Tuesday, July 29th, Facheux Bay

Life is interesting in the fjords.  There’s no cell phone, vhf or any other kind of communication with the outside world in these deep sided gorges.  So when we’re at sea, we try to pick up weather forecasts.  We set off this morning with expected winds of SE 15 knots.  We had SE all right, but they were up to 25 knots, and once again we were beating into pretty big seas.  We’re getting better at this though and are learning to reef earlier. 

We beat out of the fjord, and then, although hard on the wind were able to fetch our course.  We were still bouncing around a fair bit and Teresa discovered that cell phone coverage had appeared.  So off she went below to send out recent emails and retrieve new ones. 

Oh, did I mention it was foggy, with very heavy rain showers?  At each waypoint though, our course, relative to the wind was easier and faster.  And the winds diminished as we entered the fjord and we ended up motoring the last 5 miles.  So all in all, not a bad sail. 

The anchorage in Brent Cove, 47 41.87N, 056 20.34W, looks like it could be very nice if you could see more than ¼ mile.  Maybe tomorrow …

Ships Log: 4078.1, Todays Log: 19.8, Seasons Total: 490.1

Monday, July 28th – Little Cuiller Bay , first night at anchor this season.

We left McCallum headed for our first long fiord – North Bay off Bay d’Espoir, 47 51.72N 056 09.99W.  The locals pronounce Bay d’ Espoir “Bay Despair” which is ironic since the original French name means “Bay of Hope”.  And it’s beautiful sailing area – no despair needed!

The winds were very light initially, but for once we didn’t have far to go, so we simply sailed slowly – 2-3 knots.  Fiords funnel the winds so if you’re sailing up or down them you either have a dead run or it’s bang on the nose.  We had a very sedate run up the fiord, and winds gradually built up for the beat back.  We had up to 18 knots, on the nose, but with flat seas it was a very pleasant sail.  And the fiord was beautiful, but actually not as spectacular as we had been expecting.    We think that the Saguenay River spoiled us last year.

We looked into our chosen anchorage – Long Reach, 47 44.71N 056 05.18W, but the winds were funneling right into this cove, which is not what you want for an anchorage.  We found another, more sheltered, spot across the bay – Little Cuiller Bay, 47 43.06N 056 09.77W, where we dropped the hook.  

It was beautiful, and so far peaceful and quite. 

During the days sail, we noticed the water temperature had risen dramatically from 15C (61F) a couple of days ago to 20C (68F), so Ron took the first (non wetsuit) dip of the season. 

It was a beautiful, clear, starry and fresh night, so we left all the hatches open and went to sleep looking up at the stars though the forward windows.  At 6am we got up to close the hatches and wipe up the puddles that the showers had brought.  Hmmm, we must be getting a little too good at sleeping. 

Ships Log: 4058.3, Todays Log: 27.2, Seasons Total: 470.3

Sunday, July 27th. McCallum

We had a leisurely sail for the first half of the trip.  Winds of 8 – 10 knots, boat speed up to 5 knots although the seas were a little uncomfortable after yesterday’s winds.  Then the winds dropped and it became a little too leisurely.  So we motored the latter part of the trip. 

McCallum (47 37.86N 056 13.61W), a quintessential outport is located in a beautiful, sheltered bay.  (Sorry if I’m repeating myself - they all are!)  None of the outports we’ve visited so far have roads – they all have boardwalks and people either walk or use ATVs or snowmobiles in the winter.  The photos show a very typical outport scene. 

Houses are very close together, and people must get on very well, with small populations, living in such close proximity.  Having said that, we heard today that the port of McCallum has voted on whether to resettle and 71 were for resettlement with 21 against.  Despite that, everyone we meet is very friendly toward us and always asking us where we’re from, where we’re heading and are we enjoying Newfoundland.

