We decided to augment the trip to Nova Scotia from Nantucket with a cruise up the coast to Lunenberg this year. Charlie, Maureen, and Charlie's dad, Frank, came along to make for a large, cheerful crew. Captain Michael's friend Woody joined us again for a total of six crew members. I spent my portion of the night watch with Charlie and Frank. We exchanged plenty of sailing and other life stories. Frank's stories of sailing in the Pacific and his experiences as an air navigator were my favorites.

The weather was friendly, for a change, on the way across. We were broad reaching in about 10 to 15 knots most of the time. We winged out the headsail with our spinnaker pole and made good time. As usual Chaos proved herself to be a great boat in light air. I took a few pictures of the trip across, but it was difficult to do anything but pay attention to sailing on the way in to Shelburne. We had strong winds, about 30 or 35 knots at times, in our face all the way up the deep cut into Shelburne Harbor. We took some time outside the entrance to furl the heads'l, double reef the main, and haul up the stays'l. We were able to tack our way in without any trouble using this configuration, but it was an exciting ride. We were very happy to settle into Shelburne, as always seems to be the case even for this short 52 hour ride.

We stopped in Port Mouton to enjoy Carver's beach and the cove where last year we went on a long hike through the woods and ended up with hundreds of wood ticks on us. This time, we didn't have the time or the inclination to hike, but we rigged the P. Ellen, our showcase shell-back sailing dinghy, for the first time of the season. Charlie and even Woody discovered the enchantment of taking the P. Ellen for a sail in a remote location. I was finally able to show Woody why one would go to such trouble to have a hard, fairly large for Chaos, dinghy on the deck all the way to Nova Scotia. We sailed Chaos all the way in to the beach and anchored under sail here, always a pleasure, especially with this crew.

Our final stop was Lunenberg, the home of Greybeard, one of our friends from last year at the Grand Banker. We knew he ran a bed and breakfast from some email conversation over the winter regarding the section of our web site on the Nova Scotia trip last year. We ended up staying at his bed and breakfast to avoid a gale that came through the night of our arrival.

As we arrived at the entrance to Lunenberg, we again faced 30 to 35 knot winds coming straight down the harbor. We adjusted sail and began to beat our way in. A beautiful blue sailboat much like Chaos was about a mile ahead entering under engine. I remarked to Michael that the other boat looked nice, but I was glad to be coming in under sail. I thought it was my imagination, but it seemed we were being hailed on the radio. Who could possibly be doing that? Well, the boat ahead was Mark McGauley's Harvest Moon, and Captain Dan Harper was hailing us. They had made record time and hid in a cove past the entrance to surprise us. We enjoyed a complicated process of finding an acceptable open mooring in the inner harbor. The approaching gale meant many of the boats that were staying at the docks were heading out to weather the storm on their moorings. We finally settled in, although our spot was a bit exposed to the incoming swell.

We decided we should go ashore with the crew, rather than spend the night in the rough weather aboard Chaos. Captain Dan and Mark McGauley were gracious to operate their more substantial tender on our behalf to move us all to the dock. I quickly called Greybeard and was able to rent the house for the evening. Greybeard's was an old very well kept Captain's house not unlike our house in Nantucket. Greybeard is a descendant of Captain Macy of Nantucket, in fact. He is quite a character, and a very pleasant fellow. We shared a couple of  beers with him and also found our other friends from the year before that evening as the storm approached.