Saumure Petty Harbour
After a rather tough slog back around the top of Newfoundland, facing heavy headwinds, we sailed back into Petty Harbour.
Over the next few days we worked at sorting out the engine issues but with little success. We diagnosed it back to something up with the injectors or fuel pump. We put a clear fuel line on the system and saw that there was air in the fuel line on the return from the injectors. Air was getting in somewhere but we just couldn’t figure out where.
The local fishermen stopped by daily to chat and, when they found out that we were having some major engine issues, they took us in hand and called up their friend Waddy. Waddy has been servicing all of their fishing boats for the past 40 years. Waddy was down on the dock within the hour and quickly diagnosed the problem, clogged injectors and fuel pump. He suggested running through a cocktail of transmission fluid and injector cleaner in a litre of diesel to see if that would fix it. He said if that wouldn’t clear it then he recommended a shop where we could take them to be rebuilt. Unfortunately the magic cocktail wasn’t enough to coax our engine back to life, so it was off to the shop that Waddy recommended.The guy at the shop was really familiar with our engine and figured it would be no problem. We ended up having to order new injectors from California, which turned out to be quite costly both financially and time wise. It ended up taking about a week to get the pump and injectors back but when we reinstalled them the engine purred beautifully.
Everyone in Petty Harbour was so friendly and helpful. As it was, we were delayed there by two weeks, but I can safely say that without the help of the locals it would have been a much longer andmore expensive ordeal.
We’re incredibly grateful to everyone that helped us out. Especially Mona, who drove us everywhere we needed to go and Waddy who correctly diagnosed our engine and recommended a good shop to get the repairs done. We really enjoyed our time in Petty Harbour, getting to know a lot of the locals who would stop by our boat daily to see how things were progressing.
And so, on July 18th we motored out through the narrow breakwater. Our engine chugging away happily with its rebuilt fuel pump and injectors.
As we neared St lunaire for the second time, a strong northerly set in.
Lashing down a sail that broke loose
The next morning, just as we were about to cross the Strait of Belle Isle, we noticed our wind vane autopilot had broken. One of the metal pushrods had snapped from the force of the waves.
And so with Labrador in sight for the second time, we turned back to the now familiar harbour of St Lunaire.
Back to St Lunaire
Within an hour of us arriving at the pier, a local fishermen stopped by and offered to take us around to all the guys he knew who had welders to fix our part for us.
When we went to pick up the broken wind vane part the next morning he refused any payment for his work, saying that “anyone with the nerves to sail around the world in that boat deserves to get some stuff for free”. Newfoundland hospitality and generosity is second to none!
As soon as we made the crossing to Labrador we began seeing icebergs. At any given time there would be 3-6 large Bergs in sight.
That night as darkness set in, they became increasingly hard to spot. At 1am on Callum’s shift he saw a faintly lighter spot. The spotlight revealed that it was a huge iceberg, with icy spires reaching up higher than our mast. It was an eerie sight in the darkness of the night. Soon after I came on watch at 2 am there was a resounding crash and the boat gave a violent lurch. We had hit our first piece of ice! As we veered away and gathered speed once again, I was able to make out a large chunk of ice barely visible above the waves. Luckily we had reduced sail for just such an eventuality, but even so I took in another reef for the night.
Day broke to show a rugged coastline of Labrador, made up of rocky outcropings and looming cliffs, scattered with grounded icebergs.
We decided to make for Hawkes Bay, an old abandoned whaling port. After a tight squeeze through some rocks we were laying safely at anchor in Hawkes harbour. 200’ off our bow lay two abandoned whale boats.
Abandoned whaling boats in Hawk’s Harbour
Farther along was the red twisted pile of metal that was once a busy whaling station. Hawkes Harbour was operational on and off between 1905 and 1959. Using steam boats and explosive tipped harpoons the whaling industry would decimate the whale population over the span of a decade or so, then there would be a crash as whales became hard to find, leading to the station shutting down, before fresh whales were discovered and the process repeated itself.
Cianan with a whale rib
With the boat now hopefully in good running order we’ll leave the Labrador coast and head for Greenland. In an way, having all these mechanical mishaps happen in Newfoundland, could be seen as a blessing as they were all easily remedied, in the end with the help of all the amazing locals.