Ships Log: 4031.1, Todays Log: 28.1, Seasons Total: 443.1

Saturday, July 26th. Harbour Breton

A beautiful, sunny day with light SW winds to start with.  Perhaps we should be sailing today, but there are some recommended walks around the peninsular.  We rode to the start of one of the walks which was beautiful.  It was about 5 miles round trip, and 80% was boardwalks and stairs.  We’ve notice that a lot in Newfoundland.  Many of the outports have boardwalks in lieu of roads, and they seem to extend the concept to walking trails.  And they’re very useful, without them much of the walk would be through very wet peat bogs. 

In the afternoon we did some maintenance work on the boat, a little more shopping and Ron cycled the propane tank up the hill to have it filled.  

Friday, July 25th. Harbour Breton

We set off for Harbour Breton with a forecast of fog patches and thunderstorms in the morning.  Shortly after setting off we were once again entertained by dolphins.  This schoolwas large, 8 – 10 and  had a youngster who was showing off by jumping right out of the water!

Then the fog set in.  Our route took us past 2 potentially pretty islands, “Brunette” and “Sagona”.  We passed within 1nm of Brunette, and within .3nm of Sagona and didn’t see either.  Well, everyone tells us that August is less foggy than July – let’s hope they’re right!  Just after Sagona, we passed the 4000nm mark since starting our adventures on Quinita. 

We entered the inlet for Harbour Breton, 47 28.80N 55 48.37W, and about ½ nm in, the fog lifted and we could actually see where we were.  The small dock was pretty full, but there appeared to be a spot almost big enough for us.  As we procrastinated, a lady on the dock said she’d have someone move the boat behind hers to make room for us.  We docked behind her boat and were welcomed by her partner and their crew.  As usual everyone was super friendly. 

We unpacked the bikes and took a short ride around the harbour.

Ships Log: 4003, Todays Log: 26.5, Seasons Total: 415

Thursday, July 24th.

The winds were howling all day long, but didn’t worry us too much since we spent most of the day doing laundry and bike and rudder repairs.  We had some sunshine in the afternoon, but may not get much tomorrow when we’re planning to move on to Harbour Breton. 

Not sure when we’ll next get internet access – stay tuned …

Wednesday, July 23rd.

We took a couple of walking tours in the morning.  Actually we did half the Historic tour (time constraints), and all of the Quidi Vidi tour.  Quidi Vidi is a beautiful, tiny harbour nestled below Signal Hill and walkable from the city.  We would have loved to have brought Quinita into the harbour, but alas, it would have taken far too long to sail here.  Oh did I mention there was a brewery there!

Our final tour in the St. John’s area was to Cape Spear, the eastern most point in North America. 

Then we had a long drive back to Fortune and Quinita.

Tuesday, July 22nd.

The hotel is right in downtown, and the only parking is on meters.  So the hotel offers a service whereby you leave your car’s details and location, and they pay the first 2 hours of the meter for you.  Nice.  Saves you from needing to set an alarm simply to feed a meter at 8am. 

We drove out to Bull Bay where we took a boat tour to Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.  We were primarily hoping to see Puffins, but had an unexpected bonus of a great Humpback Whale show on the way out to the island.  These animals were huge and appeared to enjoy showing off for us. At one point one as on his side waving his pectoral fin in the air – we’ve never seen anything like that before.  The guide said they are very social and love to show off for the boats.   We watched them for about 40 minutes before motoring around the “Puffin” island.  We saw literally thousands of Puffins, Murres, Kittiwakes and Seagulls.  The Puffins were fun to watch.  They’re not very good at flying and take forever, ‘running’ along the surface of the water trying to take off.  They are very good swimmers though and we saw some swimming underwater.  They were much more elegant there and looked as though they were flying (gracefully). 

Some stats:  there are 260,000 pairs of breeding Puffins in the Reserve, i.e. 520,000 birds.  The population of Newfoundland AND Labrador is 560,000 (½ million), 200,000 of which live in the city of St. John’s.  Newfoundland and Labrador is about the same size as England, Scotland and Wales, Population 65 million. 

