tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152472952024-03-07T16:44:51.883+09:00Global Positioning CrisisAbandon the known curriculum and Set Sail in the Direction of your dreams...Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-84941261487290179712018-01-16T13:03:00.000+09:002018-01-16T13:03:39.776+09:00What am I doing in Mexico?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Read all about it here:<br />
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https://m.facebook.com/SparkyMarkAdventures/posts/?ref=page_internal&mt_nav=1<br />
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(Where I tend to post my paragliding adventures these days)</div>
Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-39434689326949118072016-06-02T10:00:00.000+09:002016-06-16T23:34:35.186+09:00An Italian Accordion-hunt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Finding the recent French weather a little on the inclement side for a full enjoyment of life, I decided to realise a long-held ambition and go travelling in northern Italy. As my focus, I decided upon two accordion museums, one in Stradella, where the standard left-hand fingering system used on the majority of modern accordions was invented, and the other in Castelfidardo, the "town of accordions" where my piano accordion was born in the workshops of the maker Borsini.<br />
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After two or three hours driving along the autostrada that winds down out of the mountains, along the Aosta valley and out into the plains beyond, I found myself driving along a cosy tree-lined avenue and into the backstreets of a small town. Having found a place to park, I wandered through the narrow, Sunday-afternoon streets, and eventually found, on a rather unassuming functional library building, a plaque reading, "Museo della Fisarmonicha". Being a Sunday, the library was closed, but the building was open. Along a dingy corridor, sitting at a trestle table were two ageing men who seemed altogether surprised and excited that anyone had come to the museum at all, let alone someone all the way from England! They spoke no English, but in a mixture of not-quite-English and not-quite-Italian (gleaned mostly from my phrasebook and dictionary that I had taken along) they found out a bit about me, including that I play the accordion. Brimming with excitement, the older of the two gentlemen led me back along the corridor and with a gleeful, "Andiamo!" beckoned me up the stairs. From a locker in the roped-off library area he produced a key, with which he opened a glass door leading to a small suite of smaller rooms, in which was an exhibition outlining the local and contextual history of the accordion. I didn't have much time to look at the exhibition, however, because for the next hour or so, the excited man plied me with a stream of Italian constituting a verbal version of what the museum had to say. From the occasional familiar-sounding word amongst the Italian, and the photos he was referring to along the way, I gleaned that I was being told the story of an Austrian who had settled here in the early 19th century and had found the local standard of craftsmanship ideal for developing the squeezebox into something resembling the instrument we know today.<br />
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A while - I could not say how long - into this personalised guided tour, the other gentleman appeared in the exhibition room, followed by a group of about 15 Italian tourists. He interrupted my guide, and said to me, "you play the accordion, don't you?" I nodded yes, and he immediately announced "we need someone to play for this group: will you do that for us?" Wow! I had assumed that everyone in this town would be an accordionist, but that did not seem to be the case. So, being the only box-player in the house, I unwittingly became the star of the Stradella accordion museum! They handed me a full-size piano accordion, and while the two gentlemen showed the tourists around, I sat and played the accordion to the best of my abilities, despite it having a rather different feel to the one I am used to. I received many encouraging comments from the captivated crowd, and when I played <i>Il Mio Sono</i> they erupted in applause (that one always goes down well with Italians, even with a few wrong notes!)<br />
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The group eventually left, satisfied with their experience, and my guide resumed my tour, showing me around the various examples of different types of accordion, prototypes and attempts at different forms of accordion, including a table-top synthesiser with Stradella-system fingering on the bass.<br />
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He also felt I should have a go on one other accordion, in particular to see the difference in sound quality with the one I had played before. Between us we lifted the perspex dust cover off a plinth, and I picked up the accordion housed within and strapped it on. Indeed the quality was different, much more mellow and melodious…. It was explained to me that on this particular instrument, the reed housings were made of copper, rather than the usual aluminium. I'm sure this makes for a difference in price as well as sound quality!<br />
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Eventually satiated with local accordion knowledge, I thanked the gentlemen and bade them farewell. <br />
