Sunshine & Crosses

Chambers Cove, Newfoundland

August 26, 2009

I gazed through binoculars at the 300’ cliffs of Chambers Cove, sunlight glinting off the cross at the cliff’s edge. Giant windmill blades moved lazily in the summer breeze. It’s a far different scene than the early morning of February 18, 1942. With the cliffs obscured by blinding sleet, the U.S. Navy destroyer Truxtun smashed onto the rocks. Farther down the coast at Lawn Point the supply ship USS Pollux, traveling in convoy, came to grief. The lead ship, USS Wilkes hit the rocks but was able to back off.

Then the nightmare really began. The men could see the cliffs, almost touch them. But frigid water, roiling currents and a growing mass of oil slickened debris filled Chambers cove. The water temperature was 30 degrees Fahrenheit. After several harrowing attempts, a small group made it ashore. From there one sailor, blackened by oil, clawed his way up the cliff face and began to follow a barbed wire fence, hoping it would lead to a settlement.

Eventually he came to the local mine and told his tale. The men went to the clifftops and looked down at the scene. By this time, men had begun to jump into the water only to be smashed into the cliffs, carried out to sea, drowned under debris or frozen into immobility. A few made it ashore.

The men from the local community of Lawn began to haul the sailors up, one at a time. Literally dragging them up the cliff. A small fire was built and the growing number of survivors tried to stay alive.

After realizing another ship was in distress, rescuers from the small community of St. Lawrence made their way to Chambers Cove. The men were taken into homes in the local communities and nursed throughout the night by the women. First order of business was to scrub the oil from them. One woman kept scrubbing and was muttering that she couldn’t seem to get the black off. The man came to enough to mumble, “Ma’am, I’m black. It won’t come off.” That man was Lanier Phillips a cook. Later he said the way he was treated by the Newfoundlanders changed his outlook on life. “I wish the world could go to St. Lawrence and take a lesson on love and humanity.” This American Life did an episode about the tragedy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJkbkBbTaYI&feature=related

In all 203 perished and 168 survived.

It’s a gripping story and “Standing into Danger" by Cassie Brown tells it well. Over the years, survivors came back to visit their rescuers and the U.S. Navy donated a hospital in appreciation. The local economy was mining and a lot of the rescuers suffered from black lung. Now the mines have shut down and the communities are scraping by.

Whew!

Little Burin, Newfoundland

August 25, 2009

Bill did indeed come a knockin'. We rocked around a bit. The wind howled in the rigging. But our anchors held fast and we even managed to sleep. It was a good drill in prepping the boat and us. Hope we don't have to do it again for a while!

And so began the task of putting it all back together, including dumping the tires back over the side - a much more enjoyable task than putting them up there in the first place! A fisherman came by later and said they were going to be tearing that wharf down next year and we could've just cut the line on the tires and dumped them in the harbor.

And almost ready to go again . . .

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 . . .