We had a week to prepare Dogbark to cruise. When the mast was down, we replaced the track as it had taken 3 people to hoist and pull down the main! We had worked with Ballard Sails but getting things through Customs wasn’t easy and unfortunately some of the order was wrong. So we carried the slides on the plane and Al had to handsew all of them on the 65′ main. But we were finally ready to go when our friends, Monica and Ted arrived.
Ted is an avid fisherman, so we had several wonderful dinners with cod and mackeral.
Our first harbor was Carbonear, 20 miles from the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club. Carbonear is one of the oldest continuous settlements in Newfoundland. It has been a multiple winner of the “Tidy Town” award and the Mayor, Frank Butts, plans to win it again. Frank Butts welcomed Monica and Ted and showed them around his gas station and sold them a jar of marinated moose which later became a fantastic shepherd’s pie.
We had dinner at the Stone Jug, one of the oldest buildings in Canada, built in 1860 from hand carved stone. When it was renovated, they tried to keep it as authentic as possible.
The town center had a large pond in it’s center with a boardwalk all around it. There was a mother duck and ducklings.
Fun to be followed this years adventures