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I thought that I would go and visit Florence, as I had been there on a school trip in 1998 and was curious to see if it had changed in my mind since then. In Florence, there is a bronze statue of a boar. You are supposed to rub the boar's nose, and this means that at some point you will return to Florence. In 1998 I had not rubbed the boar's nose, so part of me wanted to go back to the city and rub it to guarantee a third return - and perhaps I wanted the opportunity of an Arthur Dent - style insurance policy (Arthur Dent knows that he cannot die until after he has been to Stavromula Beta, so he simply never goes there). So I phoned up Florence Youth Hostel, made sure that they had space, and drove straight there, which took about 3 hours. The magic boar had other ideas, however: I never made it to Florence, as the youth hostel is not in the city, but beyond it, in a small town in the Tuscan hills, on the way to two other places I had visited before, San Gimignano and Siena.<br />
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After a night in a dormitory full of snoring Americans and Chinese, I drove over the hills to San Gimignano, a hilltop town which has a number of skyscrapers dating from the 13th and 14th centuries! Apparently a lot of Italian towns and cities used to have towers like this: they were status symbols erected by rival families.<br />
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San Gimignano is perhaps the best preserved concentration of such towers in a small town. I wandered the streets, enjoying the ways the geography of the place had shifted in my mind over the years, and had a truly awful slice of doughy tourist pizza, topped with floppy canned mushrooms. After a bit of busking in a non-obvious side road, I got back on the road and went to Siena. This is a bustling student/tourist town, with perhaps the most picturesque town centre imaginable, centring on a sloping semicircular piazza around the huge tower of the town hall. Again, the scale and geography of the place had shifted in my mind, but it was truly pleasant to while the balmy evening away sitting in the piazza, as I continued my fruitless search for a decent pizza (the one I had here had nothing on but pesto, and burnt the roof of my mouth).<br />
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I had found an out-of-season rate on a lakeside hotel in the middle of Italy, so after my pleasant Siennese evening, I drove to the village of Passignano sul Trasimeno. Although it was late when I arrived, I couldn't resist a saunter around the village before bed. The old town was near the hotel, and consisted of ancient streets winding steeply up a hill to a castellated high point. It reminded me somewhat of how I imagined Cittagazze in His Dark Materials and was also rather a lot like Minas Tirith as depicted in the Lord of the Rings films.<br />
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The lake itself - Lago Trasimeno - is somewhat interesting, as it has no outflow: the water escapes from it by evaporation. This was part of the reason it was one of the last areas in Italy to eradicate malaria. Although I only got one mosquito bite while I was there (hopefully malaria is still eradicated!), there were copious swarms of other kinds of flies, and I had to keep my hotel windows shut as the one time I opened one of them briefly, at least 10 of the critters got in.<br />
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In the morning, I played my accordion on the lake shore and then drove right across the middle of Italy. The landscape and infrastructure reminded me very much of Japan: roads have a habit of being unfinished, in the sense that a multi-lane highway will just stop and become a winding mountain road, and perhaps then turn back a few miles later. The road which was marked being built on the map I had ("due for completion in 2008") had still not been finished, and yet another road, which had not even been thought of in 2008 had been completed and in use for several years. Eventually, I saw the Adriatic sea, and found my way - despite a SatNav battery failure - to another hilltop town: Castelfidardo.<br />
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This seems to be an accordion town to a much greater extent than Stradella: there is an accordion shop or maker on almost every street corner, and accordion designs are worked into the very fabric of the town on railings etc.<br />
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The accordion museum here is bigger and self-described as "International" and by the blasé welcome I got, they seem to be much more used to people coming to visit (even people from as far away as England!) So I did not become the star of any particular show, but there were a few interesting things to see: such as an accordion-type-instrument built based on a design by Leonardo da Vinci who pre-empted the accordion by more than 300 years;<br />
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an accordion chess set, and a huge collection of accordion tat: little ornaments depicting all manner of creatures and characters playing accordions.<br />
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There were also 3 different types of accordion "for tourists to try playing if they want a go", so of course I had to have a go. The museum attendants neither seemed overly impressed nor particularly condescending about my accordion playing ability. <br />
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I then braved the intense rainstorm and moved to a different place - a tiny "museum" in the back of an accordion shop, where I saw and "played" the two largest accordions in the world. These are both a few metres high and have special automated mechanisms for operating the bellows.<br />
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A bit of a tourist gimmick, really, but I hung around in the shop and had a go on some of the real accordions that were there as well.<br />
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My final port of call in the town was the headquarters of "Borsini" the manufacturer of my piano accordion. The factory seemed very shut up and unapproachable, but I got the necessary photo and briefly played the accordion within earshot of its birthplace.<br />
