Log Book (october) 

october photo tour

This is a picture of our village, Quidi Vidi, from the top of the stone wall next to Precipice.  I can guarantee that in ten years this view will be completely different.  These are the good old days.  Soon the developers will fill in all the green spaces with condominiums and unnecessarily large homes.  We feel fortunate to be here every day.  It is a place of great beauty and community.

This is Ed's stage.  A stage is a fisherman's working area.  Ed works at the university as a carpenter and has lived in the same home here in Quidi Vidi all his life.  Ed and his wife Joan are great people with huge hearts that have made us feel like we have been here all our lives.

The hills around Quidi Vidi are packed with blueberries, one of our favorite fruits.  We often pick a bunch and then Deb makes blueberry pancakes, one of our favorite meals.

Our boat is only 300 meters from the ocean, but the entrance to Quidi Vidi is narrow and shallow.  We can only get in and out at high tide.  The small size and shape of the entrance isolates us from wave action from the ocean.   If there are deep swells coming in we can sense them, but Precipice doesn't visibly move. 

This is Frank's boat.  Frank calls my wife "Sweety" when I am not around.  One day when I was up the mast Frank called out to Deb, "How are ya doin Sweety?"  as he motored by.  I yelled down, "I am doing great how are you!"  He just about fell backward off his boat looking up at me.  He still calls Deb "Sweety". 

This is what Precipice looks like when I am halfway up the mast.  I re-varnished anything that had gotten nicked or scratched this summer while sailing. 

Another shot from the up the mast.

Deb is cleaning up drips of varnish that blew off my brush.  She is also keeping track of the line that holds me up the mast.  We use the anchor windlass to pull me up. We have two lines, one that pulls me up, and a safety line in case something goes wrong with the first line. 

Another shot from the mast. 

Home sweet home with nice and new varnish. 

october 6-8 the grandparents visit

This is the ferry to newfoundland.  Picture by Shirley Scholten.

Deb's parents drove all the way out to Newfoundland to visit us.  This is no small feat.  It is about 28-30 hours of driving to make it to Sydney, Nova Scotia.  Then you have to take an 8 hour ferry.  After the ferry you have another ten hour drive across Newfoundland to get to St. John's. 

The Scholtens and the Trowbridges

Deb's parents took us out to dinner on the town when they got here, and then we did the obligatory drive up to Signal Hill where we got misted on and blasted by the cold wind to get the full Newfoundland experience.  The next morning they came over to Precipice and had blueberry pancakes.  After breakfast the girls skipped school and we went for a tour of the Avalon Peninsula in search of a large fishing outpost and of course stopping at every collection of sailboats that could be found.  There aren't many.  Newfoundland is a rare destination for sailors, and we do not really know why. The next day we spent exploring St. Johns and ended the day by watching Navy videos that Deb's Dad took when he was a Submariner in the 1960's  I don't think that Dad thought we would find them interesting, but it was fascinating to us all the places he went and filmed.  It was a nice treat was watching Deb run around when she was one year old or less. 

Grandma and Jannelle by the Narrows into St. John's

Grandma is a lean mean emailing machine. 

Bjorn at the top of his mast.

Bjorn made an attempt at getting to Sweden and ended up breaking a backstay a week out.  He sailed back and has left his boat here.  He took his backstay off and brought it home with him in order to make another one over the winter and bring it back in the spring.   Going up to the top of your mast is one of those jobs that I would rather be the person at the bottom cranking the winch, rather than swaying around up top. 

The breaking cable. 

working with immigration

Here we are back at sea.  Notice the water on the boom, it is starting to freeze. 

Part of the fun of going to foreign countries is working with their immigration systems.  I know that it is difficult to imagine Canada as a foreign country, especially to those of us in Michigan who drive through Canada to get to the Northeast USA.  Canada doesn't seem like a foreign country until you try to live there.  We checked into Canada through the Canpass system which allows us and our boat to spend six months in the country.  The only snag we ran into is when we decided to try to send our children to school.  We visited the school principle and they had no problem with our children attending their school.  Three weeks later immigration was knocking on our door telling us our girls were in violation of immigration law.  They gave me a number to call, and I left messages for a week and got no return calls.  Finally they called and set up a meeting.  At the meeting they set out what we could do.  We could:

1. Leave the country.

2. All of us leave and try to get a student visa upon return.

3. All of us leave and Rolland try to get a work visa that would immediately allow the girls to go to school

We took option number 2.  We decided to sail to France.  France is the closest country, because they "own" several small islands south of Newfoundland. 

We sailed out about 25nm and the wind shifted slightly.  As soon as the wind shifted our diesel heater blew out and started smoking, filling the cabin with an acrid heavy smoke that hurts your lungs (unless you work as a Diesel Technician, then it smell good like money or something - right Rick?).  I let the heater cool and relit it, looking for anything that could be wrong.  A half hour later it did it again.  I cleaned it out, readjusted things only to have it do it over right away.  By this time things were getting frosty in the cabin (we actually had frost on deck by the end of the night).  We knew that we would be getting some heavier winds later in the trip and those winds plus a dead heater equaled a bad trip.  We decided to abort the trip rather than risk having someone fall off and have no good way to warm them or any number or scenarios that we could imagine that would make not having a heater be more than just an inconvenience, but an actual safety problem.  I have read too many stories that start out like this.  It is always something small that goes wrong.  Then something else small goes wrong, but the captain (of the airplane, or boat, or climbing expedition) ignores both not realizing that the next thing that goes wrong will send everyone in his care to their doom.  That captain isn't me.  I wasn't going to risk my family just to keep immigration happy.  We turned back. 

