Sailing Down the St Lawrence

Thurs Aug 25

Currently sailing (yay!) under upper and lower topsails, t'gallants, main royal, foresail and inner jib. We are making a good 9 knots over the ground. It is a chilly grey day with the occaisional rain shower.

Had a crazy watch last night. We were motoring down the seaway from Montreal and the steering was nuts. Thankfully I didn't have to have a trick at the wheel, I'm not sure I could have done that in the dark leapfrogging from lighted bouy to lghted bouy.  We were going faster over the grownd than I have ever seen the Picton Castle go, 12.3 knots! For us that is really flying. There was a 6 knot current from the river helping us along. She felt like she was on the edge of control, like when you are going too fast on a bicycle :-)

So instead of a trick at the helm I did lookout and then Shauna and I scrubbed the overhead in the galley and tried to make coffee. The coffe procedure is very primitive now. You take a big pot boil water in it then throw in Foolgers coffee grounds, wait a few minutes and laddle it out into a thermos to put aft on the Aloha Deck. Ick.

It was pretty strong, it was still there at breakfast and it really did a good job at jump starting me caffeine wise :-)

We motored past Quebec City last night around 4 AM and we are way downstream from there now. No wasting time on this trip!

When I came on watch this morning it was still pretty warm, with scattered clouds. We were motorsailing under the lower topsails. Typically our watch does the domestics, cleaning the heads, sweeping the salon etc, but today almost the entire watch was spend setting sails. First the upper topsails, then the main topmast staysail, between the main and foremasts, and then the t'gallants and royal on the main.  Once that was all set the engine was shutdown and we have been sailing in blessed quiet since then.

I did my trick at the helm and, for the first time I stayed on course pretty well and was pretty confident by the end. A very pleasant change from the schmozle of the previous tricks. Well see how I do tonight.

My hands with stood all the line hauling while we were setting the sails so maybe they are starting to toughen up.

The temperature has been dropping steadily all morning but I wasn't cold because with just the four of us on the watch it was a lot of work to set all the sails,  but I'm thinking I might need to start layering up for our night watch tonight.

Erin, our mate, says we might start to see whales in the St Lawrence soon, so I'll try to keep my camera handy just in case.


Later

It is now 4:00pm and what a difference a couple of hours make.
I was trying to sleep and realized that I couldn't seem to warm my legs up!  As the water temperature has gone down the hull has cooled off too and it sucks the heat out of my bunk. Had to put on my flannel shirt and get my blanket over my legs.

Now outside it is rainy and foggy and very damp/cold.

You can even see the fog rolling down the salon steps from the deck!
Going to need my foulies tonight I'm sure. I hope I don't need all my cold weather clothes tonight because I suspect this is not as cold ass it will get. Sigh.
I'm hoping this just feels cold by contrast with the heat we have had previously and once we get more accustomed it won't feel so sharp.

The engine is back on and  Bryson just came off watch and told me we are making 13 knots over the ground.  Woo.


Thanks for reading.
KJ