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It's probably a good thing that no accordion manufacturers were present, because to be honest they would probably cry if they saw the state of my bellows…<br />
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That evening I stayed with Barbara, an Italian friend from way back in my English-teaching days in 2003, who cooked me a wonderful pasta dinner and we caught up on the last 13 years.<br />
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The next day I returned to France, but not without a brief stop in the city of Bologna, which has one of the oldest universities in the world, and a number of towers, one of which leans more impressively even than the Pisa Campanile. I then drove through thunderstorms and Milanese gridlock, and headed back towards the Alps. In the evening, in the town of Ivrea at the entrance to the Aoste valley, I finally found my pizza: a thin-crusted quattro formaggio from an unassuming wood-fired pizzeria in a non-touristy part of a non-touristy town.<br />
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Half way up the winding alpine road on the way out of Italy, I came across a bus, teetering, half on the road and half over a cliff. There seemed to be something heavy in the end of the bus that was over the cliff, because the group of men that were on board were all gathered in the cab, trying desperately to keep the vehicle balanced. I would have stopped to offer my help, but the guy who seemed to be the leader of the group was talking rather loudly and seemed to have a pretty good idea about what he was going to do to get out of the situation…</div>
Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-2715493684649246262014-11-25T06:19:00.003+09:002014-11-25T06:20:35.090+09:00earning freedom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Waiting patiently for Chamonix's lifts to open for the winter, I still can't help hiking up when the weather is good for flying:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/112741761" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br> <a href="http://vimeo.com/112741761">earning freedom</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/sparkymarkbaldwin">Sparky Mark Baldwin</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-73002050282613543832013-01-13T03:41:00.002+09:002013-01-13T03:41:17.817+09:00The kind of day snowboarders dream of...<br />
It's not often that I write about snowboarding on this blog, but today was <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>so good that it needs to be shared!<br />
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I was riding up at the Flégère ski area in the Chamonix valley. The powder was deep and plentiful, the air was fresh and the sky clear, the crystals were sparkly, and I will let the photos tell the rest.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My beard's not normally as white as that...</td></tr>
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N.B. The snow that you see flying through the air in some of these photos is not falling from the sky - this is the powder that is displaced as I move through it on my (admittedly rather small for the conditions) snowboard.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com1Chamonix, France45.959861643162682 6.87606811523437545.954342643162683 6.8659831152343749 45.965380643162682 6.8861531152343751tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-56145015476361852162012-09-02T09:00:00.000+09:002012-10-02T04:00:16.328+09:00Crossing the Atlantic - Part 3: Final Stretch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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48 hours after we had retrieved the drogue from the water, the weather was starting to show signs of abating. The waves were still huge and epic, and would still have been the biggest we'd ever seen if we had seen them three days before. But now we had 2 days experience of steering in them, and it was time to get some rest. Two hours is not nearly enough time to remove foul weather gear, clamber into a bunk at a strange angle and get any worthwhile amount of sleep, so we reverted to the normal watch schedule, to win us some much-needed sleep time.<br />
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The mood on board gradually shifted from the tense uncertainty of survival mode to the growing relief that we were nearing the final days of the voyage. No passage is over, however, until the boat is safely tied up in a harbour.<br />
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Perhaps the most amazing thing I saw on the crossing is dolphins darting around at night time. Due to the phosphorescence inherent in the ocean waters, a night time dolphin appears as a luminous water-spirit, the light of the jostled plankton dancing around the boat in long trails, looking like sea-dragons. On several occasions, we saw groups of 5 or 6 dolphins swimming together in the dark, their trails weaving together alongside the boat, one peeling off every now and then, swimming away, and curving back to join the others again. This is almost made even more special as it cannot be filmed, due to the low light level of the phosphorescent glow.<br />
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Another amazing and unphotographable night time phenomenon was experienced by Matt and I on the first night that the wind seemed to be settling down. There was a bright moon off our starboard quarter to the south, and many of the larger clouds brought fast intense squalls of rain, some of which drenched us briefly, and some of which passed us by. One of the larger squalls that did not hit us directly passed us on the port side, and in conjunction with the moon caused an unbelievably beautiful effect that I have come to call a "moonbow". This was the nocturnal equivalent of a rainbow, caused by the moon, rather than the sun, shining on falling rain. It was quite magical. Instead of seven bright colours, the moonbow had seven shimmering shades of silvery grey.<br />
