David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Friday, September 4, 2009
Location: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Coordinates: 46° 13.896′ N  63° 07.378′ W

We arrived in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on Wednesday afternoon. There’s really no good place anchor in this harbour, so we had reservations at the Charlottetown Yacht Club. We arrived to a situation unique on our summer cruising: We were the second Nordhavn in the marina. Shearwater, a gorgeous Nordhavn 64 had arrived the day before, and they were moored on the same dock where we would spend the night. We have been shadowing each other for the last month as we both made our way down the St. Lawrence River, and we finally caught up with each other here in Charlottetown. It was really fun to meet Scott and Pamela, and to see their fabulous vessel. Although they departed Thurday morning, I suspect we’ll cross wakes again over the next couple months as we both make our way down to Florida.

Our mooring at the CYC was not ideal by any measurement. We were on the outside face dock, and the wind was blowing down the harbour at a sustained 25-30 knots, making for a pretty rough ride. There was also a large flock of sea birds out on this dock, and they were more than happy to relieve themselves on our boat (there are few things I dislike more than when a bird poops on the deck of our boat). And to top things off, the marina’s Internet connectivity wasn’t working. Argghhh! Since we wanted to stay in Charlottetown for a few days, we were going to have to find a better situation.

Thursday morning I walked over to Quartermasters Marina, and they had one spot where they could put us. At first I wasn’t so sure about it: It was deep into the marina, in a little alcove nestled amongst historic buildings. It would definitely be well protected, but it would also be tight getting in and out, with little room to turn around, which we needed to do. (You can see our little alcove if you switch our location map to “satellite” mode and zoom in.) After staring at it for awhile, I decided it was much better than another day of birds leaving deposits on our deck. So we saddled up in 25-knot wind, and bid the CYC farewell, moving less than a half mile down the waterfront to Quartermasters Marina. It was definitely tight getting in here, but once we were settled, we were happy we moved: no wind, no birds, lovely buildings, and nice people. It was perfect, except for one little detail: no Internet access. What!?!

It turns out that their wireless Internet access has been up, down, and spotty all summer. It has been looked at by “some computer guys”, but it still wasn’t working. Our adapter could see the access points from our boat, but I couldn’t connect to one of them, and the other one wouldn’t give me an IP address. On Kathryn’s suggestion, this morning I decided to offer my services to see if I could get their network working (after all, while I’m no expert on network administration, I used to configure family and friends home networks, so why not a marina in Charlottetown?). They were open to the idea of me working on it — what harm could I do since it wasn’t working anyway? It took me a couple hours to figure it out, but I’m happy to report that their network is now working well, and we are benefiting from its availability aboard Three@Sea. They were also very appreciative of the assistance, and they even offered to give us a break on our bill.

Now it’s a perfect mooring.