Coming into St. John's Newfoundland was an interesting entrance. We had been sailing for about 5 days from Lunenburg, up the coast of Nova Scotia, across the bottom of Gulf of St. Lawrence over to Newfoundland, then turned the corner North to head up to St. John's. Almost the entire trip was in complete fog. Day and night. We were running completely by instruments the whole time. We had one beautifully clear day just before getting to St. John's, but it was only clear in the ocean. As I was running fairly close to shore on this leg, we could clearly see the Newfoundland coast, but the bottom where it met the ocean was encased in fog. There were patches where the fog came out into the ocean as well, we were probably about 5 or 6 hours out from getting to the entrance to St, John's and we were in clear sun, but only for about 200 yards towards land, ocean side completely clear. There was a huge freighter running closer to shore running their fog horn. Now 200 yards out there is not a whole lot of space, from my perspective, so I'm running in totally clear weather around me from about 200 yards to port to infinity to starboard, and I'm running my fog horn for that freighter. I'm not sure what the words are to describe this one. The freighter was not running AIS, but I could see him on my radar and he was running in pea soup fog. I imagine running around 12 knots from what I could calculate... and running his fog horn... whew.... According to my radar, he was in my inner circle when he passed, but far enough away to never see him at all. That was the closest encounter of the trip up. And we'd had some others that were too close for my comfort... I think we passed just about a mile apart.
Now in a few hours I'm to go into the entrance of St. John's that they call the "narrows" and for darned good reason. At one point in the entrance it's only about 130 meters wide. Mighty narrow for an entrance that handles container ships and some of the biggest icebreakers I've ever seen close up and personal... Plus, if it's in that pea soup fog, boy, my radar skills are going to be really tested! I think this one may be a creep and pray entrance...
But as luck would have it, when we slipped into the big bay in from of the entrance, there was no fog at all. Now the difficulty was the sun! It was getting close to setting as we were coming in approaching 7pm local time so the sun was setting straight in our line of sight. It was so bright, it hurt my eyes. I put on my dark sunglasses, and then I couldn't read my instruments! The reflection off the water was truly blinding. I played with everything I could to be able to see past the reflections and the brightness. We are about 3/4's of a nm in front of the entrance, and I'm looking through my binoculars and it looks like there was a lighthouse with beacon on top of it. I said the guys with me, that I didn't recall any navigation indications that there was a lighthouse in the middle of this narrow entrance! I open up the chart and look closely and sure enough, no lighthouse. The other two guys with me were also looking at it with binoculars saying sure looks like a light house. So I'm saying, good grief, do I go the left or the right of this? This is getting even smaller! Hahahahaha - then it began to move. Turns out it was a Canadian Coast Guard boat and it had just been sitting in the entrance for some reason. The front of that boat looked like a light house sitting on a rock base... Go figure ....
St. John's is an amazing place. I'm tied up to a Oyster 66 behind some mega sailing yacht that is like 107 feet long. I could put my boat inside that one! The Oyster is a beautiful boat also. I'm just the little boat no one can really see from land... LOL
Live music last night. More tonight. This place is magical!
dj