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As the high pressure weather system moved over us, the wind lightened, the horizon became horizontal (and flat!), and we gradually changed the sails back up the gears to larger and larger sail plans. The sky contained more settled cloud patterns, such as "cloud streets", with which I am familiar from my paragliding experience. I correctly predicted that as we passed under each cloud street, we would get a little bit more wind strength and pressure in the sails. Although there was reportedly a warm front on the way, this never caught up with us, and even the cloud streets eventually petered out. For the second time on the passage, we became becalmed. Nick decided to run the engine. Although the relatively flat sea was a nice contrast to the maelstrom of days previous, the engine was noisy, and it was slightly uncertain as to whether we had enough fuel to get us to the British Isles. <br />
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The next few days were a fine test of patience. The large high pressure system that we found ourselves in was sitting just off the Celtic coasts (Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany). While this was far preferable to the low pressure systems that had been sitting here in the weeks before we left St. John's, it made for a frustrating time. The light winds came and went - mostly went - and we tried to balance the ability to make what speed we could with the necessity of saving fuel. A happy medium was found by sailing with the motor on just slightly, which kept us around 5-6 knots: not a bad speed in theory, but frustratingly slow as we had got used to a steady 8 knots while running before the big winds. Fortunately, we were still heading East.<br />
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From my diary:<br />
"<i>The current scenario is that we are all aware that we are fast approaching the British Isles: in fact, we passed south of Ireland at some point today. But it is so frustrating because, a) None of us can see it, and b) It's still over a day's sail to the Isles of Scilly, and especially now that we are down to 5 knots, it all seems frustratingly out of reach.</i><br />
<i>On the other hand, I am having such a wonderful time that I can't believe it's all nearly over - we will almost certainly arrive in Falmouth at some point within the next 48 hours, which would make our crossing time less than 2 weeks, which would be amazing.</i> "<br />
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The relative boredom of the last few days was pleasantly relieved by the ability to cook again, and time for some serious music-making.<br />
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Further excitement came from being once again in the company of dolphins.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7pykc8goP0hU8iJTCXyUrHyY1G-S6YUtMLKdpo-wqq1Pve_GRWCJB8fXYqKkAxjkhfAqgFT4qqcLTM8kJIUMbkCQ_0Ae3yOuj8yki90Cqa09ibJcWvRRXXE-0k_iVIfU3m0Ag0w/s1600/GOPR0022.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7pykc8goP0hU8iJTCXyUrHyY1G-S6YUtMLKdpo-wqq1Pve_GRWCJB8fXYqKkAxjkhfAqgFT4qqcLTM8kJIUMbkCQ_0Ae3yOuj8yki90Cqa09ibJcWvRRXXE-0k_iVIfU3m0Ag0w/s400/GOPR0022.JPG" width="300" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj29n5JHYkMo4wcO5UCfw0QZpF_capK4GzNu7gEMhi1931HyTGCDt2xcVGZUWWPquyf99WfMO5cSNInrPyzuuds9Zjb0lIUpreh5wp1Hm1xUljAetZ7r7HCABuBUYoG-2ABW8m-Aw/s1600/GOPR0334.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj29n5JHYkMo4wcO5UCfw0QZpF_capK4GzNu7gEMhi1931HyTGCDt2xcVGZUWWPquyf99WfMO5cSNInrPyzuuds9Zjb0lIUpreh5wp1Hm1xUljAetZ7r7HCABuBUYoG-2ABW8m-Aw/s400/GOPR0334.JPG" width="300" /></a><br />
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There were a number of huge pods which seemed to enjoy splashing along around our bows and chattering away.<br />
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We had dolphins following us for hundreds of miles, and I took the opportunity to get some underwater images by attaching my waterproof camera to a boat hook.<br />
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At one point, we saw a different pod of a much larger species of dolphin. The ones who had been following us surreptitiously disappeared while the larger dolphins came and investigated the boat. The larger species did not stay with us, but after a while, we noticed that the smaller ones were back. It seems that dolphin species are as territorial as any other animal.<br />
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When a slight rise in wind speed eventually allowed us to switch the engine off altogether, the dolphins immediately went away. There was I thinking they were peace-loving, anti-pollution type eco-creatures, and they disappeared as soon as we made the switch to a renewable form of energy! Theories on why this might be ranged from "they probably enjoy scratching their backs on the spinning propeller" to "they must have been trying to tell us to please switch our engine off, and now they've got their message across!"<br />
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On the evening of Saturday 1st of September, I was on watch with Nathan, and baking a cake at the same time. At around 6:05 pm (Taniwha time), I came up from checking on my cake, and Nathan said, "is that a lighthouse?" And it was! About 20 miles to the North, we could see Bishop Rock Lighthouse, off the Isles of Scilly: the first fixed point that any of us had seen for 12 days! In the excitement, I forgot all about the cake until a burning smell crept up from the galley... Only the top was singed, however, and the cake was enjoyed by all.<br />
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As afternoon slid into evening, Bishop Rock was joined on the horizon by the low-lying islands of St, Mary and St. Agnes, and we realized we had done it! Taniwha had crossed The Atlantic! And here we were entering the English channel, perhaps the busiest shipping lane in the world...<br />
