{"id":2288,"date":"2008-06-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:52:15","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:52:15","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew508","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew508\/","title":{"rendered":"Passage to Red Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"
Passage to Red Bay, Labrador. Navigating in fog, and greeting a huge pod of humpback whales.<\/div>\n

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In a lot of cruising grounds if we awoke to thick fog we’d almost certainly take this as a reason to put off departing. But in this part of the world you learn to live with reduced visibility, or you never move. (The exception is when you’re dealing with ice.)<\/p>\n

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Can you imagine working a sailing vessel with no electronics in this environment? You had to have a really good sense for the sea, sharp eyes and ears, and a good hand with the lead line. It helped to have luck on your side as well. Although we have an array of modern electronics, we still keep our eyes open, and speed down to a level where we can stop within the range of visibility if required.<\/p>\n

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It also helps to know precisely where we are (even if we do not totally trust the charts). We’ve been using a beta version of the new Coastal Explorer charting software (left hand computer screen) and really like it (we will start testing the latest Nobeltec shortly). The Furuno 2117 radar is a wonderful tool (center), and the sonar\/depthfinder (right) is always on as a quality control for navigation.<\/p>\n

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Speaking of which, how about this for a ball of fish (probably capelin)? A few minutes after seeing this, a large whale spouted alongside of us, and then did a deep dive. Probably saw the same thing on his own sonar.<\/p>\n

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A dropping barometer – 5mb in 12 hours – could signal really bad weather if we were in the mid-latitudes. But at 51 degrees North it only signifies moderate winds. Just in case, we will do a thorough survey of Red Bay and pick out a couple of good places to anchor if the weather forecasters have things wrong (this area is littered with wrecks, old and new, that had dragged anchor).<\/p>\n

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Speaking of weather, it has been raining steadily for the last couple of days. With most radar, rain will hide even big targets. So the radars come equipped with various types of rain suppression capabilities. The Furuno 2117 has the best we have ever used. In this photo (above) there is no rain suppression ("rain auto" is off).<\/p>\n

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And then we turn on "auto rain" to the lowest setting. After several antenna sweeps the radar has rejected the rain interference. The tricky part is to reduce rain clutter, but maintain the targets like fishing boats and buoys. There is one of each above after auto rain is turned on.<\/p>\n

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Life does go on aboard, even when we are operating in IFR weather. This has been a three-loads-of-wash day.<\/p>\n

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Red Bay, Labrador, is the oldest whaling port in the New World, having been in use since the 1500s. <\/p>\n

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As a welcome to Labrador, several cetaceans came by to blow "hello" our way – and we have spied our first iceberg.<\/p>\n

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We also hit a personal low point after many hundreds of thousands of miles cruising. Sea water temperature of 37F\/3C, and this is the summer!<\/p>\n

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Although there are the usual modern and tidy buildings ashore, we are now seeing structures with history. And there are even "re-enactors" (actors who play historic characters). We thought the chamber of commerce did a really good job with these animatronic whales.<\/p>\n

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As if to prove this is not a just a fluke, here is another. <\/p>\n

We must have picked the right spot to anchor because we have been surrounded by feeding humpback whales for the past two hours. Maybe heard about the dinner menu on Wind Horse<\/em> (stuffed pork chops, home made apple sauce, baked potato, and kale).<\/p>\n

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If we had more blubber on our bodies, we could have spent more time outside taking photos.<\/p>\n

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However, the wind is picking up the temperate influence of the water (barely above freezing), so we have retired inside to continue our whale watching. <\/p>\n

These 30 or so humpbacks have the show down pat. They bubble feed, spy hop, breach, fluke slap, and of course show lots of tail. If we get better light in the next couple of days perhaps we will be able to show you some better photos (or maybe video).<\/p>\n

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And to think, Labrador was not a part of the original plan B…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passage to Red Bay, Labrador. Navigating in fog, and greeting a huge pod of humpback whales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}