Hunkered down for Bill

Little Burin, Newfoundland

August 23, 2009

The last 36 hours have felt like we've been in a neck and neck America's Cup Race. We've been tweaking sails, kicking the motor in for a course lift (OK that part wasn't American's cup racing), basically doing everything possible to get tucked in somewhere before Hurricane Bill hits. Of course he's changed his mind and instead of heading for the Avalon, he's headed for the Burin Peninsula, right where we're headed!

So we're looking for a perfect, snug hidey hole and hoping Bill's strength will diminish before he gets here. The fish plant at Little Burin seems to offer the right mix. We passed by the rusting hulk of 3 draggers at least 100 feet each and tied up to a huge wharf on the back side of the plant which should act as a wind shield. It's a little cove so there's not much room for waves to build up.

We got busy stripping everything we could off the boat: sails, kayak, jerry cans of water & fuel, it all got tucked up under the plant. Alun, single-handing aboard SV Sarah a 1966 fiberglass boat, came in and began to make his preparations. From St. John's, he'd been up to Labrador and was about at the end of his summer cruise. It was encouraging to have another cruiser to discuss tactics with and share some of the work.

These tires caused us a lot of concern. We started playing that "what if" game. "What if we're pinned against the dock with the gunwale under the tires, then the tide comes up and we're basically pinned under the tires with the water rising?" or "What if we're pinned against the tires and they snap our shrouds (those are the thin steel cables that hold up our mast)?" You know just little thoughts like that.

Our solution, haul these massive tires up onto the wharf. Not as simple as it sounds. We used the halyard tied around a tire with one of us guiding it and one raising it.

Two tires have become Andante's fenders so hopefully they'll ride up as we ride up. It's a very protected spot and we feel good about it as a place to ride out the storm.

The strategy that's evolved is to stay loosely tied to the dock with the stern closer in and the bow out at a 45 angle. Our Manson Supreme Anchor, our primary anchor, is going off the bow and our 2nd anchor, a Bruce, is going off amidships to keep us pulled away from the dock. Added to that the guys on the big fishing ship have loaned us a bunch of huge fenders. Andante looks a little like those science class experiments where you try to design cushioning around an egg and drop it from the 2nd story. If your egg doesn't break, you win.

Alun had a local friend that loaned him a car and we all went into Marystown for pizza.

Bill is set to hit here around midnight -2am. Sunday/Monday night. Which beg two questions:

Why do these things always hit in the middle of the night?

and

Couldn't the National Hurricane Center have come up with a better name than Bill?

Andante stripped down! The name on that big boat behind us . . .Katrina.

Dot, Dot, Dot, Dash, Dash, Dash

Cape Race

August 22, 2009

We’ve put a lot of miles under the keel since leaving St. John’s and the appearance of Hurricane Bill is adding a note of urgency. After consulting with local fisherman in Renews, we’ve decided to beat around the Avalon Peninisula’s Cape Race and head for the Burin Peninsula. Bill is predicted to hit the Avalon so being in Burin should put us on the “safe” side of the hurricane . . . well that's the plan!

If music is the weave of Newfoundland, storytelling is the warp and together they make for a rich culture. Back at the Lewisporte Yacht Club we’d been treated to a few colorful tales. As the Cape Race light slipped astern and the sky pinked up with daylight, the story involving Cape Race came to mind.

Lynn’s grandfather was the radioman at Cape Race’s wireless station. On the night of April 14, 1912 he was outside enjoying a smoke and his daughter, nicknamed Dot, was keeping an ear on the wireless.

Dot,dot,dot,dash,dash,dash,dot,dot,dot,dash,dash,dash,dot,dot,dot,dash,dash, . . .

. . . over and over again. It’s the morse signal SOS. Repeated over and over the symbol for "S" ( dot, dot, dot) and "O" (dash, dash, dash) was chosen because it was easy to remember and very repeatable. It’s the sound of a ship in distress.

On that dark, cold night it was the HMS Titanic sending out her distress and Cape Race was the only land station to receive it. Having grown up with morse code as a second language, Dot knew what it meant and ran to get her father. Word went out from Cape Race to the world that the great liner was sinking.

The story that it was a 12 year old girl that received Titanic’s SOS was kept under wraps. Lynn remembers her Uncle telling her, “Don’t you forget it was your Aunt Dot that heard that message. It was a very important thing that she did.”

