This was the dreaded pump out day. Woke up slightly scared about the job that needed doing. Raised anchor and sailed out well offshore. Winds were at least nice a favourable, so that part was easy and we could set the autopilot and focus on doing the pump out.

We got our somewhat jerry rigged setup of a hose stuffed into the deck pump out, attached to our whale gulper pump, onto a discharge hose into the ocean. Our first attempt wasn't great, the hose was probably too long, and although it was almost working it wasn't getting enough flow to possibly finish the job. Probably not the pumps fault, but more the hose jammed into the deck fitting not being the best seal.

I decided to cut down the hose to make it much shorter and that seemed to make the difference. It pumped all the disgustingness into the sea and before I knew it was pumping air from an empty holding tank. We pumped a bunch of sea water to try and cleanse the thing as much as possible and then cleaned everything up. It was a pretty horrible experience but we were glad to be through with it. We need a couple more parts to make that more manageable in the future, but it is at least doable now. We'll also plan to seek pump outs wherever possible! At home you can get them pretty much anywhere you can get fuel, but not so much here. We had actually planned to get one in Charlettetown, but we couldn't find anywhere there that did them, and that kind of of lead us to this dilemma.

Anyways, after that job was done, we tried to forget about it and focus on the rest of the day. It was after-all a beautiful day. We sailed into the Canso lock. This was a very easy to transit lock, we were the only boat, and we didn't even need to tie off, just motor into the lock, float through it, and out the other side. Very neat double lane swing bridge that opens at the other end of the lock as well.

After the lock, we stopped at Port Hawkesbury to get some fuel and water (and popcicles). We put up sails as we came out of the marina, all full of fresh water, diesel, and a now empty holding tank. In good shape for a while away from marinas.

The wind died off, but the came back again, and we had a nice sail through the straight, and then hooked north to find a little anchorage named The Little Basin. This is a pretty remote part of Cape Breton and exactly what we were looking for. The Little Basin, is actually quite large. The entrance is narrow, and unmarked but easy to follow on navionics. We had no problem getting in and anchored in 20 feet of water. We saw a deer on the way in, and completely surrounded by wildlife. We were also the only boat in the anchorage.

Happy to be at anchor, we settled in for the night, with plans to stay a second night, so able to just relax.