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As Nick correctly predicted, it was to be a busy night. Everything on a boat happens in slow motion, and at night especially, it is easy to feel very detached from small lights in the distance. But small lights in the distance can suddenly turn into things like big ships very close by. It can all get very real very quickly, so now that we were in busy waters, we had to keep our wits about us and fight the inherently somnolent nature of the night watch. While I was on watch with Matt, somewhere just south of Mounts Bay, we discerned from a minimal collection of lights behind us that a cargo ship that had just rounded Land's End was headed straight for us. The other ship hailed us on the radio, and Matt replied, while I kept us on course. The ship was far enough away that they could alter course to steer round us. Further to our stern, two Irish ferries crossed paths, but were far enough behind us that no evasive action was needed.<br />
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After we had rounded the Lizard, which has the brightest most intense lighhouse I have ever seen, Nick and Nathan, who had taken over from Matt and I, roused the rest of us to go up and help them with our final change of course: we tacked and set our final course for the mouth of Falmouth harbour, around where there were several huge ships moored.<br />
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And all of a sudden, there we were, in the early hours of the morning, sailing into Falmouth. Just outside the harbour entrance, we started the engine and dropped the sails. As with our arrival into St. John's, the smells of land wafted down to us off the hills. Here it was the smells of morning dew on grassy fields, woodlands, earth and acorns: those quintessentially English smells I had not smelled for over two years.<br />
Tying up at the pontoon, we found ourselves surrounded by unmoving objects: hills in the middle distance, harbour walls, and many quaint-looking buildings, most of which were the size of mid-Atlantic waves...<br />
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And then I leapt ashore...<br />
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And tied us up!<br />
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And the voyage was over!<br />
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After a day of coming down-to-earth, during which Nathan left on the train for Heathrow, Matt suggested that the four of us go out for a celebratory drink. On the way to the pub, I completed my no-fly circumnavigation - by walking through a space I had been to on my last visit to Falmouth, since when I had not boarded an aircraft of any description. To celebrate, I allowed Matt to buy me a gingerale/grapefruit juice (I only had Canadian Dollars on me) and sat down with the others and wondered what to do next.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com2Port Pendennis Marina, Falmouth, Cornwall TR11, UK50.15251375380695 -5.061779022216796950.15124175380695 -5.0642465222167967 50.15378575380695 -5.059311522216797tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-20929711227409065262012-08-27T00:15:00.000+09:002012-09-13T02:35:17.288+09:00Crossing The Atlantic - Part 2: MONSTROUS!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For a day or two after being becalmed, we happily sailed downwind making good speed in the direction we wanted to go. The sunrises and sunsets were consistently beautiful, and the good weather and numerous visits by dolphins kept us all in good spirits and feeling somewhat invincible.<br />
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Nick had been downloading weather charts from the SSB radio to a fax reader app on the iPad. He had been warning us since the becalmment that according to the weather forecasts, the benign conditions we had been experiencing would change into a rather rougher environment at some point in the not too distant future. The wind, however, at no point seemed like it would pick up wildly or get crazy.<br />
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At 9am on August 26th Matt and I went up on deck to take over the watch from Nick and Nathan. Nick had sent Nathan off-duty first, and as he came down below, he told us it was still plain sailing with light winds and the conditions hadn't changed. In the few minutes it took Matt and I to finalize our preparations (warm clothing and wellies on, life jackets on) and get up on deck, all hell was breaking loose.<br />
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The wind did a sudden leap up to 20 knots with gusts to 25, and we helped Nick change the sails down to a more manageable configuration.<br />
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Throughout the morning, the wind speed gradually increased, and bit by bit we reefed the mainsail, making the sail area smaller and smaller. With the increased wind, the waves increased in height, and regularly splashed over the deck.<br />
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Just before Nathan and I went on our mid-afternoon watch, Nick decided to take the mainsail down totally, after which we were jogging along with just a smallish foresail, and as the wind continued to increase, we found ourselves still making 6-7 knots: a very respectable speed for a sailing yacht. The waves were generally manageable, but Nick had pointed out to me some bigger waves of 2-3 metres which rolled through from time to time. As these waves appeared more and more often, it became clear that unless we steered a course downwind - to the south - these waves would hit us side on, and risk tipping the boat over on its side. Even steering downwind was tricky. The waves came in sets, and caused strange illusions: the boat would surfed down the steeper waves, and as the wave overtook the boat, the deceleration caused the illusion of travelling backwards up the wave behind us.<br />
