St John to Witless Bay

 

We leave StJohn harbour at 11:00 after a run of groceries, that we decide to call final, as we are eager to make a first move – even a small one: we plan is to stop at Witless bay. This is only a 20 miles (about an afternoon ) trip, but this is setting us in motion. It also eases Eric in the trip, in a nice way as the weather is beautiful.  Makes sense, no ? 

We motor out of the harbor, there are a couple of pods of whales hanging close to the coast, and we keep busy tracking them (and in some cases seeing them close).

As the weather is perfectly clear, it is a good opportunity to test the radar – the results were not very conclusive: I can see, with my eyes,  much more objects, with much more discrimination than the radar does – it fails to register even a large coast guard vessel that is 5 miles away. I hope this can be improved but I am not sure, most of the tunings seem to be controlled by the radar software itself.  Let’s say that for the moment, I know that we cannot rely on it. In fact, we had already an interesting conversation with George (Windwood) on this topic, as he, too, installed a radar just for this trip, and he, too, wonders if it yields anything at all: GPS and AIS are probably enough.

Witless bay turns out to be rather nice – we anchor in front of the beach, it looks a some anchorage in Brittany or West ireland.  A guy at the fish plant warns that in strong SE winds the place is not safe at all. SE is not in the cards at all for the night, but when I am at anchor my paranoia level raises a notch, and I wake up multiple times during the night, checking the sound of the waves breaking on the beach.  It remains perfectly calm.