Elvie Goes North to The Iceberg Festival in St. Anthony, Newfoundland

Every town has to have a festival and St. Anthony has its iceberg festival in June.  The majority of the icebergs come from about 100 iceberg producing glaciers along the Greenland coast while a few originate in the eastern Canadian Arctic islands.   While on our cruise on the Gaffer 3 the crew scooped up some iceberg chunks for us to see and taste.  It was amazing to hold a piece of ice that may be over 15,000 years old!?!

Icebergs are the edges of a glacier that has broken off and slipped into the ocean.  The glacier has been thousands of years of snow building up and gradually it  flows towards the ocean under its own weight and eventually slips in.  The current off  Labrador brings them to the Newfoundland coast after a two year journey from Greenland.  Once they are to Newfoundland they rarely last a couple of months in the warmer waters.

 We were dressed in our foul weather gear complete with long undies....many others were cold but we sailors were prepared.

We motored for a good five miles out in the Atlantic to see this berg.....about the size of an aircraft carrier and about 6 stories tall.  It is very hard to believe how big these icebergs can be and what we see is "only the tip of the iceberg."  This expression is explained as follows:  Icebergs float because the density of ice is lower than that of seawater.  The ratio of these densities tells us that 7/8 of the iceberg 's mass must be below the water.  Usually they protrude underwater so that they are 20-30% longer than they appear from above the surface.  The average depth of the berg is slightly less than its apparent length above water.

The bluish streaks of clear, bubble free ice often seen in icebergs results from the refreezing of melt water which fills crevasses formed in the glacier as it creeps over land.  The ice is blue because of the natural light scattering characteristics of pure ice.  The first massive berg that we saw had some dark streaks throughout and these are formed from airborne dust or dirt that was eroded from the land and ends up on the glacier surface.  

It is hard to describe what it is like to see icebergs up close but they are truly quite beautiful.  Sometimes you see coloured streaks, caves and tunnels, old and new waterline notches, even objects such as boulders or birds are seen on icebergs.  What would be truly spectacular is the occasion of an iceberg calving and rolling which evidently can be heard a long way away.

  

Some facts you may find interesting:

-Icebergs are comprised of pure,fresh water.

-Icebergs float because the density of  ice is less than sea water.

-It takes an iceberg about two to three years to reach the island of Newfoundland from Greenland, a distance of 1,800 miles.

-The average iceberg weight for the Grand Banks is one to two hundred tonnes.

-Ice harvested from icebergs is often used to make products that boast purity and superior quality, such as vodka and some beers.  Rob was anxious to try the pure beer. 

-Hibernia, an oil platform off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, is designed to withstand the impact of an iceberg in excess of five million tonnes.  

Elvie's Adventure Continues

We have a wonderful keepsake from Newfoundland.  We happened to see some of Ben's work in a hotel in Gros Morne and decided to visit his studio.  It just happened to be on the way north from Gros Morne and by then we had decided that we would go to St. Anthony to see the ice bergs rather than Twillingate. 

Ben's work is quite wonderful.  He makes 3D figurines and adds them to his painted picture.  We had him add a whale and an ice berg to our piece.

Ben is adding painted splash to our 3D humpback whale.

While on our way north to St. Anthony we found ourselves a great boon docking spot complete with water view.  It was chilly and we had to use the propane furnace but it was a good spot to camp.

Everywhere you go you see fishing boats in Newfoundland.

There are also lobster traps everywhere; however we did hear that the price of lobster is so low that many of the fishermen are not able to make a living. That low price is not reflected in the price of lobster dinners however.

 

This fishing boat uses seine nets.  The small boat tows the net out from the big boat and eventually closes the circle of fish.  The fishing industry used to use drag nets along the bottom for cod; however there is now a moratorium on cod fishing  and it may last 20 years.  Fisherman are allowed to keep 5 per cent cod if they catch some while fishing for other kinds of fish but that is all.  The Newfoundlanders blame other countries that still fish the outer banks for the decimated cod population.

 

 

We didn't get screeched into Newfoundland.....tourists are dressed in yellow slickers, given a shot of Screech, which is terrible rum and given a cod to kiss; however we did have a few delicious cod dinners.   The Atlantic Cod shown below was stuffed and on the wall in a lighthouse.

 

The mural shown above was displayed in the lighthouse pictured below and showed some other important residents of Newfoundland....killer whales, polar bears that float over from Labrador on pack ice, but swim back after feasting on Newfoundland seals, and puffins, which are the national bird. 

