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2100, Thursday, July 13, 2023
It had been my intention to depart St. Anthony tomorrow. However, after a bit of a "bear" of a day, we will have a one day delay and depart on Saturday. It was a bear of a day in two different ways.
A couple of people had mentioned that there was a stuffed polar bear on display in the town hall. Apparently, a couple of years ago a polar bear floated down this way on ice flows and came ashore. They do get polar bears here on a semi regular basis in the winter months. This particular bear was lingering around the local school and eventually had to be shot. The town historian thought it would be fitting to have the bear stuffed and put on display. So, Charlie and I stopped by Town Hall this morning to view the fury fellow, as shown in the photo above. He makes for an imposing figure as one enters the building. These bears are BIG! On a side note, I did get to meet and be welcomed by the Mayor a couple of days ago. Today, we were welcomed by the fury town hall mascot!
The less fun aspect of the "bear" of a day was that the diesel cabin heater on Tazzarin stopped working a couple of days ago. Today, my home town boat yard, Dion's, in Salem, MA connected me with a top technician/engineer for the heater in Michigan. After about four hours of tracing wires, testing control panels, bypassing control panels, battery checks re wiring and other items, much of which took place with me contorted in awkward positions in the cockpit sail locker, we did track down the route cause - a faulty fuse that gave inconsistent voltages when under load. So, after a few painful muscle cramps from cramming myself into tight spaces, we finally have a working cabin heater. We will be happy for the warmth and drying of the heater as we go north.
The downside is that I spent so much time in the sail locker that we were not able to finish provisioning for the voyage. Thus, we will provision and top up water tanks tomorrow and depart Saturday. We need to set sail early in the morning to ensure we have enough time to cross the Strait of Belle Isle in daylight, when bergs are visible. It will be about a 50 mile run to Henley Harbour in Chateau Bay. For another day, we are tied to the wharf as shown in the photo below.
It turns out that another cruising sailboat had more of a "bear" of a day than us. The sailboat was out of Lewisporte, Newfoundland and yesterday was trying to cross the Strait when their engine failed. They had to radio Coast Guard Canada for assistance. The local search and rescue boat happens to be berthed just astern of us here in St. Anthony. She is the sturdy red boat, the Pennant Bay, in the last photo below. She towed the sailboat in and helped her tie to the wharf just ahead of us.
Here's to Tazzarin having a smooth and easy crossing of the Strait of Belle Isle on Friday!
Bill
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