A pleasant culinary surprise awaited us when we returned to the city – a excellent  Indian Restaurant!  It would have been rude not to have eaten there, so we did.  Teresa had a dish with a local twist, Chicken Tikka Labrador – yummy!

Sunday, July 20th.

We spent the morning trying to organize a rental car to visit the islands capital, St. Johns, which is also the most easterly point of North America.  We booked a car but were told that it might not be available since it was currently in St. Pierre and sometimes people miss the ferry back! 

So we set off on our bikes for Grand Banks, the next town – a little larger that Fortune.  Visited a museum and watched a video of the fishermen from a couple of decades ago.  It looked horrendous – fishing in gales in winter.  While fishing, the fishermen only had to put up with very hard work in horrible, cold, wet conditions.  Having filled the boat with fish the real fun began – they were steaming back to port as fast as they could which meant lots of spray over the deck, which in turn meant lots of ice buildup.  More than one boat was lost due to ice.  A tough life, just so that we can have fish ‘n chips!  There was a very nice memorial to local fishermen lost at sea. The statue depicts a wife looking out to sea  waiting for her husband.  The museum was in a lovely old house, which had a ‘widow’s walk’ on the roof.  As part of the tour we went up there, quite a view and quite a breeze.  It really gave you the feeling of the potential danger of being out to sea.

We called the car rental company at 3pm and confirmed that the current renters had indeed made the ferry so the car was available.  So tomorrow, St. Johns …

Saturday, July 19th.

The day dawned bright and sunny – yippee, perhaps the fog has finally abated.  We couldn’t leave without taking a photo of the manmade breakwater cinderblocks protecting one side of the harbour.

We noticed a problem with one of our sail battens, the other day when we were sailing in 30 knots.  So we investigated and discovered one of our battens was missing.  Well it was pretty windy and there was some sail thrashing going on at times.  We set off anyway and the sail didn’t set too badly.  We had a pleasant sail in light tailwinds between 8 and 12 knots with boat speeds of between 3 and 5 knots.  (Perhaps unintuitively, sailing dead downwind does not produce best boat speeds).  We arrived at Fortune Harbour, 47 04.28N 055 49.87W, and Ron had a little difficulty backing onto the dock in a crosswind.  In the excitement, Teresa lost her (very expensive) glasses at the end of the dock.  We eventually managed to dock, clear customs and then Ron went for the first swim of the season (with wetsuit). Luckily we were able to recover the glasses.  The weather was still good, so we aired the boat out and dined onboard.

Ships Log: 3976.5, Todays Log: 24.1, Seasons Total: 388.5

Friday, July 18th. – Langlade

The 2 weather forecasts we had this morning were conflicting, so we chose the one that said “fog clearing and sunshine” and set off on our bikes for Langlade (aka Petit Miquelon) 18 miles away on the south of the island.  We had damp, foggy conditions all morning, but a very nice road surface … for the 1^st 10 miles, and then it turned into a pretty rough dirt road.  We persevered to Langlade however and road around the village – really just a collection of houses, a church and no restaurant or café.  While we were there, the sun showed itself and we actually had blue skies for a while. 

Miquelon is known for its wild horses – descendants from many shipwrecked horses over the centuries, and we saw several.  Miquelon is also known for its seal population, so on the way back, we took a 2 mile hiking detour to the seal observatory.  Unfortunately, the fog had returned, and it wasn’t seal basking weather so all we saw were a few seals in the water, and too far away for photos.  We returned to the boat, tired and dusty (from the dirt road) and cleaned up on the boat before going to one of the 3 restaurants in town.  We were pleased to find it was a gourmet French restaurant, with very friendly wait staff and we had an outstanding meal. 

Thursday, July 17th sailing to windward in 30 knots.

It started out pretty much like yesterday but with lighter winds.  And the am forecast didn’t mention 25 knot winds for the first time in a while, so, at midday, we decided to set off for the other French island – Miquelon, 47 05.87N 056 22.25W. 

