If you favor fog, fjords, freezing cold sailing and fathoms of water, you would have a fabulous cruise in New Found Land. The boat is turning green as are we until, that is, we arrived yesterday in Francois (pronounced FRANCE – WAY) to glorious sunshine. It’s 78 degrees and Heather thinks she’s in heaven! Heather mutinied in Baddeck last summer because of the weather so, she hung-in this time and it has paid off in spades! But seriously, if you ever have an opportunity to visit here, you should do it as the landscape and people who have eeked out a living here are amazing.

The folks at our stop in Burgeo could not have been nicer. Burgeo is a metropolis because it has ‘road access’, fuel, water (which doesn’t taste very good so we’ve been making our own), groceries, hardware store, a bank and Internet. All the essentials – I left out laundry because the lone washer/dryer really doesn’t count (4 loads@11 hours). Fabulous fish right off the dock. We had a fish fry courtesy of Rolf on ‘ImVuBu’ that was a lot of fun and very tasty.

Another stop was the Grey River, which was stark in contrast to Burgeo. The small entrance had to be negotiated carefully in the dense fog. It wasn’t much more than a cleft in the sheer cliffs on either side of the river. Once past this obstacle the river opened up into a beautiful fjord with high 1000 ft mountains on either side. The fishing hamlet of Jerts Cove is the only community within the river and can only be accessed by water. We spent two nights in the river. One in the Southeast Arm (47 36.616N, 56 59.148W) and the other in the Northwest Arm. Both provided splendid views from the anchorages in spite of the low hanging cloud cover from the weather.

From Grey River we did a motor tour up La Hune Bay, which had magnificent high cliffs dropping almost straight down to the water. We then over to check out Aviron Bay which is reputed to have 5 or 6 waterfalls along it’s length. We saw three and it was explained later that the snow pack had not been as deep this year so hence fewer water falls. The best one was at the head of the bay dropping about 800 ft down the side off the mountain. We anchored there for the night (47 35.421N, 56 48.931W) with several other boat from the flotilla and had a great dinner with the folks on ‘Al Jaheen’ and ‘Windermere’.

After motoring out through heavy swells at the mouth of Aviron Bay we traveled about 10 miles to Francois (47 34.858N, 56 44.616W) and were greeted with bright, warm sunshine. The 1st time since Port au Basque. We hiked up the hills around Francois that afternoon on wooden boardwalks that weave their way around the town. That evening, we had a great moose meat stew aboard ‘Sweet Dreams’ with Maggie, Al, Angela and John. The next day, Ken along with some other folks from the boats in the harbor hiked up into the hills and saw the high lakes that feed the waterfall that drops through the middle of the village. We had many interesting encounters with the locals (120 in all). Again like Jerts Cove, there are no roads to here. A ferry comes here a few times a week to bring supplies and ferry passengers that come and go. Homes here are built in what space is available between the rocks and concrete boardwalks about 4 feet wide wind through the town connecting them. There’s a school, two stores, a church, helipad and a power generating station. We’ll be staying here for a couple nights before we venture off again.