Planning calms me down; it makes me feel like I have some modicum of control over where we’re going next year, how pleasant the ride and the degree of happiness when we arrive. To that end, we have a “LIST”; the reasoning being that if it is on the list, it will get done. Even after working on the boat every weekend since our mid-September haulout, the LIST has grown rather than shrunk and so provides no sense of satisfaction when we cross off an item. The LIST has now morphed into two lists; my list and Blair’s list and we in turn have unconsciously gravitated to the tasks we do best.

Blair is my renaissance man; he can fix most things and if he can’t fix it, he knows why. When underway, he is usually the one tweaking the sails making sure they are set to provide maximum lift and speed. For my part, I watch the weather and select our anchorages and provide endless second guessing while navigating through shallow waters. Surprisingly, at least to me, I also dock Strathspey; partly because Blair says I can’t fend off 15,000 pounds in an emergency and partly because I know that there’s no future in fending. Between the two of us, we seem to have settled on the tasks that suit our strengths and personalities.

Strathspey’s gennaker

Quite a few of the items on our lists are aimed at covering two things that on land we take for granted; Safety and Comfort. On water, it’s not as easy to take a quick turn off our route to check into the nearest hotel. We can’t just park the boat and set the emergency brake and there is no divided line that separates us from the folks heading the opposite direction. Most importantly, if we forget or run short on any item, be it food, water or clothing, it’s not a quick ten minute drive to a corner store to replace it. Under the safety banner, one of the things we need are charts to show us the best routes between anchorages and docks plus guidebooks to tell us what to see or warn us what to avoid. We are amazed at the amount of money you can spend on charts and guidebooks and equally amazed at the different types of guidebooks that provide us with information that we really just can’t get anywhere else.

In the planning, this trip seems to be logically grouping itself into three distinct legs; the first one being up the St Lawrence to PEI, the Magdalenes and Nova Scotia. The next leg covers the east coast of the USA from Maine to Florida and the third part definitely involves warm weather and turquoise seas (either Cuba or The Bahamas). At this point, we have all the chart books for the US east coast and there seems to be no scarcity of information out there for the Bahamas and Cuba.

Lake Ontario

I think that when heading south, most boats in our neck of the woods tend to cross Lake Ontario to Oswego, New York in late August or early September. They then use the canal system down to the Hudson River and from there to the Chesapeake; a major shortcut that we plan to use on our way home. But consequently we’re not finding a lot of information for the Canadian portion of our journey. It has taken a lot of Internet searching and word of mouth to build up a decent library for our cruise through Gaspe, PEI and Nova Scotia.

Oswego lock

One of the Canadian cruising books that we’ve managed to lay our hands on is a compilation of notes and warnings from other cruisers; some notes dating back to 1953 even! For example, the Cruising Guide to Nova Scotia has hand drawn sketches and notes for PEI, Nova Scotia and the Magdalens with each entry crediting the sailor who provided the information. Some of the comments are quite blunt. In my copy, the comment for Souris, PEI says that

…there are many unemployed people with little to do. This place is bleak and the only thing recommending this harbor is that it is the closest from PEI to the Magdalens.

Pretty brutal! I did notice that in the updated guide, that text no longer appears. The best thing about this guide is that it is made up of notes from sailors that have actually entered all these harbours and anchored in the isolated small bays and have been doing so since the 50’s. These guides feel uniquely Canadian and it gives me a warm fuzzy to think that we’ll probably scribble our own notes in our guide and maybe pass it on to next boat; line up on the blue cottage and straight in until you’re in 7 feet. Another guide that we like is the Down East Circle Route by Captain Cheryl Barr. It’s well organized, includes black and white photos of harbour approaches and a very cool table that helps you calculate when to cast off so as to make the St Lawrence current and tides work for you rather than against.

Whether the guide books are glossy or homespun, they all provide us with a measure of safety that would be missing if all we had were nautical charts. Plus best of all, when it’s winter outside, there’s nothing more satisfying than spending an evening planning where you hope to be anchoring next July.

Strathspey nestled in a quiet bay in the Thousand Islands