Isle Valen (or Isle Au Valen) is a beautiful, remote island in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.

This video is the story of sailing to Isle Valen from another island.

I waited for a wind shift to leave on, and that shift came very late in the afternoon. I rowed back, got the dinghy aboard, raised anchor and got underway.

I only had 27 miles to go, there was a tight entrance to pass thru, and no way to make it before dark. The remnants of a hurricane were coming, and if I waited until the next morning to leave, the winds would be less favorable, so I chose to leave in the evening and make an overnight sail.

Newfoundland, and especially Placentia Bay, has many abandoned settlements. Most were abandoned in the 1960s and later, as part of a controversial government resettlement plan.

Oderin, the subject of some of my recent videos, is one of those abandoned communities.

Isle Valen is another once-thriving community in Placentia Bay. Only accessible by boat, there are several rocks and little islands leading to the narrow, steep-sided channel into the totally protected harbor.

This is a scene from Isle Valen. The abandoned house is still standing, but one winter a storm will come and blow it down. The rowing boat in the foreground has mostly rotted away, though the bow and midships sections are still there. Trees have started growing in the field that was once cleared and farmed.

Part 3 of A Sail to Oderin is about the deserted island of Oderin and its once-thriving, now abandoned community.

This video is about how long stuff lasts on a voyaging sailboat.

Part Two of A Sail to Oderin is now online.
Part One was about the sail to Oderin.
Part Two is all about the abandoned community of Oderin.

It's a longer video (19 minutes) than I usually make, and the combination of the length and being in 4k forced me to cut it, so there will be a Part Three coming later.

The story of a spring sail to an abandoned community on the deserted island of Oderin, on the rugged south coast of Newfoundland.

It was my first time entering the snug inner harbor on the deserted island with the abandoned community of Oderin.

It was low tide. We were approaching the harbor entrance slowly, at less than one knot, with the centerboard down (10.5' draft), but unlocked.

We had passed the last of three buoys marking shoals and rocks in the entrance.


I had drawn my route (blue line) on the chart using the most detailed chart that I had. It wasn't a large-scale harbor chart, and I had OverZoomed in to draw the route.

As we approached, I could see that the plot was off, and I needed to keep somewhat farther south (to starboard) as we rounded the rock. But I had more faith in the accuracy of the chart than was justified, and the centerboard grounded on a tongue extending from the rock in the picture.

A low speed grounding in good weather with the centerboard unlocked is not a problem in Issuma, we merely needed to raise the centerboard, reverse away, and then alter course to continue.


I made a satellite image chart (using the OpenCPN VFkaps plugin, https://www.venturefarther.com ) of the entrance to the harbor, which was a larger scale, and more accurate. It showed it was shallow where we grounded, but it wasn't the chart I was using at the time.

If I didn't have a chartplotter, I would have steered farther away from the rock (in the picture) on the inside of the bend, because the water is almost always shallower on the inside of a bend than on the outside. But I was overly trusting to a chart that was not a large-enough scale to justify following it.

Anyway, no harm done, just a reminder of why one wants to approach an unfamiliar port slowly.

Grounding on the entrance to an unfamiliar port with the centerboard down wasn't all that unexpected.

The surprise came later, after my second visit.

I spent over a week anchored in the inner harbor, making a video (coming soon).

Rounding that rock in the other direction, as I left the inner harbor and headed back to sea was when I was surprised--

ALL THREE BUOYS WERE MISSING!

The buoys had been taken away for maintenance. I had my chartplotter tracks that I had used before to follow (avoiding the part where I ran agound), so it was no problem to leave without any buoys. It was just amusing.

With all the snow and ice that came with wintering in Newfoundland, I thought it was a good opportunity to show how different types of nonskid worked in these conditions. That is what this video is about.

Light winds caused the docklines to droop into the water overnight.

The surface of the water froze.

Wind in the morning pushed the boat away from the dock and pulled the lines out of the water, taking some ice with them. I liked the pattern of the ice on the docklines.

It's been chilly lately.

After a storm


we had strong, cold NW winds for three days, and now the snow on the ground mostly stays.

That's mostly salt water that waves pushed onto the side of the boat, which then dripped slowly enough where one plate overlaps another that it froze, and then kept growing into an ice beard.