Ten weeks ago we learned that Canada wished to charge the import duty on Shimshal as she has been in Canada for more than 2 years due to travel bans imposed from the start of the pandemic. Patient negotiation ensued and we were greatly assisted by CBSA Halifax and the owners of Gold River Marina. Today was the day our negotiations came to fruition and we jumped the last hurdle to get issued with our shiny new E29b - the essential permit that allows us to keep Shimshal in Canada until next summer without paying import duty.
With PCR’s done yesterday (negative) in Halifax we let go our dock lines on a flat-calm, foggy morning. The visibility was so bad we picked up a mooring and waited an hour so that we could identify the buoy at the entrance to the mooring field.
When we could see100 metres we felt our way out into the bay discovering only then that our autopilot was on the blink. The rudder feedback unit appears to be dead so when the pilot was engaged it swerved in increasingly violent oscillations.
Hand steering in fog requires a lot of concentration when in narrow channels and so it was a relief to reach open water and glorious sunshine. S/V Selkie was a couple of miles ahead of us with Robin and Jackie on their mission to get a new E29b too.
It was a 50 mile round trip to international waters and we were absurdly delighted to reach the red dashed line on the chart where we cut the motor, hoisted the sails, photographed the chart plotter and checked to make sure our AIS was transmitting to prove our position.
Shimshal sailed back beautifully at over 6 knots in light winds until we started the engine for the last lap to Lunenburg Yacht Club where a mooring and a warm welcome awaited. The call to CBSA Ottawa lasted 90 minutes (more than an hour before it was answered) and dropped off before concluding. But fortunately CBSA Halifax were ahead of the game and two lovely customs officers welcomed us to the dock and gave us all the paperwork we needed to reset our clock bringing 10 weeks of anguish to an end.
