Gloucester, Massachusetts
Aug. 14, 2011
Hi Folks,
I hope to send this tomorrow, the 15th from Boston. We finally met up with Ken Lewis here in Gloucester, as we just missed him in Rockland. I apologize to the family members who received three invitations from Picasa, as the internet connection was acting up, and I was unsure if the invite went out. I have the next album on Picasa for Lunenburg and Shelburne ready to go and will send it tomorrow as well.
This Log #52i gets us around Yarmouth and up to Briar Island at the end of the Digby Peninsula. Then it takes us on a fantastic whale watching passage across the Bay of Fundy to Grand Manan Island. The pictures I have of the whale watching are spectacular if I do say so myself. I can only put a few attached to this log, but will have a fantastic display of whales breaching, blowing and diving on the next Picasa album I will send out later. I may even be able to allow comments on the Picasa site. I will also try to put a video on it. I hope it comes through. I am excited by the pictures I just downloaded from my Nikon SLR camera, and will send a copy of the album to the commercial whale watching company that was in the area with us.
The weather has warmed up, but we still have not had more than two days in a row of sunny weather so far this summer. Oh well, we will be down south for the winter.
All the best,
Aubrey
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Log #52i South Coast to Yarmouth and whale watching Bay of Fundy
Gloucester, Massachusetts
Aug. 14, 2011
We left Shelburne June 23, and motored the 40 miles to anchor in Clarke’s Harbour on Cape Sable Island (43 25.700N, 065 37.722W), a small fishing village. We saw a couple of pods of dolphins on our way down in calm seas with light winds, against us of course. Next day we motored another 40 miles down to Yarmouth, during which we circled to take pictures of a seal colony lounging on a stretch of rocky shoals. In Yarmouth we anchored just off Doctor’s Island (43 50.321N, 066 07.472W), across the channel from the main part of town. Much of the bay we were anchored in dried at low tide, as did the shoreline of the bedraggled denuded Doctor’s Island (see attached picture). The cormorants dominated the trees like big black blobs on the leafless branches. It is reminiscent of some of the stretches of the ”protected” Lesley Street Spit in Toronto that have been taken over by gulls and cormorants, denuding large areas and smelling up the lakeside atmosphere with their guano.
Yarmouth is an old fishing town and ferry terminal for vessels from Maine. The town just had their Lobster Festival over the weekend while we were in Shelburne, using the town marina plaza as the locale. The marina manager was quite friendly and arranged for me to be taken to a gas station to fill our jerry cans with diesel, even though we were not staying at the marina. We had a parcel of mail shipped to the Rudders Seafood Restaurant and Beer Pub, as we had the address from our pilot book. It is or was part of the Parker –Eakins Wharf Marina, which is no more; the docks have been incorporated into the adjacent town marina. After picking up our parcel of mail, we enjoyed a lobster and seafood dinner. The pub has a good reputation for brewing several types of beers, one of which I enjoyed with dinner.
The highlight for us in town was the W. Laurence Sweeney Fisheries Museum just down the Water Street from the marina. It is a simulation of a traditional fishing wharf with scaled down buildings, but with over 90% of the original equipment, set up in a modern museum on the land of the original fishery. It had a pay and business office setting, fish cutting shed, smoke house, carpentry and machine shop, sail loft, fishing supply store shed, and realistic mock-up of a coastal freighter, all with the early 20th century materials and equipment used in the plant and aboard the freighter (see attached pictures). The shops looked as if they were just closed for the night and the workers expected back tomorrow. There were no roped off areas and we could look and pick up any of the equipment and materials to see how they felt and how they worked. It is a very effective private museum well worth the time and moderate admission fee. (see attached pictures)
Off again next morning to motor 38 miles up to Westport, on Briar Island off the tip of the Digby Peninsula in the Bay of Fundy, where inside the high-walled camber (44 15.873N, 066 20.986W) we rafted off a whale watching vessel, the fourth one out from the floating dock (see attached picture). The tidal range here is 18 feet. At low water the fixed wharves topped with fishing sheds sat high up, 25 feet or more above the seaweed covered shoreline, the skeletal tall supporting timbers blackened with creosote and kelp (see attached picture).
After supper I clambered across the other four vessels to wander around the pleasant community. I noticed several houses for sale, in good repair and some facing the harbour. Upon my return to the dock, I was met by Caroline Norwood who was tasked with charging us the $20.00 mooring fee. She told us a bit about the island, indicating the poor fishing now and hoping that tourism would fill the economic void, or that Americans would come up to purchase scenic, economical land and some of the very moderately priced homes available for vacation properties.
In our conversation, she was impressed with our lifestyle, living on our 32 foot boat for 13 years and crossing the Atlantic twice, etc., etc., and asked if she could come over in the morning to interview us for the sailing magazine, Points East. So, the following morning we had her over for coffee and had a good talk about where we have travelled and our life aboard Veleda. She has since sent us the article she submitted to the magazine (see attached word document), and asked to be on our mailing list for future logs. Later that morning we went over to her large interesting century-old home, several rooms downstairs and up being for a rustic used book emporium. Caroline and her partner are an interesting pair.
Off we went in the late morning to cross the Bay of Fundy 40 miles over to Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick. On our way out from Briar Island we saw a couple of pods of dolphins feeding; unfortunately they were not interested in us. We were keeping our eyes open for whales as this area and over to Grand Manan are famous for whale watching expeditions. We were not disappointed!
Within ten miles of Briar Island we saw, across the flat calm water, our first humpback whale surface a couple of times a half mile away. Angling over towards the sighting we saw another commercial rib heading that way as well. For the next hour and a half we slowly motored towards several sightings for fantastic displays of surface turmoil. One whale in particular breached repeatedly, wafting lazily a knobby-edged four foot flipper in the air and slapping it down, creating a frenzied frothing sea as it surged half its 40 foot length above the surface before quietly submerging, leaving only a circular ring of turbulence. At times it would suddenly resurface its 25 tons in a surprising resurgence of massive energy, then glide under for another five or ten minutes.
We saw several dives in which the whale would reveal itself by its blowing spume as it surfaced. Often the sound of the blow was heard before the rounded humped back eased above the face of the glassy water, revealing its small dorsal fin. Sometimes we could even smell the exhaust blow over the still water. As the long body arched up, the hump of its long back rolled along and down as the whale started its dive. It smoothly lowered its forward body starting a deep dive as the flukes slowly came out of the water, lifting high to reveal the distinctive black and white patterning of the underside of both flukes, which seemed to be silently sucked down leaving only a swirl of current before the placid surface covered the plunge of this undersea behemoth. The black and white pattern of pigmentation is as unique as a human finger print, allowing whales to be distinguished and even named.
We were within 50 yards of several breachings, and the commercial rib was even closer, to the extent I would not be surprised if the passengers got wet from the whale’s antics.
As the afternoon wore on, we had to leave to complete our passage to Grand Manan before dark. As it was, we entered the Seal Cove fishing camber in thick fog just before sunset (Who could see it anyways?).
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