Coming home to Eastport was one picture I want to post. Its the East Quoddy Light and we were coming in as some ship was coming out and was releasing his Bay and Dock pilot..
Were home and safe in port. The boats all winetrized and shrink- wrapped up like a big muffin.
Well, we launched Iapetus and are going to take a lobster run over to Grand Manaan Island for the weekend. The weather's supposed to be good and , although the early sesson fogs are quite thick in the mornings, were ok as long as we drive with all instruments in control. i LOVE THE COLD BREEZE AND THE OCEAN SMELL.I THINK ID HAVE MADE A GOOD VIKING.
returned about 4 PM today, moored the boat, sleaned the frig and pumped the tanks and took a wee nap. Now Im wide awake and sunburned.
The trip to Manaan was great, we had some nice seas both ways (less than 6ft waves), we made good time and saw about 20 whales each way.(We only count in one direction because the whales pretty much stay in an area , so we would be counting same guys twice). Lots and lots of eagles, some puffins on "birdshit shoal island", off Blacks Harbour. We motored around Manaan so Icould get some pictures of the basalt columns around the South end of the island and to get some pix of the buried fossil forest of the early Holocene near Castalia Beach.
Diesel was the equivalent of 3.59 per gallon in Blacks Harbour, and 4.25 in Grand Manaan. In Maine its about 2.88. (and"off road' and ag diesel is 2.45).If I had a whopping big portable plastic tank, Id fill it up with ag diesel and transfer that to the boat. My fuel tank is 250 gal. The cost of fuel is putting a major crimp on long distance runs. I cannot imagine someone with one of those big trawlers with the 500 or 1000 gal fuel tanks and the burn rates of 4 gal/hour. Imagine making long trips from like Newfoundland to Florida. Thats about 100 gal/day on a run and about 15 days straight through the Atlantic through the ICW to Fla. Or about 4.5k$ one way with no ditzing around up and down tidal creeks. Trawlers move a lot of water and because theyre a water displacement hull, they dont plane well. What was a good idea a few years ago is a major re-evaluation point today. I imagine that many trawlers are maybe going for quite cheap and the sleeker "lobster boat" chasis like weve got are commanding a premium for their fuel efficiency and low profiles.
I saw a new Talaria 45 went for over 2 million and a San Juan 45 was commanding about the same.
On Sunday Im Going to take a field trip with an old colleague who worked for the USGS, were going to follow a coastal fault zone and see if we cant take it all the way to the headwaters of the ST Croix. Were going to pack our bicycles on to the back deck of the boat and cruise along to where we have to moore, then well take the Zodiac with the bikes and follwo the fault inland (This is my first dirt bike Ive ever ridden, so Im practicing on the bear trail).
I got two used dirt bikes from a bike shop in ST Stephen for under 200$. I hope I didnt get suckered. I betcha my colleague shows up with one of them 3K tight-ass yuppie bikes that weighs 8 lb wringing wet.
CAn I fill the tires with helium to lighten it up?
Where do I get helium in New Brunswick?
Will Homeland Security get suspicious?
Does CAnada have a Homeland Security?
Wht would anybody wanna hurt Canada, Chumly says that they dont even have a word for angry as shole
Found an exciting fossil sequence in an along the St Croix fault area. It appears that there are several layers of coal swamps with masses of fossil cycads and ferns. Weve also found a really good cast of somekind of tracks of a tetrapod. This is kinda unique since this area was like the everglades, a coastal lowland swamp. The tracks must be seasonal infills or the raea must have dried out a bit before later swamp infilling.
Lots of horsetail ferns and arthropleura (millipede like critters) tracks.
Very similar flora and fauna as is found near Joggins NS. Weshould find some vertebrates as well, Ill be going back in the later weeks. I have to write a report , so Ill be working most of next week in our little "tin can home"
KEEP YER WATCH TA STARBOARD.." said a line from London.Yesterday (SUN) we took some friends by boat up to the ALgonquin in ST ANdrews NB for one of their fantastic brunches. We went by boat and , having radioed the Border Patrol for a meeting at the pier in St Andrews or St George(it was SUnday sfter all), we cast off and left Estport and chugged up the Tidal River betwen Indian and Deer Island. From there we went by Lords cove and out to Quoddy Light to do some whale watching (we had left about 3 hours for what was essentially a 1.5 hour trip at a nominal speed of about 10 knots)
It began to get foggy and I lit up all the navigation gizmos, we were transponding anda ctively "pinging" in 3 frequenciy ranges. The area is loaded with commercial boat traffic from tour boats to freighters. SO we turned into Le Tette, a sometimes iffy stretch of fast moving water between Deer Island and the mainland at St George. The tide was running strong and it was now very foggy. I was "crabbing", a condition that allows you 2 feet forward and 3 sideways. Even thought the passage is quite wide, its a lot like some others in Eastern Canada (like Belle ISle) where the current is able to do major steering to a small boat. AFter about 10 minutes of the 20 minute crossing through LeTEtte, my warning alarms came on. The radar let me know that there were shore transponders that we were getting very close to. I couldnt see and , suddenly I could detect a rock point less than 50 meters ahead that we were heading strait for. Radar was now picking up the rocky headland (the fog can be a mighty reflector sometime)
MY wife (bless er) immediately went and had our guests get their life vests all zipped up and she loaded 4 suits onto the rail. Then she had our guests immediately begin inflating the zodiac and she brought up the little 5hp kicker and gas can from the hold.
