We really enjoyed our stay in Ballantynes cove. This was a great place to stop over on our way towards the east coast, and is nicely situated at the tip of land jutting into the northumberland straight. Very friendly place, and we were gifted a bottle of wine from someone on the dock we were at (thanks!).
We left Ballantynes cove pretty early in the morning, and it was yet again another of those days where it sounded almost too windy to sail, but as we got out there it was quite pleasant and good sailing. We had a nice angle and direct sail toward Havre Boucher, where we planned to anchor for the night.
Before we left, we started thinking about our holding tank situation. The last pump out we had was in Tadussac, and although we have been staying in a lot of marina's since then, it had been a long while. I knocked on the tank which was my current best indicator but that yielded a null result (or full?) and so we tried pouring a little hot water down the side of the tank as a trick to see where the level is, as the metal on the tank would cool faster where the black water level was. This also yielded a null result (or full?). Finally underway I had fashioned a somewhat disgusting dip stick arrangement to use from the deck pump out. This got us the actual measurement, completely full.
At that point we realized how dumb it had been to leave this important job until now, and started looking for solutions. One option was to continue on to Port Hawksbury which is a little marina just a bit further than we had planned on going today. That seemed like the logical choice, but upon calling them we found out they also don't do pump outs. That was leaving us with basically no option for a pump out, with a completely full tank.
We had read about pump outs being a harder thing to find as you get out here, so we had made some preparations for doing a pump out ourselves, which is a thing you can do when you are more than three nautical miles offshore (which we were). Unfortunately we hadn't had any time before we left to really think though this solution beyond ordering a pump, and some bits and pieces to make it work.
Either way we pulled them out. First problem, the deck fill fitting we ordered was the wrong size (not sure if we measured wrong, ordered wrong, or were sent the wrong size, but that mattered little in the moment). The hose we had fit pretty well in the deck pump out hole by chance so maybe that would work. But we still had to assemble the whole thing, wire the pump, and actually do it. It was becoming apparent that wasn't going to happen at this moment, and we were at the anchorage, and the sea state wasn't ideal for boat projects either so we finally just turned into anchor and dropped the hook after stressing about the situation and the incomplete setup we had in place.
At anchor we were able to come up with a reasonable solution that seemed like it would work, so we made plans to try and not use the head that evening, and do the dirty deed tomorrow morning before heading onwards...
On the bright side, the anchorage was nice, a very well protected bay, and great holding.
