A boat tour to see the coast and a large iceberg
This post is about the second half of Thursday, June 18th, Day 21 of our trip and the 14th day in Newfoundland – a tour with Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours. This post will be long on photos (33 of them) and somewhat short on words – I very quickly ran out of words to describe what I was experiencing.
There are a few ways to see icebergs at Twillingate. Sometimes the location of the bergs will make the choice easier. We’re right at the end of iceberg season, but a large one was accessible by boat or hiking. We wanted to get up close, with a boat. Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours got our business because we wanted a large, comfortable boat, and they get consistently great reviews. After our tour, I added another one.
The Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours building has recently become the home of the Canvas Cove Bistro. When we walked in to register, the music was so loud it was literally painful and I had to leave within seconds. Cathy was able to get the paperwork done and get our tickets.
Out at the end of the dock is a quiet, beautiful place to wait for the boat.
Looking across the harbour we could see the monument at Smith’s Lookout that I had hiked up to a few hours earlier.
Cathy asked me to get a photo of the homes out on Carter’s Point, but I had been intrigued enough by them to already get the shot. We both find the places people choose to build to be quite fascinating. The large home seems to be under construction.
Looking across the harbour again, I caught a fishboat going by the small remnant of an iceberg.
At 4:00 pm, after a safety briefing, we cast off for our Adventure. It seems to me that on a calm day, beaches like that would be a superb place to stop with a small boat. Perhaps with a kayak, but we’ve seen how fast the weather can change here.
Yes, this boat was the right choice for us. Stable, lot of room to move around on two decks, places to get out of the wind or go inside, and great for photography.
Those comments were reinforced a few minutes later when we saw a large zodiak go by. It’s a very different experience.
We stayed very close to this powerful coastline, and the surf put on a great show for us, with some impressive swells breaking on the rocks.
This was our captain, Barry Rogers. I’m going to copy much of his bio on their website, as this is the man I saw and heard. Yes, I have great respect for people like this: “Captain Barry Rogers has been on the sea his entire life. Descended from a long line of fishermen and seamen, he grew up to love and respect the ocean. Twillingate Island made him the man he is today: honest, conscientious, friendly and above all a true Newfoundlander. …your entire experience has been crafted by a man who wants nothing more than to share the ocean and culture he loves so much with you.”
Most beaches where boats can be landed, especially ones that are backed with a grassy slope like that, have a settlement of some sort, but it looked like the approach to this one through rocks could be treacherous. There was narration being done, but in my seat, chosen only for photography, all I could hear was the engines. Cathy was out of the wind and could hear the guide.
If you have boat trouble along this coast, it can quickly turn into serious trouble, with no escape route.
At 4:58, the moment we had all been hoping for arrived in a particularly dramatic way – this combination of surf and ice, visible for only 2-3 seconds, may make it my favourite photo from this day.
This iceberg is grounded in 140 feet of water, so will probably die here. There are enough people watching it that the collapse of those towers, which I estimate to be 100-120 feetb high, will be captured on somebody’s camera.
Murray hard at work 🙂
I sometimes like to have people in photos like these, and a few times, people would apologize and move “out of the way.” I quickly assured them that people in the shot is what I wanted.
As we were about to leave, a small boat arrived and I was able to get a few photo with it in the frame, to give some perspective about the size of the berg.
Leaving the iceberg after over half an hour circling it, we headed out to sea past all the rocks, no doubt in search of whales. An excited passenger coming off the sailing before us had told Cathy and me that they had seen minke whales on their tour. We didn’t see any. Cathy and I had booked this as a boat tour – any icebergs or whales would simply be a bonus.
That was also entertainment time, starting with dancing and singing with the famous Newfoundland “ugly stick,” which looked a lot like Captain Rogers 🙂
I unfortunately didn’t catch his name, nor did I film much of his performance, but I thought this 18 seconds was worth sharing anyway.
Coming into Twillingate Harbour, we again passed the community of Jenkins Cove surrounding Saffron Cove.
At 6:20 we were nearing the dock. Captain Rogers came out on deck and said to a few of us that an extra sailing had been added and he was going out again. He said it was like fishing, when the fish (or icebergs) are here, you fish hard.
We had a disappointing dinner at a restaurant a block from the Iceberg Quest office (it’s a long story…), then before going back to the RV park, I wanted another look at the Long Point Lighthouse, in the sunshine.
In this light I was able to get a photo that shows this lighthouse tower’s distintive “milk-bottle” shape.
The evening light (it was now 8:00 pm) also showed up the rugged coast beautifully.
Although it’s generally said that the lighthouse is at Twillingate, it’s actually right at the edge of the community of Crow Head. This is a look at Crow Head as we were leaving.
This evening, we had to make a difficult decision – do we go to Gander, or the coastal roads 330 and 320? We chose the coast, so the next day would drive towards Musgrave Harbour and just see what comes up.
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