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Travels in and offshore Moments in fine paddling and camping Gail Ferris |
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Jon Cons and I took off from his home in On our way we stopped at
the From there we were to
drive up the coast of |
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From there we were to drive up the coast of The next day we were to
drive to the northern most tip of Jon told me that the ferry does 23 knots it also has hydro
capability to do turns. Wow I thought as I watched the |
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So as we were ensconced in the ferry the crossing of the
mouth of the saint Lawrence was not all that bad. Just out of curiosity in the bar on the
ferry we decided to experience a sample called “Screech” touted to be a horrible mixture
of anything distilled mixed together.
It turns out to be sold in liquor stores as a mix of rum, not of
anything distilled in the closet as might be. Whew I can tell you that “Screech” is some mix of hard
booze! I can tell you that this stuff
is not sold anywhere else than In preparation to know something about Newfoundland I
happened to have read about this concoction in A Whale for the Killing
by Farley Mowat where he describes people just pouring together what ever
booze they can find and that makes “Screech” which makes you sort of do that
when you drink it! |
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Once we landed on the other side, sure enough it was grey
and gloomy. All the houses are small
and painted all sorts of colors as if the town was an endless experiment in
testing paint colors. Parts of San Francisco neighbor hood houses are like this
but they use more integrated colors and pay more attention to trim and
highlights to accent the post Civil War era houses. We knew one thing, “We
ain’t staying here that’s for sure!”
This place is just as said to be in the guide book as a very dreary place. So we high tailed it up the road, but soon
enough it did not look so bad. I was concerned about an un
avoidable passage noted for high winds between some mountains that features
very strong winds that can send light high volume vehicles off the road. We made it through there without any
problem, it was summer. All along we were wondering what to do but things were
looking better now, should we drive on up the coast or should we look for a
park with camping available? Who reads
maps anyway? But signs are a different matter! Luckily Jon noticed a provincial park sign indicating
camping was available along the road just after we were leaving town. That could have not been better because
neither of us wanted to travel any farther.
We just wanted to stop, set up camp and relax now that we were
officially in The park was JT Cheeseman Provincial Park. We had gotten there at about 9 in the
evening here in Newfoundland it was still very light even though by our
standards the sun would be setting if we were still south in Maine. No one else was there but we did not think about it. We were up from Now we where in the The area was lush with basalt cliffs sheltering the area so
we went for a lovely walk along the bay edge.
The shallows were bright and filled with plenty of seaweeds indicating
how lush this area is. |
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What fun the bright sun so late at night? We planned in advance not to paddle on the
south coast because the weather was often really difficult stormy, windy, very
foggy and rainy. We had heard this and
read in advance about where the best weather would be and I can tell you it
is not in the The next day was pleasant we broke camp and drove up the
west coast of |
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On the northern On the map we decided the best place to overnight and
organize our equipment was at Roberts Arm.
We assembled our Klepper and tried it out in the lake behind the motel. All was fine the Klepper assembled
perfectly except that I was absolutely sure that this lake must be a
saltwater pond. No! it sure wasn’t,
wow was I shocked when Jon said to me look at the edges do you see any
seaweed or barnacles. I reached over the side at Jon’s beaconing and sampled the
water, wow it sure was not salt water!
To my amazement it did not have any seaweed or shellfish in it because
as Jon pointed out, it was fresh water.
Oh no was I in trouble, good thing we did not do what I thought was a
great idea. I thought all we had to do
was to disembark from behind the motel. I just figured that we had to be so close to the water that
the lake must be a tidal pond. Was I
ever surprised! We drove past the bottom of I suggested we look farther for an area where the shoreline
was more varied so we continued toward We happened to come across our first signed crossing
labeled Flat Rock Tickle. I looked out
at the varied friendly shoreline and we also noticed another sign at the
crossing stating that the property was guarded by RCMP. We thought to ourselves this sounds very
much to our needs. There were homes
and structures in good repair, new cars and a marine rail with a yacht on a
cradle on the rails. |
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To our relief at Flat Rock Tickle we found that there were
gracious people who were delighted with our kayaking project and would be
only too pleased to allow us to park our car for a couple weeks and launch
near a marine railroad. These people
were from Now you probably wonder why do they call places ---
tickle? Well actually it makes a lot
of sense when you are going from place to place by boat. If you are going through a narrow passage
what better descriptive term than “tickle” to let you know you are going
through a narrow area most likely bounded with rocks as well. |
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tickle means a small passage you can tickle the
bottom of your boat on |
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Below is our coast line
we were to look forward to wandering among for the next couple weeks in the
heat of summer. |
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tide is out and the water is flat as a pancake |
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On our first day we saw this sort of weather and we were
dressed for the occasion but glad that the wind was following us at 12 knots. It certainly was hot and bright on the
water, glad we had hats and sun glasses! I enjoyed the motion of the Klepper as the stern paddle in
following seas, it was like a rocking chair gliding
along. We were paddling the classic Klepper Aerius II with a blue
canvas deck and silver hull just a wonderful kayak. |
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This was our first moment of what it looks like on a hot
summer day. Note the edges of these
islands are just brown basalt which means that there are not that many places
to come in for a landing. Off these cliffs in 1989 fishing for cod was done with nets
run from the rocks diagonally into the water.