We had a great sail for the most part – broad reaching/running in winds up to 20 knots with boat speed between 6 and 8.5 knots.  Then we turned the corner to enter Miquelon bay where we expected the winds to abate since we were in the lee of the land.  Not so – we were now sailing 7 nm to windward in winds of 25 – 30 knots with gusts to 34.  Add to that a boat speed of up to 8 knots and we had 36 knots over the deck!  Quinita saw us through however.  We’ll try to make that kind of sailing the exception rather than the rule. 

We stuck our nose into the small manmade harbour at Miquelon and found a spot against a wall to tie up for the night. 

After a quick walk to town, we returned to the boat and Teresa harvested the lettuce she has been growing for the past 3 weeks.  With Scallops, taters and squash it was delicious!

Ships Log: 3952.4, Todays Log: 27.2, Seasons Total: 364.4

Wednesday, July 16th.

Foggy, damp, windy and cold.  We stayed put for the day, awaiting better weather.  Caught up on internet stuff and laundry.  French washing machines take much longer than those in the US, so Teresa was busy most of the day …

Tuesday, July 15th.

The town is open for business.  We walked around, visited a patisserie for breakfast and wandered around some more. Shopped for some real French cheeses, sausage, pate, bread etc. and then ate a significant portion of it for lunch!  Scrummy.  The prices here are quite high since, as in France, the Euro is used.  The afternoon was foggy (surprise, surprise), cold and windy.  Oh well, another 15 days and it will be August when, we’re told, they turn the sun on in these parts. 


Despite the fog, we were entertained by Hobie Cat racing, during which several capsized, (brrr, thank goodness for sailing dry suits).

In the afternoon we cycled to the top part of town, then hiked to the top of the hill where we had a nice view of a foggy island. 

St. Pierre is interesting.  French in lots of ways, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, very different from France.  Well it is several  thousand miles away with a very different climate.  We got the impression yesterday though that the inhabitants are very proud to be French. 

Monday, July 14th – Bastille Day

By chance (or was it), we arrived just in time for the French national holiday – Bastille Day.  Almost everything in the town was closed, except for the stalls in the town square where everyone gathered for the celebrations.  We joined in and had an enjoyable time.  There were lots of families and many games   for the children.  We were impressed by the educational value of the kids games and the kids enthusiasm in playing them.

In the evening, we went to a nice restaurant and were sadly disappointed.  The food was good but the service was atrocious.   It started when we arrived at 7:30 and they seated us outside (on a very cold evening).  We explained that we had a reservation and they said if we could finish by 8:30, we could be seated inside.  Not wanting to be rushed, we opted to eat outside.  The service was so slow, that we didn’t finish our meal until 9:45, most of the time being spent waiting for the waiter. The real surprise was when, after one glass of white wine and waiting 30 minutes for another to be delivered we were told that they had run out of white wine.

We watched a lovely firework display from Quinita – best seats in the town!

Sunday, July 13th – la France!

Another light winds day, so we motored to St. Pierre, 46 46.61N 056 10.48W.  St. Pierre and Miquelon are 2 islands that are part of France.  On the way, we had another great display of dolphin skills.  We watched them (6 – 8 dolphins again) for a long while.  It’s difficult for us amateurs to capture them breaching, but we think we got some good shots of them swimming under the water.  When they do break the surface, it’s usually just their fins.  After watching them for a long while, they all dived and showed us their tails.  Then they were gone.  It was just as if the tail display was a goodbye – amazing. 

We entered the harbour of St Pierre where there is a small marina filled with sailboats that had just raced from Halifax, about 350nm away.  Several boats were rafted together since there was not sufficient dock space and we rafted to one of the racers.  We cleared French customs and raised the French courtesy flag.  

We were now officially in France!

