Newfoundland
In may 2007, Tomer and I, flew to the island of Newfoundland to circumnavigate it on sea kayaks.
The kayaks arrived by ferry to our starting point at Corner brook, (a paper-mill town on the west coast of the island), and there we met Simon Jansen from “Pure Adventures”, our first “newfee” fiend. Simon was our logistics manager from the start to the finish of the trip.
Anyway, we packed the kayaks and were off to see the sea, the wild life and the people of NFLD.
We decided to paddle clockwise going north to see the packed sea ice before it all blew away with the off shore winds of the summer. Every day it was getting colder and colder as we kayaked north and after a week and a half we saw our first icebergs and were so excited to paddle beside them. That was a special experience. One of the advantages of the sea ice was that it kept the sea calmer so as long as it wasn’t packed right up to the land it gave us an opened highway to kayak thru. When we reached the most northern point of the island there was so much ice we found our selves paddling in circles to get around the bergs, realizing that this could be dangerous and we might get stuck off shore in the ice, so we paddled to shore and pulled our kayaks up onto the rocky beautiful shore.
We spent a couple of days on those rocks, walking into the nearest community that was 6 km away, for supplies. The woman at the shop was extremely kind to us and let us use a phone to call home, she told us that it has been the iciest year they remember and that the fishermen of the north had missed the whole lobster season.
The next day to our surprise, the ice pushed off-shore giving us way and some time to quickly pack the kayaks and paddle around the northern headland and continue our journey.
Paddling around Newfoundland was a big challenge for us and quite demanding as well, with 11 open crossings on the way.
Our second crossing was one of 90 km, on a perfect calm sunny day. For this crossing and all the rest we used our compass, map and watch for navigation. We did not see land on that day for 10 hours of the crossing. Taking a bearing to paddle on, and praying we wouldn’t miss land on the other side of the bay. Every hour we tuck a short brake for pee and a sandwich, So we each ate a loaf of bread every day. This was a long day of 13 hours, and we were absolutely exhausted at the end of it.
Along the way, if we didn’t manage to end the day in a small harbor, we would find another option for landing which often was very rocky. There was a good reason this island was also called: the rock!!!!
As we paddled down towards the south coast the days became foggier and foggier and most of our days we were paddling like the blind, starring only at the compass, whether it was headland to headland or crossings of 30-40 km. bays, just waiting to hear the fog horn at the headland across, and again thanking god and our selves for not paddling off to Europe or Florida. At the end of one of those scary crossing when we finally heard the horn and saw the braking waves on the cliffs, we paddled closer to see the cliffs covered with thousands of sea birds, nesting and flying over our heads. What a sight!!!!
Also at some point of the trip was the feeding season of the whales and there were days when we had tens of humpback whales popping up beside us, or even between our kayaks, scarring the hell out of us. Not to mention the sharks we had visiting us while we were peeing one day from the kayaks. Scary!
We heard from local paddlers that all these bays we were crossing were so beautiful for kayaking but unfortunately on a trip like this we didn’t have the time to paddle all the way into any of them. (We plan one day to go back for a visit and take the time to kayak more of the coast inside these bays).
The whole circumnavigation was 2200 km and took two and a half months.