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Sat 9 Aug, 2003 01:39 pm
Next Thrusday, we put off from Eastport and Lubec and are going to ply the uncharted waters of the Atlantic. We will go to Mahone Bay in Nova Scotia, then to the Sable Islands (we are accompanying a school sedimentology survey and were carrying some equipment ) Then we go to Glace Bay where we will tie up for a few days and visit some friends then we steam across the Cabot Strait into st George Bay (Newfoundland). There Im going to do some geology work for a few days. We then cross the Gulf od St Lawrence and pull in to Charlottetowne PEI then across to Cape Tormentine where we get the boat loaded on a truck bed to travel the 25 miles to the bay of Chignecto and into Fundy and home to Estport. we will pobably ma ke 5 more stops for fuel considering the range, and we will stop at St Johns New Brunswick. This will take about 3 weeks and we are all anticipating an uneventful trip but out in the atlantic , one has to be prepared and my new chart plotter on the GPS and radar will keep us close to course (at least by 50 feet or better) The days of sextants and clock based longitude are, thank goodness , in the past. We do have instruments , should all the electronics crap out. We want to see the whales and wildlife and some of the geology. In the spring Im teaching a coarse on the Alleghany and Avalon orogenies so, Im in the middle of the field places.
My son is going back to PA cause hes gotta get ready for school and hes getting a bit stir crazy anyway . One day he will learn to treasure the "down times" of life as more than being away from friends and girlfriends. So well keep him informed of our trip and will relay any neat findings to the whale watchers on a2k.
Theres another boat travelling with us for part of the journey and we will pick up another party of 2 boats on leaving Newfoundland so well be in a "wolf pack" on the open seas. Now just , please, no seasickness.j
Any casual piracy planned to insure the trip breaks even?
piracy, arrrrrhhh, we dont know of what ye speak ere , we be solid seafarin folk with only best of intentions and surely welcome to tie up and trade goods wi ye. Is at ere mask ye have made of goold matey? This poor ole slat has niver seen goold in his wrteched life.
Seriously though, we often see fishing boats on our trips and often we can tie up and they will sell us cod or scallopps or whatever s in season (with exception of tuna, thats all spoken for by contract)
The trip sounds super -- so cool that you have friends to travel with and to visit along the trip. I hope that the cruising goes well & you have peaceful water and a good tide behind you all the way.
Looking forward to tales of adventuring on the high seas when you come back. Stay safe!
Well Odysseus tried it. It turned out badly for him, mostly I think due to poor planning. I have been all over that neck of the woods your planning to visit, on land, (it's infested with relatives) and if your crossing the Cabot Straights why not continue north up the coast to Epaves Bay and visit L'Anse aux Meadow. The Viking remains are well worth the trip.
"infested with relatives" -- ROTFLMAO!!!
Whale watcher here lookin' forward to updates!
Aaaaarrrrr, I'm so bloody jealous.
unk-ever watch the shipping news? Ive spent time in Newf doing prospect development and toxic waste studies (Argentia is a big Naval research facility).
we looked at going N to L Ans aux meadows but I got ruled out because our time involved would have taken us dangerously close to the first bad gales and sleet storms, and the Belle Isle Straits have a number of place names like Shipwreck flats and "wreck Bay" . Ive been told its not a walk on the beach for a small boat. Ive also promised a colleague to take some water samples at certain tide cycles on the Gulf of St Lawrence so its a chore getting all we want done and still have time to see the belugas in the Gulf.
Ill be busy filing a plan with the US and Canadian Coast Guard so they know where we are going to be and when we plan to arrive. I expect we ll get poulled over for safety inspections every few days. Those RCCG guys are always glad to see people and small boats are given closer scrutiny lately
Farmerman, I, unfortunately, did not see the Shipping News, but I was told it was very good. There is a National Park about half way up the Long Range which is dedicated to the geology of Newfoundland. A former part of the Mohorovii discontinuity is exposed there. I talked a park manager out of a copy of the geology report they give to the park staff, it was fascinating stuff. I once saw an iceberg in the Straits of Belle Isle that was large and flat enough to land small airplane on. For all that the supertankers kept plowing through as if it were just another ship. Over on the Labrador side at Red Bay is the remains of a large early 16th century Basque whaling station (c.1540 or earlier). Because it is on permafrost everything is still there, just like the day they left it. Newfoundland and Labrador is a great province and I can't recommend it enough.
acquiunk. Ill be at the S end of the Long Range gathering some samples of ophiolites for cross seismic calibration. I want some weathered and some fresh exposure materials because we have differing reported velocityvalues and were just trying to bracket them. So the Moho is exposed there. I had not heard that at all., and Im gonna be teaching a course in orogenies. Ill have to see whether I can get some time to see. It will also help in measured velocities if I can find some of the Moho material
Icebergs are a local problem all up the N coast of Nova Scotia. They give locations and send plots over the fax so we can keep our eyes open. Actually our small boat will have less a problem with bergs than a large one. Usually, when you see one, its all covered in a fog bank so radar picks em out and we can either steer clear or tie up and have a picnic (just kidding, they have anasty habit of rolling over when a side gets ablated)
Bergs beach themselves all along the Labrador coast. Folks up there would knock off a chunk and put in their drink. The trapped air would make it fizz. It was a local substitute for carbonated drinks. Every other bay has a village and a fish processing plant with an attached ice-making machine for packing the fish. I always thought that was odd because they could have haul all the ice they wanted out of the bay, but I was told it would not meet sanitary standards (hell the fish came out of the bay didn't they?). I was in this god forsaken village once which had the honor of being the regional urb (it had a store and a bank) Sitting on the counter in the store was a box with a sign that said 1 dollar each but all I could see in the box was a pile of cardboard. I asked what?
and was told (like one would tell a slightly slow child) that they were flakes of dried cod. The first thing you learn as an anthropologist when you are in the field is that you are the lowest, dumbest, ignorant SOB on the planet, who doesn't know from Coca Cola. That's called culture shock.
Well, if you do get bored, you can always swab the mizzen mast, keelhaul the poop deck, and other nautical, well, stuff.
unfortunately rog, its a diesel.
Aha! I may be going sailing, albeit just for a day, with Paul <swoon> up on the MA/NH border waters.
acquiunk, were you doing research in the Newf /Lab areas? Archeo, or population studies?
A number of years ago, I was in the interior of Lab and was doing a location mapping for old deposits of Calcium feldspars (bytownite, anorthosite, labrodorite) . I never had so many mosquito and black fly bites . The people up there treat you as one who doesnt have enough sense to understand how you slather on greasy **** to keep the blood loss to a few pints a day. Stuff we had was made of something like moose fat, DEET, and spruce branches. Nasty crap.
When I did work up in Baffin, we used to put glacier gouge into drinks and itd keep you entertained till you got mellow. .
Waitwaitwait who's Paul? Why is he swoon-inducing?
Good question soz...I know that farmerman will love the trip (the Canadian East Coast is my dream land to live in, barring coastal Ireland)....but...I know nothing of this littlek man who shares my name?
he has eyes like a llama or a camel or somethin' like that - the sailin' Paul.
Good luck on that trip, farmerman. I suppose there's not much hope you'll run into Johnny Depp out there. <<sigh>>
Be safe.
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