Today finds us off the western end of Sable Island. As yesterday drew to a close the wind died with it, so we motored west overnight to get round the bottom of Sable Island in order to give it a wide berth. Better to be safe than sorry when lacking the correct charts. Unfortunately the wind did pick up again this afternoon, but from the north west, almost exactly where we want to go. Ordinarily this would not be a problem as we would just tack into it, however we are trying to avoid sailing with the wind on the weak side of the rigging, so we have been motoring for most of the day. We did tuck in a bit of sailing earlier when the wind was, for a time, from a favourable direction.

 

When aiming for New England  we had been keeping a store of diesel in reserve since winds are sometimes light in that area and we are time limited.  Now that we have diverted to Canada we have that diesel reserve to use – and we are using it now. 

 

During the night we saw quite a few lights away off near the horizon that seemed fixed and quite bright. Today we passed some oil rigs, so I can only assume that the lights we saw were from the gas flares off the oil rigs, shining in the night.

 

We were surprised that we have not seen so much wildlife since reaching the American continental shelf. We had assumed that there would be more life closer to land, however it seems, at least from our observations that it is far more abundant out in the open ocean. Not something we would have suspected.

 

Hamsi

 

43:53.07N 61:15.86W