts that she had already used. Charts she had borrowed from friends to make the trip but ones we already had ; she talked of hoping to have received all the charts she needed for their trip from her friend Giles LeBrun but was dismayed to find that he had already loaned his charts to other friends who were also making the trip. She was also even further surprised to hear that the charts she had been hoping for had already been lent to us by the same Giles LeBrun. What can I say but that it is a very small world we live in.
We met a couple from Vermont who had sailed up the seaboard to Maine and across the Bay of Fundy, along the southern shore of NS to the Straits of Canso and Northumberland into NB and across the Bay of Chaleur to Chandler. They had run out of time due to work related issues and weather problems. They had expected to have time to travel up the St. Lawrence to the Richelieu and Lake Champlain and back home but were in Chandler to haul their sailboat out to truck her home. They were disheartened and we could sympathize and only surmise their feelings because that was an option the captain and I may have had to face only a few short days before.
The following morning we fueled early and pulled away from our berth for our long crossing of the Bay of Chaleur and into NB. The captain cut Bridlewilde hard to the east and out toward the breakwater as I was up on deck pulling in the fenders. As we passed the last dock, I saw Judy down in her engine room readying her engine to pull out as well. She saw us and jumped out with her camera, ready to catch a pic of us pulling out. I yelled at her. `Fair Winds, Dartmouth. We`ll get together in NS in the fall.` I couldn`t hear her any longer but I knew she had heard me by her thumbs up response as we slipped around the breakwater and out of her sight.
