Sailing to the Edge of Time by John Kretschmer

Author:John Kretschmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Six

Magnetic Anomalies

Cruising Newfoundland • High-Latitude Cruising • Lunenburg • Escape from Yemen

“Newfoundland is of the sea. A mighty granite stopper thrust into the bell-mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it turns its back on the American continent, barricading itself behind the 300-mile long rampart which forms its western coast. Its other coasts that all face the open ocean are so slashed and convoluted with bays, inlets, runs, and fjords they present more than 5,000 miles of shoreline to the sweep of the Atlantic. Everywhere the hidden rocks and reefs wait to rip the bellies of unwary vessels. Nevertheless these coasts are a seaman’s world, for the harbors and havens they offer are numberless.”

—Farley Mowat, The New Founde Land

The Cabot Strait, off the South Coast of Newfoundland, August 1994

The pilothouse of a sturdy sailboat is an ideal place to watch a gale unfurl. Our cozy perch was secured to a concrete wharf built to accommodate ice-breaking supply ships that carry vital rations for the small village of Rencontre East at the northern end of Fortunate Bay. The wind tried to blow us to sea. Sipping a glass of Louise’s homemade wine—surprisingly drinkable—I watched low clouds that looked like blocks of granite scud across a withering sky. Storm clouds in Newfoundland have a permanence—they’re not the towering cumulonimbus of the tropics that come and go—these mean business, and the land is scarred from the gale-force winds they generate. Trees are bent like old men and scratchy brush clings to rocky headlands with a hint of desperation. While there’s a sense that the land is new, untamed, thrust up by impatient glaciers not that long ago, there’s also the feeling that those who live in the sparse clusters of coastal clapboard houses are also desperate, clinging to a way of life the next storm might just blow away. My reverie was interrupted when Louise announced it was time for supper. That fact that I was sailing in Newfoundland at all was a quirk, a result of a random phone call, another serendipitous turn in the life of a man always on the lookout for, well, serendipitous turns.

I almost never answer the phone. No, it has nothing to do with my low JET, I can handle a phone, even an iPhone—but of course in 1994 we were still using primitive landlines. I know myself well, I am a talker, and if I do pick up, a long conversation is likely to ensue. It’s not unusual for friends and acquaintances, often with just a hint of desperation in their voices, to track me down. They’re looking for an honest, unvarnished opinion about a certain boat or a certain time of year to make a passage, or a certain reassurance that they’re not crazy to be thinking about quitting land life to voyage beyond the horizon. That I might be considered a voice of reason is a scary thought, but we all need our dreams supported. Even if it’s a complete stranger calling, I am

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