Grey River

The sea out there was rough. Coming out of the quiet shelter of Fox Harbour we were met with steep, choppy waves. The swells were not only bigger than before but completely unpredictable, sometimes rising up beside us in slate grey walls, well over our heads, forcing us to turn the boat into the wave, and sometimes we fell hard off the back of a wave with an unavoidable violence. We could see the headland marking the entrance to Grey River only 9 miles away. The shore to our left was a cliff, essentially. We both were very silent, which was good, cause i didn't know that rob was scared and he didn't know i was, which made us both less scared. Instead of getting better further out to sea, away from the complicating factors of shoals and rocks and shoreline, the seas just increased in size and choppiness. What was incredible is how well Fully dealt with the truly nasty conditions. We had to pump her out a few times, but her size and weight meant she worked with the waves, not against them and managed, with Rob's skill, to ride even the steepest, most churning swell.
Still. It was pretty hairy.
We were doing ok at least, about three miles from Grey River when the wind, quite suddenly, swung around to the southeast. That had been forecast, we just thought we had some time before it happened. We now had a twenty knot headwind and we still had three miles to go. We were experiencing a lot of leeward slip now, starting to worry that we wouldn't make it around the headland, and we weren't making much headway east either. We attempted a big tack, but found we were headed more west than south, and the situation wasn't improving. Then the wind almost died on us, leaving us even more at the mercy of the uneven swell which was pushing us, of course, towards the cliffs on our left. Once again, the pedals saved the day. Between the sail and Rob, we managed to get far enough out to sea to avoid the headland and it was with relief that i was able to pick out the lighthouse marking Grey River. The entrance to the Fiord was a narrow slit in the forbidding cliffs, only about 50 yards wide or so, and looking messy, with strange waves curling backwards on themselves in the mouth. As i had worried a strong tide was coming out of thirty miles of fiord and meeting, with some violence, a strong southerly swell coming in. At least now the wind was on our side, and it was only with its help that we were able, Rob pedalling like mad, to make it through the churning mouth of the fiord. We pedalled the mile to Grey River, tied up against a deserted dock and sat, silently, sharing in a sense of quiet relief, almost an exhilaration at what we had just managed to deal with.
Newfoundland had swung, and we had slipped, as Rob said.

Walking into town we immediately picked up two seven year old identical twin tourguides, Bradley and Jamie, who showed us around the tiny, strange, town. Their babbling, peppered with bits of lore about the place was equal parts sweet, interesting, and hilarious, and i for one couldn't keep the grin off my face. A tired and shaky grin, but a grin nonetheless. We were unable to understand everything, especially as they both generally talked at once, but we absorbed a fair bit of seven year old information about the town--best babysitter, friendliest dogs, etc. Grey River was tiny and utterly different than anywhere i've been. 100 people, one store, and a tiny school, all wedged into a small triangle of flat land at the base of two, thousand foot mountains, rising almost straight up from the waterline. We took a little walk up to a lookout and stared for a while. It was the kind of view that does something to you. We also shared in the somehow deeply satisfying activity of watching the ferry come in from Burgeo while the entire town assembled to meet it, helping to unload all the necessities of life that had come for them.

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