Dot’s sister was nicknamed, you guessed it, Dash.

Kismet, Serendipity, fate, good old-fashioned luck!

August 18, 2009 St. John's, Newfoundland

Ever think about those little twists of fate and timing that make up a life? Standing in a packed club listening to some amazing music brought that home to me.

How far back to go . . . If I hadn’t picked the Washington, DC area to start out in I’d never have met my husband. If I hadn’t met Russ, I’m not sure I would’ve found sailing. And definitely not sure I would’ve found someone that wanted to sail North to cold places vs. South like everyone else. If we hadn’t done most sailing trips in the summer, when the kids could come, we wouldn’t have gone North and if we hadn’t gone North to Nova Scotia, we wouldn’t have gotten intrigued with Newfoundland. If we hadn’t sailed around Newfoundland, we wouldn’t have been in St. Anthony when the Bartlett Celebration was there. For that matter if Perry hadn’t decided to try for the North Pole and hired someone from Newfoundland to captain the ship that got them as far as possible toward that pole, then the Bartlett Celebration would not have existed. Feeling like the lady that swallowed a fly?

And if we hadn’t serendipitiously been tied up in St. Anthony when the Celebration came through, we might never have heard the beautiful music they played while setting up the exhibitions.

“Who’s that? And where can I get a CD?”

“It’s a new group from St. John’s, The Once. Stop in at O’Brien’s in St. John’s and get a copy.”

Which is how, after a delightful sail down from Bona Vista where our delightful crew left us, we found ourselves in “The Oldest Store on the Oldest Street, in the Oldest City, in North America – O’Brien’s.”

“Excuse me, do you have a copy of The Once?”

“No, I’m afraid we’re sold out.”

Cue the woeful expression on my face . . .

“But you can hear them tonight at their CD Launch party at The Ship.”

And that’s how we ended up standing in a jam-packed room listening to this awesome group.

Here they are at the performance at The Ship. We were standing to the left of the cameraman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bfkzKHeoBY

Check them out at:

www.theonce.ca

Yoga on the Rock

Ringing in the summer solstice with 108 Sun Salutations in the shelter of a fish plant wall in Port Aux Basques, practicing tree pose on a rocky cliff top overlooking the Labrador Sea, or flowing through a vinyasa practice on the public wharf in St. Anthony . . . it was all great but I was missing sharing my yoga practice with a group and missing teaching! So, with two willing yoginis on board we had some fun classes. I'll never forget the look on dock master's face on Twillingate when he walked in on us chanting "Om". We all cracked up, him included.

Where ever you are, grab a mat and soak up life!

I found my thrill on blueberry hill!

All of our hikes with Debbie & Patty took a really, really long time even though we didn't cover much distance. They weren't the ones slowing us down the blueberries were!

We started calling our hiking position the blueberry shuffle.

We ate them as we picked them. The crop that made it back to the boat became

Blueberry pancakes

A blueberry Tart

and blueberry muffins! Not to mention just munching on the cute little bundles of flavor and adding them to cereal and anything else that came to mind. Yum.

Threading the Needle

Fogo Island, Newfoundland August 10, 2009

“Rock! 10 feet to port,” came from the bow.

“20 feet. 15, 35,” came from down below.

“There’s a ledge coming out starboard side. Head to port a little. Careful,” came from me at the companionway

We’ve been sticking to our ever vigilant motto on this trip but 2 more sets of eyes and hands allow us a bit more margin. Combined with this area being more thoroughly charted and there just being more people around and we’re picking little slots to slip through. You know the kind, rocks to the left, rocks to the right. It’s breathtaking and qualifies as aerobic exercise when your nerves get your heart rate up that high!

Russ’ sisters, Patty and Debbie made the long drive up from the States. Up here they call the US East Coast, “the Boston States.” (I can imagine how my Southern family would take to that!) Everyone in Newfoundland has a story about the Marine Atlantic ferry, the big car ferry that connects Newfoundland to Nova Scotia. Due to a recent fire on one of the ships, the ferries were all running behind. Debbie and Patty ended up sleeping on the floor of the Atlantic Vision’s lounge.

In the above instance we were threading our way between Lower Head and the off lying rocks around Twillingate. Debbie was on the bow, Patty was on the depthfinder below and I was watching on the chartplotter with Russ at the helm.

