Summerside, Prince Edward Island

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

046-23.280 N
063-47.100 W

Ahoy from Summerside, Price Edward Island!

No, you haven't missed a chapter and no, you're not reading ahead. We're in Prince Edward Island (PEI) after making a 140 nm jump on Sunday night. Remember one of my last logs where I said that you had to be fluid and move when the winds and currents allow you to? Well, this was one of those days.

On Sunday morning the forecast was for SW winds turning to the S later in the day, but on Sunday afternoon the winds were out out of the NW and the 3:30 PM forecast changed to having NW winds switching to W during the night. Don't you just love the consistency of these forecasts?!? Since we were headed S, this was a much better forecast, so I told Sue that we needed to leave and do an overnight passage. Sue, who doesn't like overnights (especially on such short notice), wasn't particularly happy.

We left the dock at around 5 PM and had the predicted 15 kts out of the SW. This quickly built to 20-25 kts and given the 80 mile fetch of the Chaleurs Bay, the seas grew to 4-6', which made for a bumpy ride. We were running down wind with a double reef in the main and then we made the right hand turn to head towards PEI, which placed the wind directly on our beam, heeling us over big time. After the sun set, the winds increased to 25 kts and were gusting to 35, which made Sue very unhappy. I dropped the main and we were running along with just the jib at 6.5 kts which made the ride much more comfortable. Later that evening the winds relaxed and we put the main back up.

Just after sunrise we rounded the tip of PEI, which was perfect timing as the winds had started to switch to the W and drop. I took out the reefs and combined with a 2+ kt current, we were doing over 9 kts! The current and the wind didn't last, but we sailed until we were almost at Summerside and we completed the 140 mile trip in about 18 hours, which is an average of 7.8 kts! That's flying and it saved us 2 days and 30+ miles.

When we pulled into the Summerside Yacht Club, they instructed me to dock at the face dock in front of the club house. The only problem was that there was only about 50' into which I needed to place the 40+' BlueJacket. To increase the degree of difficulty there was a nice, new 48'' Morris sailboat on the other half of the dock. I assumed that there had to be more space and that I had misjudged the amount of space, but as I got closer I realized how tricky this was going to be. I started my turn to pull into the dock and I almost had everything calculated correctly, but as I swung my stern past the perpendicular dock, my dinghy tubes caught on the backstay of the boat on that dock and we stopped at a 45 degree angle. People tried to hold the bow off of the dock, but I left a small amount of paint on it. Someone got on the other boat and helped push me away and then someone else grabbed the stern line and pulled me into the dock. Talk about a tight parking spot!

Prince Edward Island (PEI) is shaped like a parenthesis "(", is about 110 miles from tip to tip, and it varies from 4 to 40 miles wide. The primary industry is potato farming and tourism. There are 26 golf courses on the island. The water in the Northumberland Straight is quite warm, with temperatures in the 70s! While we haven't seen it, they say that there are miles of wonderful beaches. The west end is covered with wind generators.

Summerside appears to be a struggling community based upon the number of store fronts which are for rent. The historic home section is quite charming and over all, it's a good place to stop. The Yacht Club is nice and friendly. We stayed for 2 days due to the overnight and a front moving through today. We also need to do some repairs on our jib which suffered some damage from flogging while we dropped the main in high winds the other night.

Tomorrow we're headed 50 miles to Charlottetown, where we'll probably stay for 2+ days and rent a car to explore the island.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 1268