Enetai - Northumberland Strait, Part 3:
Summerside to Pugwash
We left Summerside mid-day having listened to the weather and considered how much time we had left. We had to motor as the winds were light and variable as we made our way back under the Confederation Bridge. This time we were headed south-east.
We thought we would anchor at Cape Tormentine, on the tip of New Brunswick Province. We arrived at around 5 PM, and found a rather forbidding, industrial strength wall of sheet piling closing in the small area that could be a harbor. The wind came up, and it was cloudy and gray, which didn't help the forbidding aspect of the anchorage.
The light marking the anchorage was prominent atop an enormous concrete pier. It was a bit eerie, the high unforgiving walls and no one to be seen anywhere. The buildings that could be seen from down in the enclosure, seemed to be abandoned. While we cooked up a quick dinner, we worried that this would not be a very protected spot if the winds came up and the weather got bad.
We decided that we should get going and make our way to the next planned stop, Pugwash, on the north shore of Nova Scotia. While darkness was going to fall, the weather predictions spurred us to make a dash for a more protected, populated harbor.
Sailing at night can be beautiful with the stars out, but we were a bit tense as the clouds were thick and there were no stars. We weren't far off shore and could see lights as we glided along, we had to pay particular attention to our course and buoys to follow our location on the charts. This proved particularly difficult in the dark with the small sized buoys in Northumberland Strait.
As we approached the harbor, there were plenty of lighted red and green channel buoys to guide us in, but against the shore lights it was hard to sort them out. We had to creep along from buoy to buoy in the winding channel, finally arriving around midnight. We docked on the Thinker's Landing of the Pugwash Yacht Club and gratefully turned in.
We were truly glad we had moved along when we woke up the next day to a pouring rain.
It felt good to be in a snug harbor, on a dock, that allowed us to make our way (albeit a very wet way) easily into town.
Pugwash was lovely, and had the best coffee that we'd had anywhere! The Chatterbox Cafe had beautiful flowers and an environmentally oriented rain barrel out front to water them.
Not only that, the cafe had wifi, so we spent some time indoors, out of the rain, catching up on emails and information.
Pugwash has a nice park along the water front along with shops and a few restaurants. It's a very pretty place, but for us, it pretty much rained the whole time we were there, so we didn't get to fully appreciate the amenities.
As we went to leave Pugwash, again the narrow channel funneled the tides and there were some pretty stiff currents to navigate. So, we left with the tide.
Pugwash to Fox Harbour
The weather was good for sailing, but the rain kept the captain in his foul weather gear and harness, hunching against the rain. We passed two very large yachts, purported to belong to the owner of Tim Horton's. No picture from a distance on the water can do justice to the size of these boats. They had to anchored out in the strait, too big to go into the harbors along this shore.
We ducked into Fox Harbour inlet, a bucolic setting where we could anchor for the night. The winds were still quite strong, the skyscapes were impressive.
We did take advantage of the warmer water in the generally shallow harbor to go swimming. There was quite a current! We arranged a fender on a line and trailed it off the boat. As the current increased, we could swim 'upstream' of the hull and hang on to the fender and let the current sweep us back. After a while, we realized we'd probably best get back in the boat, if we lost hold of the fender, we were going out to sea! Even though it had been cloudy all day, the sun shower was warm enough to give a nice rinse.
The wind continued unabated through that evening and into the next day. The beach towel hanging on the boom sort of shows how the wind was whipping, so that Enetai was heeled over (her high bow tends to sail her in the wind when we are at anchor). You can see the deck heeled over in the wind, so much wind, just like Caribou Harbor when we set out, except without the microbursts and hail! 
We were in the harbor until mid-afternoon waiting for the wind to abate.
Fortunately, it's a lovely spot and the skyscapes allowed for sitting and watching the clouds and the shore.
We had a running debate about an island in the distance, whether it looked like our dog when she's stretched out on the couch. The island had a tail, then a big middle belly-like part, and then a neck and another high spot which would be the head. Still not so sure that it really looked like the dog's silhouette! You be the judge. (Hint: head is on the right.)
In the morning, we got a complaint from the teenager in the bow that there was a loud knocking on the hull. Until we moved up into the bow, we couldn't hear it, but then there it was, "knock, knock" and then "knock, knock, knock" and then another pause and it began again. Creeping up to the bow in the wind and peering over along the anchor rode, it became clear that a strand of sea grass ('submerged aquatic vegetation' (SAV)) had pulled free and worked its way up the rode, and attached to its little roots was a small rock. The grass was draped over the line, and the little rock was tap-tap-tapping on the hull. 
All was quiet for a while, but then the teenager in the bow set up another squall, and lo-and-behold, another strand of sea grass with its little rock had made its way up the anchor rode and was tap-tap-tapping for attention. Nothing like a muddy bottom to hold your anchor, and those little rocks helped hold the vegetation.
Time to brave the wind and head back to our launch site.
Fox Harbour to Tatamagouche
We had to struggle to get the anchor out of that mud. Nonetheless, it's a good feeling to know that the anchor had a good bite considering the winds and how Enetai sails on her anchor.
A seal came along to check us out, not much else going on in the harbor!
The wind was good for sailing, but again, the narrow channel had to be carefully followed, thank goodness for that depth sounder! We weren't really in a harbor, we were anchored in a channel without any buoys and had to watch ourselves as we left on an ebbing tide, in lots of wind.
And the weather wasn't done with us; we got some rain squalls as we made our way along the coast. The Captain had to hunker down in his foul weather gear, with his harness on again. Needlesstosay, we made great time.
We arrived in time to see the Tatamagouche harbor buoys heeled over in the current again! the little cabins in their rainbow colors cheerfully welcomed us back.
We had to kick up the rudder to get back into the basin at the Sunrise Shore Marina. It was a "drain-tide", the ramp was fully exposed and the keel boats were sitting in mud.
One last evening, packing up and watching a beautiful sunset, before we had to pull out and head home
The drive home
Now we got to reverse the process and pull out of the marina and head out on the road. We made sure to stop at the Chatterbox Cafe on our way through Pugwash to get some of that wonderful coffee. The drive back was pretty uneventful, except for a very long wait at St. Stephens to go through US Customs. We inched down the hill, we inched around the corner, we finally turned left into the actual customs lanes, and then we were a couple vehicles back from the checkpoint when a customs official with a german shepherd approached our truck and trailer and directed us to go to the right. We pulled up to a stop sign and got a signal to move forward, the signage indicated that we were being x-rayed. As we pulled up, our cab was stopped next to what looked like a blank wall, but when Bo looked up out of his driver's window, there was an official way up above us looking down and asking for our passports. Bo had to get out of the pick-up to hand them up to him. We eventually realized that this was actually for semi-rigs, and that the window up above us was at a height to be level with the window on a semi's cab!
And then we were on our way, back through Maine and New Hampshire, and home to Massachusetts.