Crossing the Pond

Iºm way behind on my blogging and I have soooo many pictures. Iºm using a Portugese key board so there will be some typos. Sorry. This is me being SCREECHED IN at the Foggy Rock Hostel by Angela and her grandparents. You had to down a jigger of SCREECH and not leave a drop, have some Newfie steak, bologna, Kiss the Puffinºs bottom and say something in Newfie, ´May you jib be full, or something like that. The Grandpa wore oilskins and told us what to repeat and then we were ummmmm touched on our shoulders with a wooden, sword and delcared Newfies. It was a lot of fun.

This is me and Angela the young woman who ran the Foggy Rock Hostel. She gave us bedding for the boat and was so helpful and good to us. She drove us around and was there everyday to give us information.

Well we actually started out of St. Johnºs Harbour twice. Here is our first, first day of our trip at sea, June 26th around noon. As you can see Anthony is very happy to get going and is holding the tiller in his hand which we held for two hours every two hours all the way across the Atlantic, yes, we hand steered the boat for 13 days.

Here we are on the first, first day still trynig to leave the St. Johnºs Harbour. As you can see it was very, very foggy. We called the Coast Guard to tell them we were leaving and to let them know our plans so they could keep an eye on us and they informed us, first that it was too busy right then for us to go when the fog was so thick, just outside the harbour were a bunch of fishing boats coming and it would be better if we waited till the next day and they said that once we were out of Canadian Waters they would not be following our progress. Ummm that was a surprise to us, so we called Jim Lewis and told him if he didntºt hear from us in 3 weeks that he should do what he needed to do to find us or let the powers that be that we were missing. He was our Canada Coast Guard.

Captain James Christie at the helm, checking out that fog.

This the next day and is our Day 1 at sea, June 27 at noon. This is the battery on the port side of St. Johnºs Harbour just below Signal Hill. I love the colours.

Here we are at sea. What you see in front is Cape Spear. We sailed around that and then off to the Azores.

Anthony at the helm. We saw one iceberg in the water. We did 2 hour shifts at night and 3 hour shifts in the days with some variations. At night we had 2 in the cock pit and 2 sleeping. Often we had dolphins swimming beside us and squeaking at us and once we saw a whale spouting water in the distance. There were always birds playing in the wind and the waves and lots and lots of water. It was quite cold, three layers of clothes whenever we were in the cockpit.

Sally the rain suit you gave me for the bike was great, warm and dry and big enough to put two layers on underneath it. Captain James gave me a crew hat to wear. The soft bimini and the soft dodger were great for keeping us dry. The first two days were very foggy, lumpy and wet.

Day 7 at Foggy Rock Hostel in St. John's

We went to the Ship Pub and watched the Mayers Bayers play jigs and reels. I got their CD. They were fabulous. It was open mic night too.

The streets in St. John's are crazy steep, soooo steeeeeep there are stairs on some of the side walks.

This is the sign for The Ship Pub, great music.

We're staying at Foggy Rock Hostel. This is the common living room, we share the kitchen and there are 2 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms. We've met lots of great people from Alberta, BC and Ontario and Dave the owner and Angela, his daughter, are just super people to know.

The hostel is a historic building, a row house, three floors up. It sooo clean and beautiful and is starting to feel like home. Angela the young woman who looks after it is a real pleasure and has been a great help driving us to get the Alternator fixed at Billy Nugents in Lower Cove.

This is Anthony and I with St. John's Harbour behind us, Signal Hill on the left and Cape Spear on the right. The second mast on the right is Carmen 1's. We listened to a great blues band in the park on the weekend. The scenery is awesome.

These are the boys from right to left: Tony, Jim and Anthony. We're hoping to leave tomorrow for Horta in the Azores. The alternator is fixed, the wind generator is almost together, we have been buying groceries for the last 5 days to feed us for 14 to 20 days. Anthony took 40 gallons of water to the boat today with the help of a new friend Ian and his car. We have one more run to Sobey's and the Liquor store and we think and Leith is helping us with our last run with his car, he is the brother of a friend in Toronto...that's it. We're off to the Azores.

