We Are Not Alone
Saturday morning calls for blueberry pancakes and moose watching: one comes from the thick forest and stands briefly at the shore. Harald later spots one swimming across the end of the bay and lumbering over the rocks, long enough for a photo.
Saturday is also cleaning day so I sweep and wash the floors, clean the head and hatches, removing the salt spray from yesterday’s sail. Harald cleans the stainless on the top deck and completes other small tasks.
The view around us calls me to attempt another watercolour. Our friend Barb has outfitted me with a starter kit which I opened in God’s Pocket for my first attempt. The forest is so thick, the trees are most difficult to recreate. I will have to ask her for some advice or just go with the impressionistic creation.
Supper is light (no exercise today) and so is the rain that starts with 20 knot wind gusts when we finish. Neither of these last so we can play Phase 10 in peace. I finish Lisa Moore’s “Alligator” and start reading Kevin Major’s “Found Far and Wide”. It is difficult to put it down but bed is calling.
Sunday I am up at 5:30 closing the hatches and turning off the anchor light. Rain has come again and the day unfolds with cloud but no wind. The sunrise has produced a beautiful red sky surrounding us.
We are both thrilled that Harald’s window caulking has worked and we have no plastic bags or buckets sitting in the cabin.
It won’t be a lovely day but we do not plan to go anywhere so after breakfast we read and I write in the blog. Harald measures the foresail to determine if our whisker pole will work with the larger sail. We chose to carry our “130” this year but it will need to be reefed (rolled in a bit) for the pole to work.
Ann sends a message through the InReach, telling us they are in Knights Island, just 12 miles from Lewisporte. It is very warm there, still. She shares the coordinates for two possible anchorages in Canada Bay which helps us with our decision for coming days.
We marvel in the company of at least one eagle and just as we are heading to bed I hear splashing near the boat. There is a curious seal swimming around the boat, so close we can see his eyes and bushy whiskers in the fading light. He appears to be checking out this “creature” of a boat, perhaps he has never seen before, standing still and proving no threat. He swims away and then returns. I am worried he might try to shimmy up on the dinghy, expecting it would probably sink under its weight. As we head to bed, it appears to have left us but is back in the morning, swimming near the narrows.
The plan was to leave on Monday morning, but the local forecast we finally got on the InReach shows 60% chance of heavy rain and very little wind. This is probably a better forecast for us as we are not off the coast and won’t be as we move north.
Seems we are tucked so deep into the interior, that we are unable to get the Coast Guard forecast anyway. We tried calling for two nights, as we had agreed with Rob from LBI, at 8:30 just to let him know we are ok. I had hoped to also get the forecast from him directly.
My little transistor radio brings us CBC if we are pointing the right direction and have the radio in exactly the right spot. We hear of the devastating floods in Nova Scotia, on the heels of wild fires and not a year since Hurricane Fiona struck nearby.
I sent the signal home yesterday, so family should know we have stayed put until the next message. That should be tomorrow as we will head north, along the shore, to Englee. In the meantime, we continue to read and play cards. A shampoo and cut brings me more pleasure than it probably should.
The now expected afternoon breeze builds to 20 knots on Monday and gusts continue until after supper, when Harald is able to get the dinghy up on the davits. We screen the companionway to keep the deer flies out. They have been relentless in the sun and heat. We are again glad to have the full enclosure, where we have spent most of our 3 1/2 days in this anchorage.
