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From Piccaire we travelled around the east side of Long Island into Bay d’Espoir through scenic, but aquaculture-filled Little Passage. We stopped for the night at Jack Damp Cove with great views into Bay d’Espoir. The next day we ran through even more scenic Lampidoes Passage and anchored at beautiful and sheltered Middle Goblin Bay…

In 1961 when best-selling Canadian author Farley Mowat visited Piccaire, he could barely find room to tie his skiff to the crowded new Government wharf. He prefered to anchor off Piccaire and make the three-mile walk overland if he wanted to reach the nearby town of Gaultois. Little remains of that new Government wharf today,…

When there’s no room for error, even a small mechanical failure can make for a very bad day. In this case, one of the four main engines on Boston Harbor Cruises’ Regency remained in forward gear coming into Long Wharf and, with only seconds to figure out what was wrong and take action, time ran…

Earlier this week our dryer stopped producing heat en route to Rencounter Bay, Newfoundland. The drum would tumble, but there was no heat. Once we’d anchored, we rigged a clothesline in the engine room to take advantage of the heat to dry the large load of clothes while we investigated the failure. We opened up…

We weren’t planning to visit Round Harbour on the south side of Long Island as the entrance looked tight and the charts showed aquaculture filling the small basin inside. But we decided to at least check it out on our way past and are glad we did. The entrance wasn’t difficult and the bay inside…

Sam Hitches Harbour is as beautiful as Little Bay, and also has a waterfall at the head. It seems like it’s a rare anchorage here that doesn’t have a waterfall. Newfoundland is exactly our kind of cruising grounds: solitude with amazing natural scenery. Except for a few local-looking boats docked at Harbour Breton, we’ve not…

Little Bay was our first of many amazing anchorages in Bay d’Espoir on Newfoundland’s Southwest Coast. We left Harbour Breton in a fog thick enough to warrant our fog horn, but visibility improved in time for us to get a view to dramatic Connaigre Head and was clear once we reached Little Bay. There we…

After landing in Newfoundland at Jersey Harbour, the following day we continued to the head of Harbour Breton and anchored in Nancys Cove in Northeast Arm. From there, we toured the area by dinghy and ended up running all the way back south to visit the town of Harbour Breton. With new jobs from the…

After fueling up in Boston we ran directly to Newfoundland, with a brief stop in Lockeport, Nova Scotia to clear into Canada. We adjusted course a couple of times to working through a mass of floats at Parker Ridge on the first night out of Boston and a group of fishing vessels off Nova Scotia…

Oil analysis is one of these practices where many people I know find it valuable and send their oil out for analysis on every oil change. We don’t on Dirona not because we don’t believe in it but more from a perspective that the hassle/cost-to-value equation isn’t sufficiently compelling for our usage. When I raced…