This is the Carmen 1. There is room for 3 to sleep down below and 1 person will be on watch at all times. He has wind vane steering and an autopilot, radar, VHF, single side band, chart finder ... everything we need ... a life raft, a dingy and motor ...a stay sail...a soft bimini...etc. It's a 36 foot Granpian.

Here the boys are trying to keep the grocery cart from flying down the steep street. It's all food.

Here we are on Water Street almost to the boat with some of our food. Today it's raining but it is the first day we have had rain. The hostel is about 5 minutes uphill from the boat and Sobey's is about 10 minutes up hill from Foggy Rock, lots of very steeeeeeeep walking, good cardio workout. Here Jim and Tony are celebrating Father's Day on the boat. I bought all the guys a wee treat for Father's Day.

First Day in St. John's Nfld.

Leaving Toronto at 10:00 am this morning on Tuesday, June 15. It was a beautifully sunny day and we are very excited to start our adventure on the sea.

The landscape from the plane makes a huge change as we headed into Labrador, so many trees, no houses, no highways, so much water, so much wilderness, just beautiful.

It was a milk run on Sunwing. We came down in Gander to drop some people off and pick some up then onto St. John's and then the plane was going to Halifax and back to Toronto. It was like a bus. There was nothing in Gander except the airport. It was beautiful, gorgeous trees and water.

Next airport was St. John's then a taxi to City Hostel on Gower Street. They had just opened another house so we were moved to Prescot Street.

The houses are very colourful, wooden and attached or touching with no front yards. The streets are very hilly and the hills are very steep.

This is a huge Anglican Church in downtown St. John's, an awesome building, just huge.

We walked a lot, up to Churchill Square to Karen's brother's restaurant for supper, Mexican, and then we walked for another 2 or 3 hours around the harbour front and the streets downtown. We found one sailboat and asked the captain if Jim could dock there when he arrived on Carmen1 from Cape Breton. We're hoping he'll arrive on Thursday. He called yesterday or the day before to say that he and Tony were leaving Cape Breton that day heading for St. John's Harbour.

The middle house, 50 Prescot is where we're staying in a bedroom at the back. It's a very old house, newly painted. We share a washroom with one other bedroom on our floor and have a common living room downstairs and a common kitchen. We bought granola and bananas for breakfast, and vodka and rum for night caps.

This is a picture of the terrain in Labrador, isn't it just gorgeous.

Service Trip to Moldova

Moldova is between Ukraine and Romania. It is a very small and was very interesting to visit. I went on a Service trip from Appleby College with 3 adults and 10 students. We worked at the Orphanage #2 in Chisinau. This is a picture of traditional Moldovan costumes in a tiny museum-like house at a place where there was a monastary for monks built into a stone wall and in caves.

On our way to Chisinau we had a 4 hour stop over in Vienna, Austria. We caught a bus to the downtown are of Vienna. This was one of the buildings there. There were beautiful buildings and statues.

This picture was taken from one of the gun holes in the fort in Sorocco, the gypsy capital of Moldova. It is an Orthodox Christian Cathedral. Often there aren't any pews in them, the people stand for the service. This way more people can fit inside. There were a lot of Cathedrals' around Moldova.

This is the main road from Chisinau to Sorocco. It was hard packed dirt and our driver, Igor, drove slowly and tried to avoid the huge pot holes. There were small villages along the way where all the houses were and the huge fields of very dark and rich soil for as far as you can see. There weren't any farm houses in the fields only in the village areas.

This a a picture of a building at the Orphange #2 in Chisinau. The children here were from 7 years of age to 15. We sanded down the playground equipment and painted it and made some outdoor benches and installed them around the grounds. There were two other buildings like this one, two for residence and one for the school.