This is the only place in the world I know of where they run cod nets
this way. At first we just la di dah paddled under them as we thought “oh we can just
do this!” with complete impunity we hugged the shore passing under the net
lines. Then we thought about it, “What if we should get caught on
one of these lines?” so after that experiment we decided we better paddle
under those lines very carefully or go out and around them. It would be a nasty situation to get our
kayak caught under these taught lines.
We stayed clear of them from then on whenever we came across the cod
fish net lines. At this time Cod was still the main staple of the |
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In the photo below you can see that we are paddling with
Warner Furrer paddles I think they were 8.5 feet
long which is a good length for average paddler to use for paddling a double
Klepper. The Klepper is a wide boat. This particular paddle, the Unfortunately the shaft was
defectively manufactured and did have some roughness to it which constantly
raised blisters. Without the slightest
doubt from this experience I recommend never using a paddle with a rough
shaft because it will ruin your hands.
I can tell you from experience I wound up with every finger having
some sort of bandage on them. I wound
up with terrible blisters on each finger and I cannot tell you how many band
aids I used at a time but I had to cover all sorts of open blisters. Luckily Jon happened to
bring an extra paddle that had smaller surface area but a smooth shaft called
Little Dipper. |
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It was great fun to
watch a classic boat note no running numbers and no outboard just a tiller on
the stern. The motor was a one-lunger which chugged along chukka chukka
chuk. |
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We were amazed to see no identifying numbers on boats or on
lobster pots. I figure everybody knows
everybody so you can’t get too far if you steal somebody’s boat or rob their
lobster pots. I noticed that lobster
pots only have just only a piece of floating line with no sort of
marker. Something you never see in the
States. I figured that the ice can
gather on the buoy and when the ice goes out the pots goo too. With just a simple floating line but the
ice can be shed off the line easily. Lobsters are caught under strictly controlled fishery in
assigned areas within the proscribed season only. The season is very short because the
population is very limited. |
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a lobsterman checking his pots |
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What a delight it was to see these boats always in white,
very seaworthy with everyone going everywhere among the islands all summer
long. I enjoyed these sights where all
life comes from the water. Here these
boats really are seaworthy boats able to take waves at any moment! |
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look at the rounded hull and the stern |
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An enlargement to show you the wake sheering off the hull.
This is a well designed efficient hull. |
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look at the wake how it shears off the hull
because this hull has a hollow stern to detach of the wake forward of the
stern |
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One thing we found out while visiting was that nobody could
figure out why we or anybody would come to We kept quiet about our kayak plans. We got to see the first iceberg either of us had ever seen
in our lives. |
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hot weather calm waters |
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We investigated it very
closely as it was just sitting there, grounded out, melting
by the minute with rivulets of water flowing off in the hot sun. |
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I was absolutely
fascinated with the brilliant blue bands in the iceberg. They reflect blue light which is why they
are so blue. Icebergs are of compacted
snow. |
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if
this iceberg had split up or rolled over we would have been toast! |
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The endless horizon to
the south of trap rock type of basalt rock faces flanking the islands and
peninsulas. |
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These are dry cliffs on
the way east which later sported some waterfalls after a rainstorm. |
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some foggy paddling |
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We were on our way past Later on our return we encountered that fog that starts up
from an oily calm. |
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in the back near the cliffs is the whale spouting |
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We just happened to see a whale spouting along the
cliffs. To me at first I thought
somebody has a serious plumbing problem, what a leak! Then we realized that the spout was moving
and it could only be a whale. |
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Below in the photo is a view of our deck load just so you
can see we had our handy bowline and our sea drogue incase of extreme
conditions. The yellow box was for the camera and the net was the dip
net Jon brought specially to fill with rocks that would anchor the outhaul. |
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Rather than bring the kayak up on shore Jon had the great
idea of creating an outhaul from an article I think Audrey Sutherland wrote
for putting the kayak afloat out on an outhaul. John rigged this outhaul by bringing a fish
net and long line attached to the bow double the necessary length for the
outhaul rig. The trick for rigging an outhaul was to load the dip net
with rocks tie it to the outhaul line and put on the bow deck just at the tip
of the bow. Next he would push the
kayak off and just as the kayak gets far enough out he would jerk the outhaul
line just hard enough to cause the dip net to fall off. If the kayak is far enough out all was well
and if not he would reload the dip net and repeat the same. This saved us from having to completely
unload the kayak and carry it up over the traprock beach. There were very few sand beaches. |
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see
the outhaul works, just fine. |
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Calm evening with the
kayak on its outhaul. |
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why
drag the kayak up the beach if you can just leave it on an outhaul? |
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We paddled among inhabited islands some of them had temporary
houses built on wharves and this type of house is built to float. These houses are levered off the shoreline
in the fall and are positioned in the spring because these islands are not
owned as private property. All summer people travel back and forth in their motor
boats visiting as people do in In the fall everyone moves back to land. Various islands are being connected to land by new bridges. |
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Our tent served us well
and we got to experience a fierce thundershower in it and it remained
perfectly dry. |
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Jon had made sure to
bring a pot big enough to boil lobsters and shell fish in. On our way out heading
east we decided that we just could not resist and bought some lobsters. Wow were we lucky
because just as we were about to put ashore we encountered a lobsterman who
had some lobsters and was happy to sell a couple to us. The season is very short
in Naturally we had to
compare these lobsters to |
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