7/31/04   St. Johns Newfoundland.    <St. Johns Images>

Civilization meets Jed Clampett Taft and his Newfie Boat Dog (TM).  Cars, buses, sirens, graffiti, phone booths with no phones left in them, office buildings, beggars, assorted petty crooks and the like. (As an aside, about three weeks ago some seedy looking guy in Port Aux Basques did come down to the boat and ask for a "Two-nee".  I wasn't sure at the time just exactly what he was seeking. Turns out, the one dollar coin has an image of a loon (bird) on it -- nicknamed a "Loony" -- and the subsequently introduced two dollar coin naturally became a "Two-nee".  I knew "Loony" but only figured out "Two-nee" sometime after the beggar made his plea.  A classic case of aiming too high.)

First thing I noticed here was an airliner flying overhead.  Of course, many planes fly over Newfoundland on their way to and from Europe -- but at 40,000 ft.  This was a big noisy jet at 2000 ft. that had just taken off from St Johns airport.  Hadn't heard/seen that in a month and I had unknowingly gotten used to the quiet (except for the gentle purr of my 440 HP diesel.)

Second thing I noticed was the stink of the sewage filled harbor (apparently the sewage acts as a sort of anti-freeze in winter -- but they really ought to re-think the cost-benefit on this one.)  The problem has two sources: (1) everybody shits in the harbor, and (2) the natural geography that makes the place such a great harbor works against flushing and cleansing.  St Johns harbor is a one mile long by half mile wide deep dogleg with access to the sea via "The Narrows", a half mile long by 300-500 foot wide 90 degree angled cut at one end of the dogleg.  You can't really even see the opening from the sea until you are right on top of it.  (People have mistakenly chosen the indistinguishable similar blind opening 1/4 mile to the north which leads to a rock filled shoal bay.)  They even have radio-coordinated traffic control to coordinate vessel movement in and out of the harbor through The Narrows.  You call in from several reporting points on the way in and a friendly voice on the radio tells you that some big ship in The Narrows is likely to run your little ass down and turn you in to mulch, and you might want to slow down and wait a bit.  Anyway, the result of this great natural harbor configuration is that if you drop, oh, say an "egg", in the far end of the harbor, it probably takes several thousand tide cycles before 75% of the "egg" makes its way out to sea.

There are no facilities for "yachts" (me) in the harbor at all.  There are numerous people with yachts here, but they all keep them on the other side of the big peninsula that the city is located on, which is a 20 minute drive to a nice calm, scenic, clean, and fresh smelling bay.  But it is about 70 miles (or a day's steam) around the wrong way by sea.  They are perfectly happy to have me here, and the harbor authority assigned me a nice area to tie up in (the whole shore is solid docks), but my little-boat berth is, of course, at the far end of the dogleg where the "egg" lingers longest before making its way out to sea.  We sleep with the generator running the air conditioner so as to be comfortable and avoid dreams of being buried in a flood of molasses (it is also moderately warm here now so air conditioning is not such a bad thing.)

Winds were up today so we are here at least another night.  At least there is a fairly decent (if over-priced) cheese and pate store.