This is looking down the hallway inside one of the residences. The girls from Appleby painted a mural on one of the walls in one building. The children in the orphanage slept 4 in a bedroom and there were 4 single beds in the rooms. The parents of these children could not afford to feed them and look after them so during the school year they would come here for education and room and board. About 200 of the children had no parents. There were 500 children at the orphanage and 200 more were coming from other orphanages in the next 2 months.

When were were in Sorocco we visited a tower where people would come to pray and it overlooked this beautiful river. On the right of the river is Ukraine and on the left is Moldova.

We had 8, 16 year old girls with us painting outside in the playground. The young boys from the orphanage came and visited us every day to talk and tease the girls. They loved trying to teach us Moldovan and they like to try out our English words too. Each student took a bag of donations for the orphanage and a bag for their own clothes.

Our Moldovan leader, Igor, loved music and therefore treated us to 2 nights at the Filharmonic, an Accordian Concert and a Violin/Piano Concert. The music was awesome. Igor worked for Projects Abroad. He made us feel so very welcomed. He fed us really well too, soup, bread, pork, potatoes, soup, bread, ...

This is the beautiful tower shaped like a candle on top of a hill in Sorocco. We had to walk up 567 steps to see the inside of the tower.

Winter Camping at Temagami Lake

This is me at Appleby College catching the bus to go up to Rabbit Nose Island for winter camping with 47 Appleby students and 3 professional trippers and other teaching staff. It was very exciting getting prepared for this trip. I bought a lot of warm clothing from TNT on Lakeshore Blvd. It was hard to decide what I would need on the trip to keep comfortable. I got a new thermal rest which was great when it came to sleeping on the snow and I borrowed the knapsack from Niall's family in order to carry everything together.









First we had to walk across the lake, 10 km, to the island from the mainland. It was a real trial for me physically. I walked most of the way but did get a ride for the very last part. My student, Niall, walked the whole way with the other sighted students. It was blowing and snowing the whole way across as you can see in the picture.







It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. If you got cold all you had to do was either start walking around in the very deep snow or start shovelling and make a bench or quincey (snow hut) and before you knew it you would be sweating. We took a few breaks while walking across the lake and Mr. Stamper brought us some warm water to fill our water bottles with and granola bars.








Niall was an awesome sport. He never complained about the cold or the hard work. He collected wood and broke up kindling for our fire and shovelled snow for everyone's quincey with the other students.













The weather was sunny on the days we were camping in the quincey's. I did have time to collect wood, take pictures and sit and contemplate life. We were out for three days and two nights. It was a lot of shovelling to make the quinceys'. Two for the boys, one for the girls and one for the leaders. We also made two couches to sit on.













One evening we had a beautiful winter sunset. The trees smelled awesome and it was so quiet out there in the middle of nowhere. We had a lot of ravens around cawing at us.












This was our quincey. I hung my fur hat outside so I could find it quickly, for in the evening when it got colder. I wore about 5 layers of clothing. The quincey's were quite warm inside for sleeping. You just definitely didn't want to get up in the middle of the night to pee. That would be waaaaaay toooooo cooooold, so no drinking after 7 at night.





This is the inside of our quincey looking out the opening. It still amazes me how warm it is for sleeping inside a pile of snow. What an awesome experience.









This is a picture of the map of the area of Lake Temagami and Rabbit Nose Island. It is a very beautiful place to camp and spend time. The map of Temagami some how disappeared and every time I go to delete some of the print I lose a picture so, no more deleting anything. I want to get this blog done.
This is a picture of our fearless leader, Doug Stamper. He is the outdoor ed. teacher at Appleby's northern campus. He took very good care of us and was an unrealy cook. Thanks to you Doug for such a wonderful time camping.








This gives you an idea of how much snow we had up there. This is the window for the room where the kids sleep if they are sick so we can watch them closer. There was sooooo much snow.








It was definitely a wonderful place to sit and think, think about life, and all it has to offer. I loved the huge bolders and rock cuts formed by the Canadian Shield. It really speaks of a different time, a time when the natives were in the area without us, making their living off the land and animals. It was a trip to be remembered, forever.