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August 2, 2013 Day 72  Chaleur Bay

Caraquet Marina
Caraquet, New Brunswick, Canada

A day of change!  We are no longer in the province of Quebec but are now in New Brunswick.  We also entered the Atlantic time zone, which means we are now an hour later.

We left the marina at L’Anse a Beaufils at 7:30 this morning and crossed the Chaleur Bay with Outbound and Firebird.  This bay is 45 miles wide and we needed a good weather day to cross and we had one!  It started to rain lightly just before we arrived, but we were happy that we avoided most of it.

Our passenger - the blue heron

At 10:30 this morning we picked up a freeloader passenger – a large blue heron landed on the top of our sundeck and then flew to the top of the flybridge and stayed for 45 minutes!  We guess he enjoyed the restful ride!  The only other wildlife we saw today was a gray seal and the gannets with their white bodies and yellow-gold heads.

The Caraquet Restaurant was all decked out for Acadia Days!

Beautiful colored fishing boats at another local marina

We arrived at the marina in Caraquet at 2:00 and were met by friendly staff and other boaters. Jocques, a local resident, stayed to talk for a while and then insisted we borrow his car for the weekend.  We met Enid and Richard from New Zealand on their boat, Astral Sky.  Together with them and Outbound, we all piled into the car and went to dinner at a casual but very good seafood restaurant.  We had a great time discussing our mutual travels and experiences.

Caraquet is just beginning a two week celebration and festival of their Acadia Days.  We took a short drive into their town and will go back again tomorrow to see some of the festivities. There are fireworks tomorrow night.

This has been another good day and we are happy to be seeing such beautiful sights and meeting such wonderful people in Canada.

(Note: more pictures have been added - see July 31 for Blue Whale)