Ships Log: 3925.2, Todays Log: 55.6, Seasons Total: 337.2

Saturday, July 12th – Outport François

The day dawned bright with some mist, but pretty soon the mist burnt off and we had a beautiful sunny and warm day.  We set off for François, 47 34.70N 056 44.68W with very light winds from the W.  Well at least the direction was good!  We motored for ½ the trip, then the winds freshened enough to sail the rest so all in all a pleasant trip.  The highlight was the dolphins that came to play with Quinita.  There were several, perhaps 6-8 dolphins showing of their skills at the bow of our boat.  We were travelling at 5.5 knots and they seemed to have no difficulty keeping up – not bad considering they were swimming.  And they are beautiful animals – graceful, powerful and seemingly friendly. 

François is an outport – a small village at the end of a fiord, with no roads in or out.  The only access is by boat so it’s pretty much like living on a small island.  The village of François is beautiful.  People are, as we now expect, very friendly and keen to chat.  Many residents have lived there all their lives, and have been very happy with their way of life.  There are no roads or cars in the village, but they have boardwalks and some concrete paths.  These days transport is by 4 wheeler in the snowless months and snowmobile in the winter.  The guy we were speaking with said that, in his youth, there was no mechanical transport, (but it doesn’t take long to walk the entire village). 

There are several outports on this coast, and we hope to visit others on our return to Port aux Basque.  These days they are somewhat sad.  Fishing has been their main industry for years, but now they are regulated from Canada’s Federal government in Ottawa.  We’ve heard the same story several times now – the government imposes a ‘one size fits all’ fishing regulation aimed at not depleting the stocks, but in this area, the fish are plentiful and regulations don’t take that into account.  One guy told us he could catch his entire year’s quota of Halibut in one day!   So without fishing, there are no jobs, and the young people are all leaving.  In François, there are 10 kids in school with ages ranging from 5 to 18!  And no more children are expected to be born.  So the town will die out.  Each outport needs a critical mass, to survive, and the government provides assistance for people to re-locate.  The towns vote on whether they want to re-locate or not, so if you’re in a minority and the majority votes to leave – bad luck.  I guess it’s toughest on the older residents who’ve lived there all their lives and expected to die there.  Several outports have already met this end.

Ships Log: 3869.6, Todays Log: 30.1, Seasons Total: 281.6

Friday, July 11th.

Slightly less fog this morning, so we could see a little of where we were on the way out.  We’ve figured out how the Canadian forecasts work:  SW 15 20knts means E 10, S 15-20knts means E 10, Variable 10-15 means E 10.  Today we had E 10, but for once were sailing SE to the Ramea islands, 47 31.31N 057 23.23W, and so were able to actually turn the engines off and SAIL.  Yippee.  We had a pleasant beat to the islands and docked around 2pm, where we met Joe from Port aux Basque.  He has a powerboat and did the trip from Port a Basque in one go. 

When we arrived we were excited to take a dinghy ride to Puffin Island to do some Puffin watching.  Ron launched the dinghy and took it for a test run since this was the first time we’d used it this year.  We had lunch and then the fog closed in so thickly that we could not see Puffin Island (or anything else) anymore.  And the dinghy doesn’t have radar, so we aborted that plan and went for a bike ride instead.  We hiked to the top of a steep hill and saw a wonderful view of fog L.  The bike ride was interesting – lots of roads on this small island.  One of them turned into a dirt road, then a board walk (perhaps ½ - 1 mile long), then back to a road again. 

The water is very clear here and we saw several starfish on the seabed.

We dined at the restaurant, where we negotiated they would serve us dinner as long as we were prepared to eat at 6pm.  We did, and the fresh cod was good. 

Ships Log: 3839.5, Todays Log: 14.8, Seasons Total: 251.5

Thursday, July 10th.

We left Rose Blanche the same way we entered – in thick fog and with light headwinds motored again all the way to Burgeo, 47 36.77N 057 36.47W.  We had AIS, Radar and eyeballs and saw nothing but fog all day on any of these devices.   And the coast here is, apparently, so beautiful.  Well we’ll just have to take an extra look on the way back.  We entered the harbour on GPS and Radar, without which we’d have had no chance of getting in safely, and docked in the travellift bay. 

