Newfoundland

[Steve Laume]

Well after many attempts and much confusion I have found my way back on board the message board.

This has been my most ambitious trip by far. I left Noank, Ct and sailed outside of Nantucket, directly to Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Sable is about 90 miles off the mainland coast. It is aprox. 20 miles long and less than a mile wide at it's widest. It is all sand dunes and grasses; no trees or shrubs. It is known for it's wild horses and I saw over 40 of them in my time there. I also saw thousands of Grey Seals. I was able to cruise along the coast in 20 to 25' of water 150 to 200 yards off shore in light SW winds, then anchor there for the night. Seals kept me company as they would come up along the side of the cockpit and I would know to look over at them when I would hear them breathing. You could also watch them swim under the boat. By spending the night there, it allowed me to get a morning start and know that I would arrive in Newfoundland in the daylight a couple of days later.

My port of entry was St. Lawrence, NFLD. The folks there exceeded their reputation for being friendly. They gave me rides, cod fillets, took me to get water from the filtration station, invited me to dinner and were just generally nice to me. I spent a couple of days there to explore and take a bit of a breather from my offshore passage but it was great to have made an aprox. 950NM trip in 8 days. Raven was flying all the way with the exception of 9 hours of motoring the day before Sable. Once I left St Lawrence I went around the Bruin Peninsula to Brunette Island. There was a very nice anchorage there but both paper and electronic charts had no soundings for the entire cove. They just never got around to it I suppose. There were huge snowshoe hares all over the place and I was lucky to see four caribou. One of them walked past on the beach 150 yards behind Raven at my anchorage.

From there I went to Northeast Arm which is the first of many, mainland, fjords I got to explore. This one was 15 miles long but most were about five. There are water falls in all of the fjords but one day it rained and there were hundreds of them in a five mile ride up to my anchorage that day. These are not 10 or 15' either. They are best measured in hundreds of feet as are the cliffs that emerge right out of the water to heights of over 1000'.

Next was little bay which was my most challenging anchorage where I eventually gave up on setting an anchor. Had I put out enough scope to feel comfortable in 35' of water I would have swung into the rocky shore. This was the only place I had to resort to rowing lines ashore and tying up to trees at the bow and stern at a little bend in the cove. It was perfectly quiet in there but still a bit spooky to be less than 2 boat lengths off the rocks at best.

Hare Bay was next and I did my most ambitious hike there. The only way to gain access to the high lands through the cliffs and undergrowth was to climb up the brooks. Much of it was boulder hopping but some of it was mild technical climbing that would have been a nasty fall into cold water if not very careful. I wound up way back in the highlands with nothing but tundra and open space to gaze upon. It was a very long hike that day.

I had to go in to see Devil Bay. I didn't stay there but it has the most spectacular 1000' cliff face you could find any where in the world and there was no one there climbing it.

Francois was the fist town I came to. It had an excellent harbor with a nice floating dock but not much flat land for homes. They are packed in tight and have a system of board walks running through them to accommodate ATVs. There was a small store, a PO, school, a church and not much else. There were 10 kids in the school and 6 of them were in grades 10 thru 12. The other 4 were in 6th grade or higher. You could feel the town dying around you as there was no future there for the young people and mostly just older folks who were hanging on.

La Hune Bay was very pretty and promised a nice easy anchorage after a day of 30 knot winds and higher gusts. I think my dinghy flipped over at least 6 times while making the run up there. Once inside the fjords there are no waves and only sporadic wind gusts. I made it up to the anchorage that was supposed to have a nice big shelf of 16' water where A brook entered the bay. I was watching the plotter and then the depth sounder went to single digits. I looked up to see a huge sand bar where there was supposed to be 16'. It was only about 4' deep and I turned away just in time to keep Raven from touching. There must have been a big slide that washed sand down the brook and filled the whole shelf. It was nice clean sand and mostly dried out at low tide. I had to anchor on the edge of the shallows that night and row out another anchor to keep me from swinging in. I had a nice hike the next day and saw a huge black bear.

Ramea Island was next and I had to come in after dark as I hiked longer than I should have in the morning and faced some pretty serious head winds. It is a very well marked harbour with lighted buoys and space at a floating dock. This seems to be a thriving town as it has regular car ferry service to Bergeo on the mainland and that is where the road starts back up again. I was surprised that so many people had cars on an island with only 5 miles of road. The fact is, it only cost $8.00 to bring your car over. $6.00 for seniors. Again, lots of extremely nice people who seemed to want to give you stuff just because they are Canadians. The harbor master caught up with me and said he had to charge me $10.00 for dockage but then we got to talking and he gave me 4 bags of ice they happened to have left in the freezer at the firehouse from some earlier event.

