Not far from St. Lawrence, EXIT passes a prominent point on shore called Lawn Head. This was the sce

Blue sky and sunshine as we waved adieu to Tom and left Saint-Pierre. This time we can actually see the harbour that EXIT crept into in the thickest of fog two days earlier. The immediate chore is officially reentering Canada. To do this, we re faced with sailing to the entry port of Fortune, on Newfoundland s Burin Peninsula. This means backtracking from our planned route and losing a day in the process. To get around hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach this, Gene called Canada’s Border Protection Service and asked if we could forgo Fortune and request hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach clearance instead at the town of St. Lawrence, almost directly on our route east. “Not a problem,” said the helpful immigration official on the phone. Thank you, Canada! And thanks to Doug and Dale Bruce, editors of the authoritative hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach Cruising Guide to Newfoundland, for that time-saving suggestion.
Not far from St. Lawrence, EXIT passes a prominent point on shore called Lawn Head. This was the scene of an horrific shipwreck of two U.S. Navy vessels during a blinding snowstorm and gale in February, 1942. Bound for the naval base at Argentia, (where FDR and Churchill met six months earlier in a top secret meeting to discuss the war in the North Atlantic), and steering a zig-zag pattern to evade German U-boats, the supply ship USS POLLUX and the destroyer USS TRUXTUN wandered badly off course and went aground on the rocky ledges off Lawn Head. Within hours, the two ships were ripped apart by the rocks and roaring sea. Lifeboats were smashed and most of the two crews were lost trying to reach shore in the freezing water. A handful that succeeded found themselves perched on a rocky ledge below a sheer cliff, near death from exposure, and the tide rising at their feet. Meanwhile, a small group of men from the town of Lawn learned hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach of the ship wreck, drove horses dragging wooden sleds through waist-deep snow in the middle of the night to the top of the cliffs, and managed to pull most of the survivors off the rocks with long ropes. hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach There are several accounts of this mix of tragedy and heroism. Two especially riveting hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach recollections — one by a quartermaster on the POLLUX and the other by one of the Newfoundland rescuers — are in George Whiteley’s book of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador sailing memories, “Northern Seas, Hardy Sailors”. A stunning story you absolutely will not forget.
No drama for EXIT this day. Approved for Canadian entry, and taking advantage of a benign weather forecast and a helpful 15-knot westerly on the stern, the crew elects to keep sailing east. We cross Placentia Bay, watching the comforting flash every five seconds from Cape St. Mary’s light through most of the night. In the morning, we lay over in Trepassey, at Newfoundland’s southeastern tip. A well-protected harbour with good facilities and “some of the nicest folks in the Province,” according to the cruising guide.
After a nap to recuperate from the all-night sail, we meet one of those nice folks. “This is a dying town,” says Sharon Topping, Trepassey’s friendly, efficient, and surprisingly candid, town clerk. A fish processing plant, a window manufacturer and a water bottling plant have all closed as economic activity, and the town’s young people, increasingly get sucked into St. John’s, the booming provincial capital, two hours away. A high school that had 800 students is down to 50. A floating dock at the public wharf has vanished. The mayor quit two weeks ago and the town council is down to two members. Sharon Topping seems to be barely holding things together.
The downward spiral, however, has produced one promising side effect amazingly cheap real estate that just might attract an influx of new residents. Like Sharon, a Newfoundland native, and her husband, Fred. They left a home in northern Manitoba, moved to Trepassey four years ago, and bought a well-built, fully-furnished house for less than $40,000. A young family from Bowen Island, hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach British Columbia, next to Vancouver, did the same thing. Lorne Warr , Genevieve McCorquodale and their two and one-half year old daughter arrived a month ago. They were driven hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach east by, among other things, hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach skyrocketing hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach ferry fares from their island to Vancouver, which has just surpassed Toronto as Canada’s most expensive city. In Trepassey, they found an affordable house on an acre and a quarter of harbour waterfront. Lorne, a Newfoundland native and a musician with a growing reputation, was also lured by Newfoundland’s vibrant folk music scene. Before the day was done, EXIT’s hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach crew was sitting on the deck outside Lorne and Genevieve’s house. Jamie Snider, a veteran of Canada’s legendary Wonderful Grand Band, was also visiting. Pete brought his mandolin from the boat and the group, alternating between guitars, hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach fiddle, mandolin, button accordion and bodhran, played until dusk. Sharon Topping quietly hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach recorded it all on her camera. The next morning, before we shoved off, she presented each of EXIT s crew with a video of the previous nights music. It goes without saying that we’re rooting for Trepassey.