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In light of the challenging conditions, Nick announced, "Right. It's drogue time." The drogue he referred to was a Jordan Series Drogue - essentially a long line to which are attached hundreds of fabric cones. When dragged behind the boat, this piece of equipment will slow the boat right down, and align it perpendicular to the waves, supposedly preventing it being tipped over by the waves.<br />
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With the drogue out, there was no need for anyone to steer the helm or even be out on deck, so for the night, we set up a 1-person watch system to look out for ships, which allowed us all to get some rest. Once more the Taniwha's progress was stalled: this time not by too little wind, but in struggle against the effects of too much wind. We were now almost exactly half way across the Atlantic, with the handbrake on. The nearest land mass was the Azores, which was in the region of 1000 miles away - the same distance away as either St. John's or Falmouth.<br />
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Before we could sleep, though, there was the bilge to worry about: this was discovered to be rather full of water, so a lot of pumping had to be done. What made matters worse was that since we were now essentially stopped in the water, the larger waves (which were still increasing in frequency and size) were coming right over the back of the boat and flooding the cockpit.<br />
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The deck areas all have drains, so this would not have been a problem, were it not for the fact that there was an unstoppable hole in the deck where a piece of equipment had been installed. I noticed the stream of water coming into the stern of the boat, and Nick did his best with a twisted rag to convert the flow to a trickle, which allowed the bilge to be pumped almost (but not quite totally) dry.<br />
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It was difficult to relax in the evening, and I frequently got up to have a look out at the waves. On one occasion Matt and I both went up the companionway for a quick glance.<br />
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As we looked out, we both saw the biggest wave either of us had ever seen bearing down upon us - it was fully 5 or 6 metres tall, and we had no time to react before it broke violently over the stern of the boat, and caught us both full in the face.<br />
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In the morning, there were still some mighty waves around, but Nick decided that since we were all well-rested after our overnight, drogue-induced pit-stop, we should be able to cope, and so the new plan was to continue sailing as long as we could. The first challenge was to pull the drogue in. It took all 5 of us to perform this feat, and we had to use the "coffee grinder" - a pair of handles that attach to the winch to give us more leverage for tricky manoeuvres like this. Pulling on handles for the 20 minutes or so that it took to retrieve the drogue, I was taken straight back to the rowing training I did at school, and the necessity of pushing oneself through the pain of exhaustion.<br />
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By and by, we got the drogue back on board, cleared it out of the way, and rigged up a conservative sail plan under which to sail on. The day was surprisingly sunny, but we continued on a heavy-weather watch system of 2 hours on, 2 hours off, with 4 of us manning the watches and Michelle detailed as backup to provide us with food and moral support as required. We made a steady 7-8 knots all day. With challenging but consistent conditions, we built up enough confidence to feel that we could sail through the night. In the middle of the following night, a long dark cloud approached us from behind. As it came over, the wind suddenly switched 90 degrees to a cool flow out of the North, causing us to change the boat's direction from heading South-East to heading South-West. Nick was woken by the change in the boat's motion, and he came up to help Matt and I change the sails so that we could continue Eastward. As I went to bed, I thought perhaps that this new weather pattern would bring a lull in the wind and the return to more benign conditions.<br />
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When I woke, however, I realized that this was not the case. Nick had popped down briefly, and I asked him how conditions were, expecting to hear that they had mellowed nicely. On the contrary, his one-word answer was "MONSTROUS". He went on to say that it frequently felt like we were steering our way through a washing machine. Looking above deck, I realized that he really wasn't kidding.<br />
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There before my eyes was the very definition of Monstrous. All around us, independently rising and falling, were peaks and valleys of water, all constantly changing and undulating.<br />
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Throughout the day, the wind trended stronger and stronger, and the waves even seemed to get larger. We all agreed that the waves were frequently at least the size of our parents' houses. These were multilayered waves: veritable mountains of water. To hike up one of these, if they were static and solid, you would have to hike for a while, stop for a rest, then hike some more before you got to the top.<br />
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At the crest of the wave, given a gust of wind and the right boat direction, we would surf, careening down into the vast valley below. We hardly went below 8 knots all day, and surfing down the waves we frequently made speeds of 10-11 knots, with a maximum speed of 12.92 knots!