A couple of Brits who had been living in Newfoundland since the 70’s came over, introduced themselves and offered their car.  We accepted and used their car to fill our gas tanks using our spare cans.  We spent a very peaceful night. 

Ships Log: 3824.7, Todays Log: 49.9, Seasons Total: 236.7

Tuesday July 8th, Wednesday July 9th

We set off for Couture Bay, 45 nm distant with forecasted southerly winds which would have been perfect sailing winds.  As it turned out, the winds were from the East which was the direction we were going in – not so perfect.  And the waves were still pretty big after the recent storms, so Quinita was banged about quite a bit.  After a few hours of beating into this mess, waiting for the winds to come round to the south we decided to head for one of our ‘emergency’ ports instead.  We entered the harbor of Rose Blanche, 47 36.59N 058 41.62W, at about 3pm after sailing a distance of 33 miles to make 19 miles to windward.  That’s sailing! 

Ships Log: 3774.8, Todays Log: 32.9, Seasons Total: 186.8

We are the only boat here that is not a local boat. We went on a hike from this village into the next (even smaller than this village) – Harbour le Cou. What a lovely trail it was! We decided to hang out here till tomorrow. There’s a Tea Room overlooking the harbour where we get our wifi connection and although the opening hours are 11 – 4 the owner said don’t pay any attention to that, if the lights are on, come on in. We said disappointedly, “oh you aren’t open for dinner” and she said “I can do dinner for you”. So we arranged to dine there tomorrow (Wed) night. 

Wednesday dawned cold, wet and foggy.  Ron had a few maintenance jobs to do on the boat and Teresa went for a walk to the local ‘Groceteria’ but it was closed for lunch.  (They’re open 9am – 9pm but closed for lunch and supper).  On the way back, the road had been dug up so not even pedestrians could get through, and Teresa had her walk extended by a mile or so. 

Ron hiked to the top of a hill to get cell phone coverage where he was able to call Raymarine for tech support of our chartplotter. 

In the afternoon, we attempted to dry our wet clothes from yesterday, but were unsuccessful.  Forecast is for fog and rain for the next few days.  Oh well – it’s still a beautiful area. 

We dined at “Madolyns Studio” in the evening.  It was very nice and Lyn was a very interesting person.  The name came from comments Lyn’s friends made when she announced she was opening a B&B and Tea Room at the far end of the only road east of Port aux Basque, at the age of 73 – Mad Old Lyn!

Saturday 5th, Sunday 6th, Monday 7th July. Storm bound

By 1pm, the winds were blowing strongly across the harbor, but Quinita is pretty well sheltered.  When the ferry goes past however, it sends quite a swell which rolls the boats around a bit.  Forecasted winds are from the SE (blowing us onto the wall), becoming W later, which will blow us off the wall and should be more comfortable. 

We had a coffee at the local hotel, and caught up on internet stuff – bills, blogs and (Teresa) sifting through the hundreds of iceberg photos…  We saw Joe in the hotel and he joined us with his computer.  We had appetizers for lunch and stayed all afternoon with the occasional check on the boats.  It was blowing hard and rainy.  We got caught up on blogging, and other internet stuff and helped Joe download some updates to his Chartplotter, (which took a while since the internet connection was not lightning fast). 

Suddenly it was dinner time, so we did!  Ron had Cod Tongues and Moose Stew.  Yum yum. 

After dinner the rain had eased and we (Ron & Teresa) went for a walk around town before returning to Quinita.  We were being blown off the wall and so had a comfortable nights sleep.

On Sunday, it was still blowing hard when we woke, but we were still pretty comfortable.  It was raining again and cold.  In the afternoon we took a scenic drive to the Rose Blanche lighthouse.  The drive was beautiful and the lighthouse was very interesting.  It had fallen into disrepair and recently been restored.  They made a very nice job of it.  The wind was howling at the lighthouse, almost blowing us over, which made us realize what a nice snug harbor we had for Quinita.  We had another quiet night, despite the wind.