Great to know the kitchen celeigh tradition still survives, even as, sadly, the town continues to die in the ongoing and inexorable depopulation of much of rural Newfoundland. How strange to realize that in a few years, except, perhaps for Burgeo, only ghost towns will remain on the south coast from Port Aux Basques to Harbour Breton. One can only hope that the friendly, indomitable spirit of the people will survive, even without the harsh reality of inhospitable coasts and unforgiving seas in which that spirit grew. By now you re headed for St. John s I would imagine. Keep your mandolin handy, Pete and your voices strong!
Reading Tom s comment and Gene s past few blog entries immediately brought to mind the Finest Kind song, No More Fish, No Fishermen, about the demise of the Newfoundland fishing industry in the seacoast villages. We Lewises have been singing it for the past few years; I think we may have even used it as our Revels audition piece once.
Great though sad song. I have a good friend from New Foundland who lives in Virgin Gorda where I live half of every year. I will send it to her. She met her husband hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach in Canada at a bar after he had sailed all the way from Ireland.
Thanks, Susan. Sounds like an Anglican hymn. Wouldn t sound out of place at St. Columba s. Lovely and sad and all too true. Outside of St. John s, which is bustling, thanks in large part to offshore oil money.
Eric and I are roughing it in PA with longtime friends. On our way to NY next. Our ELIZABETH JEAN is resting safely in Nuevo Vallarta enjoying very hot weather and rain. We ve been away from her for 2 months and I m missing her. But greatly enjoying our road trip . Over 7700 miles in 2 months(!!)
You are such a good writer! When MImi told me about your blog yesterday after I asked how your trip was, I just read your latest hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach entry. I am saving the others as treats and rewards for myself as I keep packing hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach and tidying etc. for our next 6 months in VG. We leave here on Aug 4.
The impromptu concert sounds like it was fun and one of those wonderful surprises that traveling can bring. I remember reading a book by a Canadian couple ( A Surfeit of Mangoes?) hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach who sailed hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach around the Caribbean from Canada for a year. Once when they were anchored at sea ( not at a dock) with other boats nearby, a rum-tasting sail boat came by and offered rum tastes from many Caribbean hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach islands to as many people as could fit on the Canadian couple s boat.. Who would have expected such a treat?!
I look forward to reading more.Now when I look out to sea from our VG house and see the many beautiful boats, I will think of you and of each boat having many stories for the sailors to share but not with me which make your tales all the more to savor..
On Saturday I said goodbye to EXIT, Skipper hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach Gene and shipmate Dr. Tom at the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club on Conception Bay, following my brother Tom, who flew back to his Lunenberg, Nova Scotia summer place from Saint-Pierre.
Thanks, Gene for your skilled, ever-ready leadership on the boat. Always the first up and last asleep, checking weather reports, trimming sails to catch the liveliest wind, constantly monitoring EXIT’s gear, making sure your crew had a clear and safe handle on their jobs you’re a captain’s captain. EXIT, with its aluminum hull and cherry wood interior, is a wonderfully tough and elegant boat, but off Newfoundland’s thinly-settled south shore, help may be a long way off in an emergency, and Gene made sure we didn’t have to call for it.
Thanks, Tom, Tom and Gene for a feast of interesting conversation and enjoyable companionship. Talk of families and vacations; of Newfoundland s story; of journalism war stories from Gene and me; brother’s Tom’s adventures as a corporate consultant; and Dr. Tom’s encyclopedic insights into the medical world, filled up the hours. (“Calor, dolor, rubor, and tumor,” Dr. Tom advised at one point, listing the key flags of inflammation from the 1st Century AD). My twin Tom and I shared a couple of night watches, the longest time we’ve had together since college, with much to talk about.
hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach at one tense point, trying to stare through thick fog to find the entrance to Grey River, a needle’s-eye opening several hundred yards wide in a wall of cliffs 1,000 feet straight up, then suddenly finding it and entering a stunning fjord;
watching tens of thousands of murres, petrels and puffins perched on an island refuge, wheeling above it and bobbling for fish in front, and then racing close-hauled at 8 knots on a grand entrance into St. John’s harbor.
The abandoned settlement of Grand Bruit and the empty houses of Trepassey, told the sad story of the decline of Newfoundland’s fishing economy, which now sends young people to St. John’s for city work, or far off to Alberta’s tar sands oil fields. But troubles or not, the Newfoundlanders we met were welcoming, busy folks, hotels with honeymoon suite in virginia beach and it was a great pleasure to be among them.