Canadian weather gurus are predicting 20 to 30 knots of wind from the east in Cabot Straits today, with gusts to 40 knots. However, the distance exposed to easterly fetch is only about 80 miles (after which Newfoundland acts as a giant breakwater), so we are underway at 0445 for the 185-nautical-mile trip to Lark Bay.

If this were a long passage, we’d probably wait for a nicer day. But the distance is short, and we doubt there is anything which the Cabot Straits can brew up quickly enough to be a problem for Wind Horse.

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Four hours later and the wind is blowing just twenty knots. But the seas are amazing. Really steep, almost square, and running six to eight feet (1.8 to 2.4m) with the occasional ten footer (3m) wave thrown in. The current is light, and we cannot figure out what is causing the seas.

Our oversized NAIAD stabilizer fins are paying for their drag penalty right now. Roll is averaging less than five degrees in these beam seas.

In an exchange of e-mails with John Harries (about Newfoundland anchorages) he mentions that Cabot Straits is referred to as "The Chuck" (as in extended causal relationships with reverse peristalsis). We can understand why.

Lots of interesting cloud shapes and squalls to watch. We caught some of the wave action on video and will try and get this up on SetSail before too long.

"Land ho" and to weather, calming the Cabot Straits waves. A huge humpback whale comes by to welcome us to this new (to us) cruising ground.

Your typical Newfoundland early summer sunset.

This went on for half an hour.

We would shoot a series of photos, put the cameras away, and then drag them out again as the light show would get even more dramatic.

We normally do not enter strange harbors at night, but the entrance to Lark Harbor, at the western end of the Bay of Islands, is easy, without off-lying dangers. So armed with radar, chart plotter, and SONAR we had the anchor down at 2230.