First Stop

9:07 am
Hawke Bay
15 July 2008

After bashing my way out of Charlottetown in a stubborn headwind on Thursday (10 July), I enjoyed a pleasant sail around the east end of Prince Edward Island and the following day sailed up the coast of Cape Breton Island.

The following two days I enjoyed mild but productive sailing breezes in the afternoons and evenings but only ghosting airs for the night and mornings. Saturday I sailed by the Isles de la Madeleine which I could see from some 30 miles off. Sunday I cruised up the south west coast of Newfoundland.

The winds started to pick up Sunday evening. I recorded doing 7.5 knots with a double reefed main and a two-thirds furled jib. By midnight the jib was completely furled and the mainsail reefed down to its smallest possible dimension as the wind picked up.

All night the winds increased in tempo - like the devil beating its drum faster and faster. The next day I spent hanging on as we surfed down the growing waves. With winds blowing 30+ knots, gusting well past 40 knots, the rigging wires start 'singing', or is it 'howling'. Perhaps 'screaming' would a better description. That's where the 'Screaming Sixties' gets its label.

By 4 o'clock in the afternoon I had followed the Newfoundland west coast for over 100 miles and needing a rest I ducked into an opening anchoring in Hawke Bay just south of Port Saunders. A welcome rest.

Hawke Bay is on 50 degrees latitude north. I have left the 'Roaring Forties' with a bang. Ahead if me in the next couple of weeks awaits the 'Screaming Sixties'. I'm not familiar with the nickname for the fifties. If yesterday is characteristic I'd call it the "ferocious fifties', or something like that.

I'm reminded of a book I read while in Trinidad. Entitled 'There be no dragons', it was authored by an American sailor who had sailed extensively. His book was out to prove that long distance ocean sailing was neither dangerous nor foolish. His one caveat was that this only applied to sailing within 30 degrees either side of the equator. It turned out that this brave soul had never ventured out of this 'comfort zone'.

Hawke Bay is an attractive and reasonably secure anchorage about 3 miles long and half a mile wide. We are the only boat anchored here. There is a small village (20 houses?) situated on the far side of the bay. It stradles the only road that runs up the west coast.

It's highly likely that we (me & boat) will be the only sailing boat to anchor here this year. (The last reference to Hawke Bay in the Newfoundland Cruising Guide was made in 1968). If it were in the 30 dergree latitude 'comfort zone' range it would probably be crowded by American and European yachts, marinas, resorts, and the like. Security always comes with a price.

We're 85 miles from the northern tip of Newfoundland. There's a former Viking settlement site there I plan to visit (L'Anse aux Meadow). It will be my last port of call before heading northeast into iceberg country, the screaming sixties, and towards Iceland.