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Old 09-12-2015, 05:45 AM
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Neil, I can relate to the one about the fog. I can hear the fog horn from my living room here this morning ... can't see the street 60 feet from the house. If there is one thing I really dislike sailing in it's fog. It deprives me of my senses, no terms of reference, tiredness soon follows. I usually don't even go play in it at all anymore, and if I'm out I find a spot to bring her in.

On the Newfoundland trip I had 7 days straight fog up the coast....and then back again. All I did was watch the radar and glance at the chartplotter now and then. Sometimes the sun would be shining through from about 100-150 feet above and the glare would be just crippling to the eyes. Every evening I head into a port, pick my way in using chartplotter and radar....easy, well not so easy when fighting to keep your eyes focused and all I wanted to do is be able to lay down and close them for 15 minutes.

Once inside a harbour typically drove out of the fog, anchor and sleep for an hour. Then get up and get something to eat and crash out a little after dark. Summer here gets dark around 9pm.... mornings wake up with fog all around again and I'd hope for a day without it...morning sun would start burning it off and I'd head out...around 11am the sea breeze would start and the fog, which receded 20 miles out would make it's way in. I'd spend another 6 hrs in it until my next stop. Also, typically when there is fog the winds are around 10-15 kts...so it makes for a slow rolling ride in the Atlantic swells...The best wind around here is a Northerly...any Northerly ...blows the fog out to sea, wind is off the land actually knocking down the seas...get 20 kts of that and you are making time. That didn't happen for me on that excursion but it sure would have made it less stressful and shorter.

PS: I never did make it to Newfoundland that summer. I'd talked to a ship ASL Sanderling on which I knew one of the mates. They run from NS to NL every week and he said there was nothing off Newfoundland only fog as well...and had been all summer. So after a week of hopping up the Nova Scotia coast I turned it around and came back to Halifax...fog all the way back too...and fog the rest of the summer. It was one of the worst sailing summers any of the old timers could remember.
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"Odyssey"
1976 C&C 30 MKI

The pessimist complains about the wind.
The optimist expects it to change.
The realist adjusts the sails.
...Sir William Arthur Ward.

Last edited by Mo; 09-12-2015 at 05:58 AM.
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