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| The Game | ||
Seven count 'em... seven miles of progress
Date: August 19, 1998
Author: Doug
Lat/Lon: 59 deg 29' N, 63 deg 41' W
Location: Whale Island, Bear Jaw Cove
Course: Anchored
Speed:
Weather: Sunny, windy, warm
Sightings: Half-naked men, rowing
Click on the pictures below to view enlargements
We knock on wood, we make offerings to the gods, we avoid speaking of a goal - such as arriving in Newfoundland - as though we take success for granted. We brave men are a bunch of superstitious ninnies.
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Rowing |
And nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the wind - or the lack thereof. The wind is understood by all of us to have a fairly well-defined personality, the central trait of which is the way it loves a good laugh - at our expense. It is not mean-spirited, the wind, it is just contrary. Mischievous.
So there is no argument and no eye-rolling when one of us observes that the reason the wind just died is obviously because we just raised the sail; or because, after having sailed well for a few minutes, we had the audacity to stow the oars. To stow the oars once under sail, on a day of flukey breezes, is to throw the gauntlet down at the feet of the wind. But it must be done! - or we will just keep tripping over them.
Besides which, if we don't stow the oars, the wind, in a different mood now, might take that as a vote of "no confidence". And die with a barely audible "As you wish-h-h-h...."
Sometimes, what the wind chooses to do is simply a matter of what you want it to do, and how badly you want it. If it cooperates, you can celebrate proudly, for it has favored you! - and if it fails, you suffer the sting of a personal affront. But you don't curse the wind on a boat with no motor.
Today, we must have done all the wrong things because for all our efforts, this was not a big day of southerly progress. Seven count 'em... seven miles.
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The sail is full and the oars are stowed - for the moment |
We went into it, I admit, with eyes open: there was no breeze to speak of when we rowed away from our anchorage at the Iron Strand. But the indescribable beauty of that place was still with us, and the skies were still clear. We had gotten a decent night's rest, and those whose hour of anchor watch came in the darkness of the night were treated to a fine display of the northern lights.
At breakfast, sitting in the sun munching giant bowls of granola, we talked as a group about our progress, and the long road still ahead. We agreed that it would be a shame to feel like we had to speed through Labrador without taking time to rest, explore, and soak it all in.
On the other hand, we need to be in L'Anse aux Meadows by mid-September, and the length of the coastline - 600 miles - between here and there, along with our total dependence on a very fickle element (see above), more or less demand that we move whenever we can. Thus it was that we decided to push out today, especially since our anchorage would not protect us from any strong wind that might come up suddenly.
My own situation is further complicated by my big brother's wedding, for which I am supposed to be Best Man. On September 12, duneside in Cape Cod, the stalwart Ned marries the beautiful Karen. This is a tough one, as my chances of being there fade a little each time the sail begins to flap.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Anybody who's been saying to themselves, "I don't take the old jet out enough these days!" want to help out a Viking?
Also at breakfast, we reiterated the need for everyone to be patient and civil with each other. The seams start to show at the end of a long day, when the fact that Biff's oar stroke is just a little slow for Whiff makes Whiff want to bastinado Biff, but Whiff just makes some sarcastic comment about slow rowers the world over, and now Biff silently scoffs at Whiff for not being direct; and when you're rowing, or when you're simply stuck with the same slightly imperfect souls for three months, you have a lot of time to savor slights and gripes.
Rowing all day in the warm sunshine might not have been so bad, had not the wind kept teasing us so. As it was, we had a lot to occupy us. We went with a new shift system: instead of shipping six oars, since we anticipated a potentially long haul, we went with four; and instead of 60-minute shifts, we tried 30. (The six-oar system has one side, port and starboard alternating, relieved every 30 minutes, so a body works 60 out of every 90 minutes.)
We played a couple more games of Boticelli, but that started to get old. People on break read, dozed, jumped in the water. Rob got his ear pierced a second time. (John G used a sailor's needle to do it, after numbing the ear with a small chunk of iceberg, and threaded the hole with rigging wire.)
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John wears a sailmaker's palm to pierce Rob's ear |
But the wind, the blessed prankster, kept enticing us to raise sail. And forcing us to lower it. Up and down. And this afternoon, just when rowing had lost its charm, it gusted hard and warm from the west, lured us halfway across the bay we are now in, gave us giddy hopes of reaching Cape White Handkerchief, some ten miles distant - and then came at us just as suddenly from the south.
So we changed the tack and came about. We headed inshore towards Whale Island, where we might just give up the fight. But now the wind was coming back around to the west, heading us off, making us go north, and we'd already been there.
So we came about again, and sailed on a beam reach towards that magical Cape White Handkerchief. And then, the wind headed us off fast enough to back the sail... so we did it all over again. And again.
Finally we faced a west wind strong and steady enough to take us to Whale Island, as by this time it lay to our north. Of course, we might have tried going south again too, and that is what I wanted to do awfully badly, but it was getting late and Terry had played enough with this flukey offshore wind.
So here we are in our makeshift harbor on Whale Island. A shore party went exploring and found a bunch of large, heavy, lower jaw bones. Identification is not agreed upon, but we are calling this place Bear Jaw Bay all the same.
Erik fixed up some dough and then amazed us, and himself too I think, by making delicious calzones in a frying pan. The west wind continues to blow strong and steady, and we hope it will be there in the morning.
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