Bergeo was my last stop in NFLD. The harbor was hard to find and you had to weave your way in between rocks to get there but it was as snug as you could even hope for once inside. Bergeo is a nice town but I didn't explore too far as I had killed my knees on the earlier hikes.

From Bergeo it was a couple of days over to Lowisburg, NS. A long fast day to Louse Harbour. Then Isaacs Harbour. A rough day to Beaver Harbour. Owls Head Bay. Then Halifax and a major cultural shock. People everywhere, lights sirens and it all seemed intimidating enough that I just stayed on Raven the first night and looked on like I was watching a movie. I anchored way back up in the Northwest Arm. I could have stayed at a dock at the Armdale yacht club but I would rather spend my money on dinner and beer. I didn't really need anything at a dock. I got to spend Labor Day weekend downtown and it was great fun. What a beautiful, happy city. I left after a few days and the fog came down hard just as I was heading out of the harbour. to make matters worse they were conducting some short of naval operations with a French, nuke sub and some kind of Canadian war ship that I got to see before the fog closed in. I thought for sure that I was going to be boarded when three guys dress all in black, came over in a fast and rather sinister looking inflatable. They asked me if I could please stay as far to the right as possible because they were conducting naval ops. They ASKED and they didn't even have any guns. That is not how it would have gone in the US. I hugged the rocks like a barnacle on the way outta there.

It was incredibly foggy, there was no wind and I was rolling like crazy so bailed out and went into Sambro Harbour for the night. Then on to Lunenburg the next day. Lunenburg is a major tourist town and I had great fun talking to some boat builders and going out to dinner as well as making a trip to the library and filling a couple of fuel jugs to top of my tank in preparation for my jump offshore and home.

I had planned to spend 4 days offshore and sail straight back to Noank. I had some beautiful sailing and some of the worst I ever experienced. I wound up getting pushed into a corner of sorts by the SW wind. I would have had a very difficult beat directly into 20 to 25 knot winds to get around Nantucket so I dove into Pollack Rip and then found myself wondering what I would do from there. Sleep deprivation is a real thing and evidently has some effect on your decision making. It was already pretty late at night and that place is a mine field of shoals. I would have had to stay awake and alert until dawn to keep going so I headed over to Nantucked and anchored outside of the harbor at 3AM for a rolly night's sleep. Next day was Cutty Hunk, then Block Island and home.

I was gone for 42 days, overall and probably did about 2500 NM. Raven did a wonderful job. I had to tighten the stuffing box I had just repacked, lube some blocks, to stop the squeaking and one set of winch paws I didn't get time to regrease before leaving. The depth sounder alarm was going off at odd times and I finally fixed that with a pair of snips for a good night's sleep. I did T bone a decent sized log on the way up but hit nothing else, floating or fixed. I saw eagles and ravens every day in NFDL, Thousands of seals and hundreds of dolphins. Caught a few bottom fish, dug some clams and ate more blue berries than is probably good for you. Broke nothing and had no accidents or injuries. I have a great deal of confidence in and a greater appreciation for Raven and am pretty proud of the fact that I handled her well. There was a good bit of potential for something to go very badly and bad luck can always come into play but this trip came off very well indeed.

I had a blast and now have some more memories to carry me into older age, Steve.

[Jim Walsh]

Thanks for sharing your adventure, Steve. Glad everything went well.

[Doug Jesseman]

Thank you Steve, you where on my mind, wondering how things were going. Thanks for the report. Wish I was doing the same adventure. Big difference in wishing and actually doing.

[Neil Gordon]

Thanks for sharing the adventure!

>> I thought for sure that I was going to be boarded when three guys dress all in black, came over in a fast and rather sinister looking inflatable. They asked me if I could please stay as far to the right as possible because they were conducting naval ops. They ASKED and they didn't even have any guns. That is not how it would have gone in the US. <<

Leaving Menemsha (on Martha's Vineyard) last summer, LIQUIDITY was closed by the Coast Guard... crew in full body armor and a mounted machine gun on the bow.

Totally polite, they pulled within hailing/talking distance, and offered a rather friendly "Good morning," followed by a request to "please stay at least 1000 yards off shore."

As it goes when the President is vacationing there.

[Tom Keevil]

Steve, thanks for the report. Sounds like a first rate adventure. You were so close to St Pierre and Miquelon, wonder why you didn't stop there?

[Steve Laume]

I sailed right by the French islands twice. That would have been my first or second port of call had I chosen to stop. At that point I was looking for a wilderness experience and also didn't want to have to deal with going in and out of customs.

Maybe I should have stopped and probably would have if it had been latter in my trip. At that point I was happier to anchor in a spot with caribou, eagles and seals than shops and night life.

Maybe next time. Steve.