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Little by little, we improved our boat-steering technique, but all too often an unexpected wave caught us from a different angle to the majority.<br />
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The boat would heel and roll violently over onto its side, causing much discomfort to those in the cabin, frustration to whoever was on the helm, and causing the other person on deck to cling on for dear life until the boat had righted itself. Not infrequently, the boom and part of the main sail would go right down into the water, and even the side of the deck went below water level more than a few times.<br />
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On one occasion, in the middle of the night, after I had almost been tossed from my bed a few times, the boat was thrown over so violently to the starboard side that it seemed impossible that those on deck could have hung on. Inside the boat, the wall became the floor onto which we fell, and what had been the floor did a remarkable impression of a new wall, with a table fixed calmly in the middle of it. As I emerged from sleep, the boat righted itself, so I got out of bed and poked my head up through the companionway to make sure Nick and Nathan were both still aboard.<br />
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"The spreaders go underwater, did they?" I asked, referring to the horizontal parts near the top of the mast.<br />
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"Nah, we just got blindsided by a freak wave," replied Nathan, who sounded surprisingly calm.<br />
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It must have been that sort of calm that comes from being in a state of shock, because he and Nick later told us that when the boat went over on its side, a third of the deck went underwater, as did a large proportion of the mainsail. Nick was wedged in between the hand hold wheel frames, and Nathan, who had little control, due presumably to the rudder being out of the water, simply had to hang onto the wheel for dear life as the wave subsided and the boat came around.<br />
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Although this moment did not seem as scary as some that we experienced, it was probably the single point on the whole voyage where our lives were most at risk. Had another wave come from such an angle as to tip the boat even further over, there is no knowing what state we and the boat might have ended up in.<br />
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The ocean, it seems, is a dynamic environment.</div>
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We were able to keep going, so we did.</div>
Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com2Smack bang in the middle of the North Atlantic51.6180165487737 -28.12530.825775548773702 -68.5546875 72.4102575487737 12.3046875tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-84374118230919786502012-08-24T23:30:00.000+09:002012-09-13T00:08:02.248+09:00Crossing The Atlantic - Part 1.2: Becalmed!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The watch system on Taniwha consisted of 3 hour watches with 2 people to a watch. With 5 of us on board, this meant that we had a repeating schedule of 3 hours on deck/steering, 3 hours off duty, 3 hours on deck/steering, followed by 6 hours off duty, repeated.<br />
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In the early hours of Friday August 24th, Nathan and I were on watch. The foresail, was poled out to catch as much wind as possible in the downwind direction we were sailing, and as the wind was fairly light, this sail frequently flapped about as the boat rolled with the ocean swell.<br />
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This repeated flapping eventually caused the sheet (rope) holding the sail out to wear through, and the sail fell down and flapped about uselessly. Nathan called Nick up from below, and the two of them furled the sail while I steered the boat to course.<br />
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Later in the morning, while I was on my 6-hour sleep break, the wind dropped off entirely. There we were in the middle of the ocean, idly rocking about, with not enough wind to sail, and not nearly enough diesel to get us on our way to England.<br />
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Fortunately, it was a nice sunny day, and we all took advantage of it, hanging clothes to dry, and making various attempts at washing. My attempt at a shower was as follows: I stripped, and installed myself under the front hatch, which was open. I attached a small towel to a length of string, and climbing partly out of the open hatch, I tossed the towel over the side of the boat, while holding onto the other end of the string. Retrieving the saltwater saturated towel, I then scrubbed myself all over, before repeating the process a couple of times.<br />