It turned out to be a beautiful night.  I sailed the 30nm back into St. Johns under beautiful starry cold skies, while everyone else slept under piles of wool blankets. 

I woke Deb up five miles from St. John's.  I could see St. John's from 25 miles away. A little different from the last time when we came into St. Johns and we couldn't see the range lights for the harbor when we were abeam Fort Amherst in the narrows - essentially right in the harbor.  Our first time in was under radar with about 35ft visibility in the heaviest rain we have ever been in.  Our second time in was with no wind whatsoever.  The range lights were so bright I wished that you could turn them off like you can when flying an airplane. 

One of my big beefs in life are people who take everything and turn it into drama.  Dealing with immigration is one of those things that cruisers tend to turn into a daytime soap opera.  Our first contact with an immigration officer was a little gruff for the circumstances, about what you would expect when you take a young man and put a bullet proof vest and a badge on him.  Every other contact with immigration was with people who where really trying to make things work out for us and be within the law.

Do I think they could have bent the law to make things work out better for us: Absolutely.  Do I think they could have just as easily made our lives miserable within the law: Absolutely. 

Millions of people are trying to get into Canada each year.  They are trying to get into three cities:  Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto.  All three of those cities have infrastructures that are stressed to the max.  The immigration system is designed to filter out millions of people and only admit the best candidates into Canada.  It isn't built around a family of four who want to live in their boat in Newfoundland.  The entire province of Newfoundland probably only has 200 people who want to stay, in fact the province has steadily been losing people for over 15 years.  The infrastructure in Newfoundland has the exact opposite problem of Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto.  Unfortunately, entry into any province gives you the right to move to the three overloaded cities and I am told this happens often. I am sure that immigration here completely understands that I am not about to move to Vancouver and try to get a job, and that is why they worked hard to make things work for us. 

When we sailed back into Newfoundland after spending the night at sea, immigration accepted us back and gave us a stamp for six more months in Canada.  We did not, however, apply for student visas for Jannelle and Bianca.  I am still in the application process for a work permit, and if I get one the girls will be able to go back to school. 

Rolland makes another happy face while sailing back into St. John's

last sail of october

We left at 0530 to catch the high tide so we could get out.  It was beautiful. 

The guy with hair (I am jealous) is Steven.  Steven and his Dad are transplants from Michigan.

Our spot in Quidi Vidi allows us to meet alot of people because it seems everyone eventually makes there way down there either to visit the brewery or to take pictures of the Village.  We met Steve and his son Steven and immediately made a "Michigander" connection.  They also used to own a wood boat.  They told us if we ever went sailing call them.... we did and they took a ride.

Boat eating rocks with big nasty pointy teeth.

This is where we ended up sailing to, Petty Harbor.

Jannelle next to a fishing shack

A homestead with laundry, lobster pots, crab pots, and wood for heating all out in the sun. 

Steve and Steven on the way back home

Otters playing on the Queens Wharf in St. John's Harbor.

Heading back into home just as the sun sets. 

rolland goes to new york city

         New York City is the polar opposite of Newfoundland

I spent a week with Rachael in New York city to get her Catalina 27 ready to sell, and ready for winter.   While in NY, I took a drug test, got a physical and updated my emergency first aid/cpr certification.  I also sat for my Ham Radio exams.  I took the class with Deb and Rachael two and a half years ago, but the night of the test I couldn't make it because I ended up dealing with some unruly customer at work (ahhhhhh, I really miss that!) and never took the test.  I took the technicians test and passed with three wrong.  The people administering the test said that since I did so well I should take the General test, the next level up.  I took it and failed by one question. ( I was guessing on a bunch of them, this is no easy little test like drivers training or something)  the group there encouraged me to try again, which I did and I passed by one question.  I walked out a happy boy. 

Much of the time in NY was spend driving around.  Something two and a half miles away could take forty minutes to get to.

Double decker bridges, and Lincolns are things you don't see in newfoundland.

You know a sailor in any town because they are down by the water looking at the boats.

Rachael and I replaced the rub rail on the Catalina, and we removed and re bed all the stanchions.

This is my kind of marine store.  I found a set of bronze hinges here. 

We went and looked at a Contessa 26 in New Hampshire.  Note to brokers: Would you buy a house that was wired like this when the realtor showed it?  They were asking premium prices for this boat that was wired by an electrical idiot.  Give me a break.

Rachael and I went for a short sail after we got the boat all ready.  This is the only wooden boat that Rachael knew of in the area. 

I think this is what people think of when they see a wooden boat, some old forgotten hull. 

Not the best way to float your boat.

This boat motored past us.  It is hard to beat the beauty of a gaff rig. 

It was a successful week in NY.  It was a little crazy running around getting everything done in NY traffic after having driven very little in the last six months for either of us.   The weather was beautiful.  It was nice to spend time with Rachael. I wish she was in Newfoundland, but she doesn't like cold.  I like cold better than hot.   I would rather be in Newfoundland than New York. 

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