45°54.6'N x 059°56.2'W

By Matthew Maples

 "Welcome to Norway" says Japke Van Urk, ship's doctor, to my groggy-eyed face as I shuffle towards my dinner. Norway? She reads my confusion, telling me that the place we have dropped our anchor this evening looks just like Norway. "I believe it" I say as I finish buttoning my cold-weather jacket for a dinner in the lounge. Thankfully though, the chilled air coming down our tweendeck corridor is defeated by a timely, steamy plate of beef stew and rice.

I've never been to Norway, but this place appears to be what I'd expect its shores to look like; sea-battered, lichen-strewn rocks with a line of pine wood behind. A sole, small lighthouse marks a small cape with a sleepy, small looking town behind. This, of course, is not Norway, but Cape Breton Island, just east of Nova Scotia. The palms and sun of Bermuda seem a lot farther than nine days away.

We've dropped our hook outside Louisbourg, seeking shelter from some nasty headwinds that were otherwise awaiting us at the entrance of the nearby Cabot Strait; our entryway into the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes.

Instead, we wait for a low pressure system and its unfavourable winds to move on, rather then face them head on and toil our engines and burn too much fuel. Even now as I write this in the library back aft I can hear the gusts of wind rudely rumble through our rigging.

The water and wind of Nova Scotia's Grand Banks have been much as I remember them from past voyages; cold wind, fogged horizons, and spray across our deck. The strong winds of the past few days have died down, only to begin to return today. Meanwhile, our night watches have grown longer in these colder nights, but our voyage crew have stoically stuck to the wheel and kept a vigilant eye in a "darker" void, interrupted by few objects to report. It is not unusual for us to go several days without visually seeing another sign from the 6+ billion other humans on this planet. Since our crew for this voyage is so small (20 people) we have all had to put an extra hand in to help with the work, and our crew and voyage crew alike have become "as one" to pull our weight together. Our voyage crew is becoming much more familiar with the ship and are really "stepping up" to lend an appreciated hand.

As I look over some charts with the mate, Harko Lambarts, he shows me that we are now at a "half-way" point between Bermuda and Toronto in terms of the miles we need to cover. From Bermuda we have left 875 miles in our wake with a little more than half that to go. Time, as usual, feels like it is going much faster than us.

Lately we have had a rash of ripped sails. Next to me in the library lies our now-patched main course sail (the lowest, largest square sail on the mainmast). The starboard leech was torn at the seam as it was being taken in during the near gale-force winds of a few days ago. The watches, with heavy needle and stitching have repaired it after two days of work. When the wind dies down, it will be sent aloft and "bent" back on to the main course yard. We would scarcely have time to enjoy the satisfaction of a finished job; It was not more than a few hours later when a new rip appeared in the seam of another sail - the Inner Jib! It is another sail-repair project to keep our stitching skills sharp.

Work and weather aside, many of us saw a truly awesome sight last night - glowing dolphins (Seriously!). A trio of dolphins escorted our bow in a sea awash with bio-luminescence. Bio-luminescence is a night-time phenomenon out at sea - basically small creatures in the ocean letting off a short, green-yellow flash at they are "disturbed" by the movement of our ship. Last night was one of the brightest displays of bio-luminescence I have ever encountered; as those dolphins swam in our wake, their movement caused many small creatures to continually emit light, bathing the dolphins in their collective glow. As they swam effortlessly in our bow, the green-glowing dolphins looked like wavering ghosts in the black sea, like twisting, neon phantoms beneath the surface that left a flurry of firefly-like lights with the staccato of static in their trails. Our ship likewise triggered those little glowing "lanterns" all along our sides and left them sparkling like momentary nova stars in our wake before they returned to the featureless dark of before. We will miss the ocean and its curious creatures as we enter the fresh water lakes.