Elvie Goes East

Elvie is excited as he is waiting in the parking lot at the North Sydney dock in Nova Scotia.  The MV Puttees would be our ship and she can hold 950 passengers.  Rob is standing in the car parking area below decks.  The ship has 4 decks and can park 8 vehicles side by side including a lot of transport trucks.

The ship seemed almost brand new with large comfortable seating.  My captain sees Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland.

Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland as we arrived on the ship.

Elvie's first camping spot was at J. T. Cheeseman Provincial Park near Port Aux Basques on the south western coast. 

Near Corner Brook there is a down hill ski area called Marble Mountain.  During the summer they run a zip lining thrill ride over the falls on the mountain.  Notice the green platforms on the left.  If you look hard you can see the zip lines extending from the platforms.

 

All you have to do is run off the end of the platform and hold on!?!

All suited up and ready for action!

Rob arriving at one of the platforms.  We had 8 zip lines all together and it took about 2 hours to get the seven of us down the mountain.

 It had been an exciting and thrilling day and we were

both glad that we had taken the challenge.

We stayed in Blow Me Down Provincial Park near Corner Brook and did some hiking.

Blow Me Down Provincial Park

Our first boon docking was in a beautiful fishing cove called Last Cove.

If you look closely you can see Elvie peeking out behind a building

Gros Morne is one of Newfoundland's gems.  It is a beautiful national park.

One of Elvie's camp sites in Gros Morne.

Bridal Falls, Gros Morne

Everywhere you drive there are spectacular views.

There are chairs placed through out the park.

The table lands are a fascinating part of the national park.  The earth's mantle which is normally under the crust is exposed here.  It looks like a moon scape and only a few plants can survive here because of the heavy metals in the rock.  Notice the snow off in the distance.  These are very high hills.

Every once in awhile we would find a tiny flower in the middle of the rock waste land.

We climbed up to a fresh water stream on the table lands complete with snow.

It had been a very interesting hike into the geological past of the earth.







Deh Spice Necklace .....Memories of Grenada

In the outdoor market in Grenada's capital St. George's, women sit holding long, fragrant strands of the island's spices out to passersby.  "Hey darlin,  you want a spice necklace...I give you good deal?"  It is hard to pass without breathing in their scent and eventually succumbing to buying some.  They are made up of a little of everything on this spice island...nutmegs, hidden in polished mahogany shells under lacy scarlet corsets of mace,  spiky, pungent cloves, slices of saffron-coloured turmeric root and chunks of pale-gold ginger, rough curls of cinnamon bark, cocoa beans, fermented and roasted to a deep chocoate-brown, bay leaves, folded into tidy squares that give off a whiff of balsam forest, small dark disks of tonka bean, which look like exotic beads and smell like vanilla and then to fill the spaces between the spices are strings of egg-shaped ivory river seeds. " Once dey not smell so much, place deh necklace in warm water for five minutes and deh smells...dey comin back!"

This winter in Grenada was a nice balance of boat work and new adventures.  We thoroughly enjoyed our trip north to Bequia and exploring the Tobago Cays.  We were happy to get some work done on the big girl as it had been awhile since we had had the time or the conditions to do more than fix things as they broke down.

 

 

 

 

Our haul out went well and Celebrian is in a more permanent spot this year and shouldn't have to be moved.

The first thing that we needed to do was scrape the barnacles and critters off her bottom.  We knew it was pushing it not to do bottom paint this year but we decided that with the short season we could leave it for another season.  She was quite the sight when she was lifted out and it took both of us scraping for two hours to get her clean.  The tropical water at its 28 degrees C (86F) sure grows things.  Next season we will doing bottom paint for sure.

In the evening at Cool Runnings the captain was working on his glue projects....a cover for the hatch cover to protect the varnish and his sandals which have had numerous previous glue jobs.  Yes...those are granola bars holding the sandals?!?!?

We had our farewell dinner with our friends Dennis and Arlene on Tiger Lily 2 and John and Katherine on Katerina at De Big Fish Restaurant by the boatyard. 

The captain does a terrific job of battening down all of things that could blow in strong winds. One half of our nesting dinghy Goldberry fits over the forward hatch and allows it to be left open for ventilation.  The other half protects the skylight.  Rob's new sunbrella cover proved to be a good fit and we hope that it will stay attached and protect the new varnish over the summer. 

A sure sign of spring when we arrived at the cottage are the trilliums in their full spring glory.

The first day that we were home we were anxious to get out to the cottage and check on how things had come through the winter.  The weather was so inviting that we decided to move into the cottage instead of the condo.  Of course we knew it wasn't going to last and we now have the stove going; however for several days it could have been Grenada? 

Well.....maybe not quite Grenada, but pretty darn nice for Lake Huron in early May?