By Monday morning the wind was starting to ease.  The forecast was indicating that we might be able to continue our travels tomorrow.  We’re hoping so.  There’s not really much to do here at Port aux Basque.  In the afternoon we went for a drive with Joe and found some very interesting dirt roads.  After driving through huge potholes at 5 mph for about 45 minutes, the main road re-appeared, but it was touch and go whether a road car would be able to get across the last big dip in the road.  We unloaded passengers to save weight, and cautiously crossed the last hurdle. 

Friday 4th July.

We had been monitoring Hurricane Arthur for the past few days.  It wasn’t expected to reach Newfoundland, but its effects would probably be felt in the next couple of days.  So we cut our trip short, and returned to the boat.  On the way we popped in at Gros Morne, a huge national park.  We didn’t have time to do the park justice, but we did manage to hike to the start of the boat tour into the inland fiords. 

We got back to the boat at 9:30pm after a long day mostly driving.  It was still light and so were the winds, so we decided to move the boat to a better location before the predicated strong winds arrived tomorrow.  We tucked ourselves into what we hoped would be a relatively sheltered spot against the harbor wall.  Two other yachts had arrived since we left 3 days ago – one from Germany and one from Maine, heading for the North West Passage.  So in the past couple of weeks, we have met one boat on the way and another planning a trip to this tough sailing area.  Good luck and fair winds to both of them!

Thursday 3rd July- Icebergs off the Starboard Bow!

Fortunately it wasn’t the bow of our boat, which is tied up 390m south of here.  We took a tour of the icebergs with Cecil http://icebergtours.ca, and it was fantastic.   He has been giving tours of the icebergs for 30 years and is still so passionate about them, and of course very knowledgeable.  As you probably know, icebergs are very dangerous, since 90% of them are below water and their centre of gravity changes as they melt which can cause them to suddenly roll without warning.  Our skipper pointed out icebergs that had recently rolled – he could tell from the texture of the ice whether the exposed part had been underwater recently but I forget the details.  He was still cautious of course about going too close but we did get some amazing views of them. 

Teresa must have put a really big roll of film in the camera, ‘cause she took ~300 photos which she has pruned down to 136.  It was extremely difficult but she’s chosen a few to include here – enjoy! Note that one of the photos is an eagle nesting in the mountains.  The photo was taken from the tour boat. What an amazing area!

In the afternoon we went for a short and very hilly bike round around North and South Twillingate Islands.  The islands are very pretty and hilly and the weather was unbelievably warm – 33C, 92F.  We took a hike up to Long Point lighthouse and just missed seeing an iceberg calve – when a large chunk breaks away and forms a smaller one.  In fact we heard the crack and by the time we turned around, just saw the remains of the splash. 

In the evening we went for a ‘Theatre Dinner’.  This took place in a community centre and was attended by a mixture of locals and tourists.  We had dinner, then the wait staff took up guitars, accordions and various props to entertain us with music and sketches.  The jokes were intentionally corny, but the whole experience was enjoyable.  It took me (Ron) back to the middle 1960’s when my Boy Scout troop performed “Gang Shows”, attended mostly by friends and family, to raise money for the troop.

Wednesday 2nd July.

We set off north in the car bound for Twillingate, a beautiful fishing town on islands off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.    It was a beautiful drive, although rather long – 620Km, 390m.  When we got to Twillingate it was even beautifuller and we were treated  to the site of several big icebergs.  Yes, that is a big iceberg behind those buildings in the second photo.   Our B&B was very nice – a small room, but what the heck, we’re used to living in a small space!  We went for a short bike ride, saw more icebergs and then had dinner on the outside deck at a local fish restaurant. The Snow Crabs were delicious.   We never dreamed that we’d be eating outside in shorts, t-shirts and sandals at 9pm watching the sunset and looking at icebergs.  What an amazing contrast.