Fachuex Bay 47:40.6N 56:20.7W

Millybrown
Mark Hillmann
Wed 10 Sep 2008 20:11
We sailed across from St Pierre to Fortune on the Newfoundland coast and went back through customs.  Assaf was able to extend his visa, but seems likely to go back to Israel and set off hitch hiking back across Canada.  He had retired to his bunk to avoid seasickness most of the time at sea.  He was not sick but it made sailing seem a pointless exercise.  As he originally came to the boat asking for a lift across the Atlantic, it was just as well that he found out he did not enjoy it, before setting off across.
 
Fortune is a little ferry harbour with fishing boats and is one of the few sea entry points to Canada, so from St Pierre you have little choice.  In retrospect I should have stopped the night there but it was a good wind...   I tried to get up to the south coast of Newfoundland and got the timing wrong.  If I had set off earlier, I would have anchored behind an island half way across, but it was dark when I got there and I did not trust the gps enough to take me in completely blind. 
 
If the wind had been less it would have taken all night to get across to Fachuex Bay, but I would have got there at 1am.  A black night, a rocky unlit coast and only the gps saying where we are.  No, not safe, so I hove to:  Rolled the genoa away and put three reefs in the mainsail and headed back out again.  At 6:15 it was light so I headed in.  The wind had gone by now so we motored in and anchored in Warren Cove in Fachuex Bay at 7:45am.  Back to sleep.
 
Through the night there was no other ships visible, but the area does have rocks off the coast.  With an alarm every half hour and off-course alarm set as well in case the wind changes, I do get some sleep at sea, but more was needed.
 
Although Warren Cove is two miles up the bay (fjord is how we think of that geography) the previous wind had left a swell coming in and the cove did not protect from it.  It was when I tried to get ashore on to rocks, with a swell of perhaps a metre washing up and down them that I gave up.  We motored on up the bay and into Dennis Arm, where there was complete peace, a much better anchorage for the night. 
 
The reward was a bald eagle being harassed by a pair of crows across the fjord.  They are not bald at all, they have white heads and tails and look quite smart.
  
Next morning I rowed ashore and tried to get up the hillside. 
 
It was steep and forested with deep moss on the ground and has mosquitoes.  It felt completely wild and empty.  I started to wonder if there was much life around but then came to a place where a moose had slept, with tracks in and out.  I never saw the moose and did not follow his trail far as he was going round the hill.
 
Climbing up was strenuous but not difficult, with small trees to hold on to all the time.  I worried what going down would be like, but it was easy, you could never tell whether there was a branch under the moss but if you kept your feet together it was like scree running or snow boarding. 
 
I came to an open area, from which you could see down, so with time back on the iridium phone, here is a photo.
 
I was wearing socks after getting my ankles bitten previously but with no repellent the mosquitoes fed on my neck.  Repellent may smell a bit, but perhaps better than the skipper. 
 
The insect screens are up on the boat now. We had no trouble in Greenland, which has a bad reputation, perhaps because we avoided the green areas.  This is the third time I have been bitten in Newfoundland.   
 

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