I was busy trying not to impale us on rocks , and, unlike captain Smith of the TITANIC, I gunned the boat and opened the port thruster so that we were heading to turn away at full power not drifting , Cutting power is the wrong thing to do when faced with a potential collision from a side sweep. The water was running hard and the boat was wide open. WE barely creeped the channel at less than 5 knots forward(thats how fast the running tide could be)
Suddenly we safely broke through and we were faced with the huge expanse of Passamaquoddy bay,just some chop and normal current , Nothing like the passage. The boat almost began planing (which is not a big option for this mother) and we virtually scooted toward ST Andrews.
My wife had the zodiac all prepped for shore now (even though we could have pulled up to the dock at St Andrews. We had the zodiac towed behind us and met with the RCMP and the Border Patrol. The RCMP got my wifes earlier transmission,(did I tell you she radioed) just to let evveryone know our position, "just in case the next words were MAYDAY". She was refrained from sending a MAYDAY but , RCMP guy stated that she sounded stressed on the radio "Was everything all right?"
I admitted to coming through LeTette in a foggy current and that we were close to the rocks.
"well, youre lucky then," he stated. " You probably wont be going home that way eh?"
As I was eating my treackle pudding at the restaaurant later I ansewered him."No way in hell am I going home that way" We took the Loooong way all the way past St Croix Island to home. I think our guests were almost oblivious of the danger we were in.
You never see an old bold pilot.
There was a new, young German coastguard on his first day.
There was a storm in the Channel, and he got a radiophone message from an English ship.
"Help! Help! We're sinking!"
He made no reply.
Then came the call for the second time.
"Help, for God's sake! We're sinking!"
So he replied
-"Yes, message received. But vot are you sinking?"
Its funny today, yesterday, when we got back and I logged on a bit. I was trashing messages left and right because I was still nervous. What a difference a day makes.
Foggy today from E'port out. Fortunately theres no "fishing emergency"
Good grief farmerman.
Glad that all worked out OK.
The only time I've ever been lost in the bush was when a fog rolled in. scary for a bit once I started walking past plants and rocks I'd seen earlier. Fortunately moss only grows on the south side of trees.
Soz-while I was near panic, my wife had been doing all the necessary things to make sure that all of us would be safe should we wash up on the rocks. All I had to do was steer, she was keeping our company calm and getting things prepared for the worst, which, thankfully, never came to pass.
She a much better one on the seas than I , she thinks like a chess player and has eventualities all planned out .
Thats my angel.
Heh! Of course. (All the little weirdnesses of you being on the other side of the globe... as a lass in Minnesota I learned that moss grows on the NORTH side of trees.)
dadpadQuote:Fortunately moss only grows on the south side of trees.
.
Dadpad gives out this advice and then waits in the caves like a funnel-web as the trekker gets hopelessly lost and then he pounces. OH YEH, I See it all very clearly.
I think it DOES in Australia, though...!
And yay farmerwoman. Sounds like she has quite a head on her shoulders.
sozobe wrote:I think it DOES in Australia, though...!
South is cooler, north is where the sun comes from. Yes it still rises in the east and sets in the west but it traverses the northern sky cause thats where the equator is.
I think it would be super weird for things to be the other way around. Remind me not to go trekking in the northern hemisphere I'd get hopelessly lost.
Oh, man, farmerman! I remember from some of your tales before that your wife is very sharp and cool.
Your story reminded me of a bit of my auto trip from Humboldt County, California, to New Mexico a couple of years ago in an interesting December rain season. I and hundreds of others were caught in a total downpour on the 101 freeway just north of San Francisco on a stretch where the lanes changed frequently as to number, the visibility was nil, and, if for a minisecond it wasn't nil, you couldn't see the lane striping or where most of the other cars were. Wipers were completely ineffective. I couldn't figure out how to get off the freeway right there, and was wildly frightened about staying on it. Talk about adrenalin rush.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Then the lot of us completed a curve around a cliff (what cliff, I'll look that up some day) and faced San Francisco Bay; the rain tapered off, streaks of sunlight showed through the storm blanket, and the city beckoned across the golden bridge. Sort of like the gates to heaven....
When I got to my motel in southern California later that day, I watched new reports of that exact downpour on that exact highway stretch, complete with accident reports.
Having been invited over here from the ID thread I thought I would have a chirp as is my wont.
You cannot search out a vagrant gypsy life. It's theme park stuff. A lower middle-class pursuit.
I spent a few years in the demolition and scrap metal business and the vagrant gypsy life in those games comes with the scenery. It takes a while to realise it too. It finds you.
We have a tendency to fit in with the milieux we are in. For example, if you got yourself under the duvet at the fossil game it would not take you long to become a rabid Darwinist. You couldn't get on if you didn't. So even that has resemblances to a vagrant gypsy life although it seems to cause an extra effect whereby ideas about running the country come to the fore which are quite consistent with evolution theory as the expression of them does rather represent a sort of mating call.
Such an effect does not arise in the demolition and scrap metal business even though one sees a tremendous number of passed away items and hopes the essential message of which is given up without any of them needing to become fossilised.
Well, we are planning probably our only boat trip of the season next week. Diesel is over 6 a gallon and even though it came down a bit, I think its at a bottom point for the immediate future.
We ae going out the Eastport Campobello channel out to the sea and up the Cabot STrait to the MAdelaine Islands. I hope its not stormy since its been a long time that weve gone out in big seas. This will be a run for diatoms in that we will be towing a plankton net and will be collecting diatom and foram samples at various GPS points. (This helps a colleague whose doing oil emplacement reserach).
We hope to come back in time for a water festival in SW Nova SCotia. Well be gone about a week or so . Dont send help unless were gone for moe than 2 weeks as we dont have the provisions room without frequent land calls for raiding food stores of the natives.
I got my new Canon Camera so Ill be shooting pictures like a madman. (I am totally blown away how cheap the new flash cards are)
