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The Contessa Corner → Cruising → CO26 crossing Canada
Depending on your arrival time in New York, you may experience ice on the Great Lakes. Distance from New York to Thunder Bay, approx. 1600 km. and another 3600, from Thunder Bay to Vancouver.
You will most certainly enjly winter in the Thunder Bay area.
All the best on your voyage !
If you hit the St. Lawrence next summer and do the great lakes over the summer you will have a great trip - very beautiful - and you can make it up to Thunder Bay by the fall and I would suggest instead of wintering there, you could get your boar hauled over to the west cost in the fall and continue on sailing or winter in Britsih Columbia without worrying to much about the winter weather. Average temperature druing winter months in Vancouver/Victoria is 6c (with the odd snowfall) while in Thunder Bay it could average -30c. I liked your suggestion - a unique way to cross the continent other than the Panama canal.
Ivan Ross JJT 266 "Morava"
If you are considering the Caribbean for this winter, perhaps a solution would be to pass through the Panama Canal in the early spring and spend the summer on the US and Canadian West Coasts. When you eventually truck the boat to Thunder Bay, the truck will have done the hard work of the climb. That is, sailing out of the Great Lakes and down the Saint Lawrence is much easier than sailing up because of the strong currents and prevailing Westerly winds.
You still see the same destinations, but in an order that is better suited to the Contessa.
Christopher
Wow! You guys are amazing!!! Nina & Henrik, I follow your "websalbum" and am totally inspired by your trip!
I am not sure about the great lakes area, but I live in Vancouver, and to truck a boat from Thunder BAy (or area) to Vancouver is actually done all the time by all kinds of boats. So that part is simple...the cost would be about $2,500 - $3,000 Canadian Dollars or so...I had priced it out when looking for a Contessa 26 before I found mine out here! If you need any help with boat transport companies or contact information, I would be happy to help you from Vancouver in any way I can! My e-mail: shannonrae@telus.net I can give you more contact information if you e-mail me, if you need! If you need information of any kind on Vancouver area, etc. again, I am here if you need!!
We are slowly circumnavigating in our CO26 BIKA, and have thought of Canada as an alternative to the Panama Canal. Is it a good plan to sail from New York to Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, winter over in a cabin with the boat on land, and then use a trailer over to Vancouver? Any comments?
Henrik and Nina in BIKA.
Thanks for all comments.
We plan to arrive in New York spring 2008, and then take Hundson River, Erie Canal and other water ways up to Hudson Bay area in Lake Superior. Winter over on land (us and the boat), before trailing BIKA to Vancouver. Maybe we`ll see some of you along the way.
So long, Henrik and Nina in BIKA, currently in Cartagena, Colombia
You know you will be going through the heart of JJT Contessa 26 when you travel the Great Lakes! There are dozen or so just on Lake Ontario and I sail out of Dunkirk, NY on Lake Erie. We should have a gathering along your route to share stories. Good luck on your sailing north. jklee
A few comments for you if you have made the choice to go north and west via Lake Superior. There are no such things as sea dragons (or so I'm told), and people do sail on Lake Superior, but some warnings are worth while even to ocean sailors.
We have a storm season here on the Great Lakes too. The weather gets noticably more changeable, both in the speed at which fronts come through, and the severity of the changes, starting in mid-September and getting worse from there on in. October is getting cold and rough, and November is what we call the gale season - after that ice along the shore becomes a problem. You'll want to be at Thunder Bay by mid-Sept. I've come across Lake Superior in an autumn gale in a 650 ton ice breaker and had a snotty ride, and a Contessa could have had a desperate time of it.
I know you folks sail in the North Atlantic, and you'll have plenty of miles under your keel by the time you get to the Great Lakes, but this is a different environment than the ocean (not to say better or worse, just different). The problems here are the increasing speed at which weather systems move through the area late in the season, and the way that weather systems happen to collide over the lakes. Fall storms sometimes don't give much warning and Superior can see waves in excess of 20 ft. high due to the strenght of the winds, but because the fetch is so short (compared to the ocean) the waves build unbelievably quickly and never get to lengthen out. You end up with tall, steep waves on a short period (frequency). They could be very difficult to ride out if you are caught out.
One thing I've observed is that, for the area where I live (Georgian Bay), I can get a good idea of what's coming in the weather by listening to the weather observations for the areas west of me because most of our weather tracks west to east. For example, what's happening in eatern Lake Superior and Whitefish Bay will usually find me about two days later. For Lake Superior try monitoring conditions in Lake Winnipeg to get a heads up on what you might see in the near future. The real weather bombs happen when a warm wet system comes up from the Gulf of Mexico and crashes into an arctic air mass moving in from the west, and they seem to do that now and again directly over Lake Superior for some reason. Locally the MAFOR forecasts are usually pretty good but the broadcasts always include the disclaimer "winds and waves may vary considerably due to shoreline effects".
Other than that, you'll see some gorgeous cruising grounds especially if you get into the area known as the North Channel in northern Lake Huron. Superior is majestic, perhaps partly because of its unpredictable strength.
re-reading what I just wrote, I'll modify it by saying that good weather can persist into late Sept. or even early October, although I have been on the same ship in a nasty snow storm up there in mid-Oct. The later you go, the harder it is to get enough days of benign weather in a row to get from one safe place to another.
Interesting statistics about Lake Superior for anyone who wants to go there...I just went net surfing to to see if there were numbers to correspond to my experience of Superior (we took a good shit-kicking), and lo, there they were. The peak wave height in Lake Superior East is just over 4 meters in Sept. then jumps to 6.5m in Oct, then soars to a whopping 10.5m in November. So yes, get off the lake before October. For our non-metric readers, there's about 3.4 feet to a meter.
The Contessa Corner → Cruising → CO26 crossing Canada
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