We’re stopping at places we’ve been hearing about in songs and reading about in books for so long. First was Moreton’s Harbour where Russ and Debbie rowed ashore and waited out an intense downpour under a dockside awning. Their fellow awning mates told them there’d been a big wedding in town last night and everyone was hung over but we should all come ashore for coffee in the morning.

Next day it was onto Twillingate and that thrilling entrance, accompanied by some squid hounds. Great walking out to the cliffs Andante had sailed under on the way in, back through a small cemetery tucked into a little valley looking out over the sea and out to a huge cross. Some local boats suggested RJ’s restaurant and we splurged on a night out.

Andante threaded the needle between Twillingate and Burnt Island on the way to Fogo with all of us womanning a different station. Those rocks seem awfully close!

Fogo has been deemed one of the four corners of the Earth by the Flat Earth Society. A hike out to Brimstone Head meant we were actually standing on the corner!

They think the last Great Auk, a penguin like bird, was killed here. They didn’t know what it was so they saved the skin. It fed their family for 3 meals . . .

It’s crowded here!

Lewisporte Yacht Club

Lewisporte, NL

August 7, 2009

We shared a quiet anchorage with hundreds of moon jellyfish in Welsh Cove where it felt like we were the only people on Earth.

Then onto Boat Harbour, reported to be haunted by a Beothuk ghost, one of Newfoundland’s aboriginal people. The last tribal member died in 1829. It’s said that strange things happen to boats that spend time in this little cove with a few houses and stacks of lobster pots on the shore. Sure enough, our weird incident happened in the morning. Russ dropped the dinghy line thinking it was tied on at the end! A brief moment contemplating swimming for the dinghy and he took a big leap and managed to land in the dinghy versus the water. Someone’s laughing!

This is Notre Dame Bay, one of the crown jewels of Newfoundland cruising. There are enough coves and islands here to keep you exploring for many years. Our goal was the Lewisporte Yacht Club located at the foot of the Bay where we were rendezvousing with Russ’s sisters in a few days time.

We were amazed to see other recreational sailboats! 5 guys (not selling cheeseburgers!) took our lines. Turns out they were taking a boating class and were glad for the practice. That kind of hospitality marked our stay here.

Bonnie & Joe on Deep Powder, Vermonters that keep their boat here and cruise in the summers, gave me a lift to the grocery store and then we had an impromptu potluck with other sailors. Newfoundlanders Wayne & Elaine, Bruce and Lynn, Peter and Carolyn entertained us with boating stories and tales of Newfoundland. It’s the longest we’ve been in the company of others since we left home!

So, considering our home county has a population of 512,790 living in 588 square miles, (That’s 872 people per square mile.) Newfoundland’s population of just under 478,684 spread out over 69,214 square miles (6.9 people per square mile but that’s a little off since about 70% of the population live in St. John)it’s hard to believe this area feels crowded to us . . . but it does!

One is the Lonliest number . . .

One is the Loneliest Number

Round Harbour, Newfoundland

49° 55’N 55° 44’W

August 4, 2009

It’s easy to look back on the past with rose colored glasses and totally forget the backbreaking work it took just to survive. Charlie Foss reminded us of that as we sat in his kitchen sipping tea and telling stories. I asked him if he’d played around the cliffs as a young boy.

“Oh no,” he said, “You couldn’t wander away from the fish flakes in case it rained. We yong ‘uns would have to cover up the drying fish before they got ruined. When we weren’t doing that it was watching the sheep and pigs or any number of chores. My six year old sister worked like a 16 year old.”

Charlie went to the one room schoolhouse through 8^th grade but didn’t learn much. There was never time to do homework but when he missed spelling something right, the teacher would hit them with a ruler or stick. He wouldn’t cry and in the 2^nd grade the teacher hit him so hard it raised blood welts and he had the scar to prove it.

Kind of takes the rosy glasses off . . . but doesn’t blind us to the beauty of this spot today. Round Harbour is exactly that an almost perfect round bowl with houses built up all around. There are pictures of fish flakes, large flat structures used to dry fish, filling up every available space and all of it covered with drying cod. Today it’s a mix of colorful houses but most are empty and Charlie is the only full time resident. Yep, come winter he’s the only one here. So far the government keeps the road plowed so his mail can be delivered but as he put it, it’d be cheaper for them to pay him to move!

Nice hike out to the cliffs and we met a few more residents. There’s a beautiful Anglican Church and a nice place to stretch your legs. The anchorage is open to the swell and we were rocked to sleep at night.