By Doug Weibel
After spending our fifth winter in the Bahamas, my wife Marjorie and I felt ready for something different this summer. We wanted to go further north, further east really, than we had previous years. I proposed Newfoundland back in January, but Marjorie was firm in never committing to go any further than the Bras D’or Lakes in Nova Scotia.
We spent a week in Newport prior to heading for Canada and had the Cruising Club of America’s Cruising Guide to Newfoundland shipped to an Amazon locker. The guide reveals that Newfoundland is not the easiest cruising ground. Anchorages have a variety of issues, the most common being that finding reasonably shallow depths with swinging room is often problematic. The descriptions for many anchorages indicate you should anchor in 40, 50 or even 60 feet of water, remembering to account for a large tidal swing. Two anchors, or a stern line (or several) to shore, are often recommended. In many harbors, anchoring is discouraged due to depths, abandoned fishing gear, and/or rocky bottoms, and the preferred accommodation is to tie up to a wharf or raft up to a local boat if there is no space. Add in cold offshore waters, a coastline with rocks and ledges lurking everywhere, frequent fog and a scarcity of services ashore and you have a challenging cruising ground. The guide did not improve Marjorie’s outlook on cruising Newfoundland.
We have more confidence in our boat, Frolic, an Antares 44i catamaran, than we have in our own abilities. Sometimes you just need a little push from the universe. With just the two of us aboard, and with favorable winds, we made swift progress northeastward along the coast of Nova Scotia after clearing into Canada at Shelburne. Anchoring overnight only in Liverpool and LaHave before passing through the Saint Peter’s Canal and into the Bras D’or lakes, we felt like nature was pushing us ahead and found that somewhere along the way we had silently reached an agreement that we were heading to Newfoundland’s southwest coast without delay.
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