Day 3 - Newfoundland

We pulled into the ferry terminal lot around 11:15 last night. Aside from a large number of tractor trailer rigs, we were the only ones there. Needless to say, we went straight to bed, sleeping in until the late hour of 6 am. By that time there were two other vehicles behind us, a pickup truck with a boat trailer and a truck with a travel trailer.

That didn’t last long as the cars and RVs started streaming in. By 9 am there were three long lines of cars and two lines, each about a 100 yards long, of RVs of various types. A gargantuan Class A pulled up beside us that was part of a caravan of 13 on an organized tour. They will be on Newfoundland for the next two weeks, hopefully not in places where we are. There were also a couple of dozen motorcycles, mostly BMW GSes, many doing the loop up through Newfoundland, over to Labrador, across the Trans-Labrador highway and down through Quebec. We got a chance to talk we some of them on the voyage.

While we were waiting, the overnight ferry had arrived and a fleet of small diesel tractors were shuttling many trailers off and on the ship. Finally, it was time to drive Speedy aboard. We were on the lower of the two vehicle decks, right behind a tractor and trailer and almost next to the long double line of motorcycles, all strapped down.

We had to turn off the propane while onboard, so it was going to be a bit dicey as to whether the refrigerator would stay cold. We bought a bag of ice last night to put in the refrigerator compartment, hoping it would keep it cool enough. We had our fingers crossed.

After locking up Speedy it was a climb up to Deck 7 where the seating lounge was. Speedy was on Deck 3. We parked our backpacks on pair of seats next to a window (without much of a view) and went out on deck to look for birds. We saw only gulls and cormorants around the terminal, but we did spot a Bald Eagle soaring overhead. The ferry left at about noon, a bit behind schedule, so we stopped at the onboard Barista Cafe (which has no barista...and no espresso) for a mediocre sandwich. We somehow missed the real restaurant further forward on the same deck.

After lunch it was up to the outside area of Deck 10 to look for seabirds. We could only find a few Gannets and as we got further offshore, even they petered out. We were pretty tired, so we alternated between forays out on deck and napping at our seats. We saw no other birds until seeing a couple of Northern Fulmars and an unidentifiable Alcid just before arriving. We spoke with a couple of other birders who spent nearly four hours out on deck and they saw a total of four birds. It was not a good day for pelagic birding.

After the seven hour voyage, we were quickly offloaded and made our way to the J.T. Cheeseman Provincial Park which is only anout 10km outside of Port aux Basques. We were able to get an electric site. Normally, we wouldn’t be so needy, but the refigerator was in the mid-40s and it cools much better on AC than on propane these days. After a quick dinner, we were ready to call it a day. Not only was it a seven hour voyage, Newfoundland time is another 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic Time.

Tomorrow, we will stop back at the Visitor Center in Port aux Basques and maybe go out to Cape Ray, which supposedly had good seawatching. We will probably stay here another night as well.

But first, we’ll sleep in. Then it will be time to start exploring Newfoundland.