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A bit of castille soap smeared on one corner of the towel made for a further sense of cleanliness, and the whole process was most refreshing.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6A6XIEKX-sItdsF2TvDgTtN12W3Cl3ECGlTDExRFSWie4h2s3Q9DTjVZrfM_Zq3_s5OoyMbTI7dIXaCm3_A8rkzBhpYNMQ3S8VxouOZDw2ZuaNsV0DCAgQmyNL49rs_INW-tHcQ/s1600/GOPR0914.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6A6XIEKX-sItdsF2TvDgTtN12W3Cl3ECGlTDExRFSWie4h2s3Q9DTjVZrfM_Zq3_s5OoyMbTI7dIXaCm3_A8rkzBhpYNMQ3S8VxouOZDw2ZuaNsV0DCAgQmyNL49rs_INW-tHcQ/s400/GOPR0914.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">first breath of wind after the calm</span></span>
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The calm did not last too long - we had changed the foresail to a reaching sail, and by the time I was showered, there was enough wind to speed us along nicely.<br />
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An entry in my diary includes the following mantra for being out at sea:<br />
(For each of the 4 repetitions of the phrase, a different point of the compass is pointed to)<br />
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<i>Thar be nowt b'there,</i></div>
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<i>Thar be nowt b'there,</i></div>
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<i>Thar be nowt b'there,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>...and...</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Thar be nowt b'there!</i></div>
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"... Such is life on the ocean. Thar be nowt nowhere, and all that's to be done is to keep on going!<br />
On setting out from St. John's, I had but an inkling of the enormity of the task ahead of us. Now we are out in the middle of it, and everything is simple. There really is nothing to be done but point the boat in the right direction, maintain whatever propellance we can, and wait."<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0Atlantic Ocean49.152969656170391 -37.26562547.83227515617039 -39.792480499999996 50.473664156170393 -34.738769500000004tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-47458283425428349962012-08-22T01:42:00.000+09:002012-09-13T00:07:20.554+09:00Crossing the Atlantic - Part 1.1: Fog and Sea Monsters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A year or two ago, a friend told me an anecdote of a chap who had got high on ecstasy or some other recreational mind-bending substance. In a drug-induced stupour, the guy in question had found his way into a building site and climbed a crane, to watch the sunrise from a vantage point high above the city. By the time of said sunrise, the drugs were wearing off, and the lad came to his senses, to find himself up on top of a crane in the early morning, with no safety harness, and no real clue of how he had climbed up there.<br />
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As we set out into the Atlantic, there was a similar sort of feeling, amongst some if not all of Taniwha's crewmembers. How had we got to this point? What series of decisions, events, and mindstates had led us to put ourselves into this situation? As far as I know, none of us had been consuming mind-bending drugs in the past little while, but somehow, it seemed, we had come to the decision to put ourselves through something that may be deemed a little risky.<br />
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Days before we left, we had seen a ketch with a broken mast limp its way back into harbour. This was <a href="http://alberg37junk.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Simon the Welshman</a>, who we had met the day we arrived in St. John's. Simon had left and set out into the ocean, only to turn back when he found conditions unfavourable, and had lost part of his mast on his way back to the harbour. So we knew from second-hand experience that there was heavy weather out there. But all 5 of us had made the commitment to pursue this crossing and our individual decisions to make this commitment had brought us together to see the plan come to fruition. By golly, we were at least going to give it a go.<br />
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Setting out between the cliffs of the harbour entrance, we waved to Nathan's family who had gone up onto the headland to see us off. From then on, we were immediately into seas that would accurately be described as lumpy. It was not a bad or particularly large seastate, but it jolted us out of our harbour sensibilities, and reminded us that for the next 2-3 weeks (estimated) we would be at the mercy of the fluids, and constantly in motion. A mile or two offshore there was a bank of fog, into which we passed under sail. As the land behind us faded from view, we realized that not only would we be constantly in motion, but we would not even see anything that was fixed, for as long as it took to get across to the other side of "The Pond". On reflection, that's a funny name for a body of water containing several weather systems and being 1800 miles wide at the point we were starting to cross.<br />
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The fog (or "Faahg", as it is pronounced by many of Newfoundland's inhabitants) lasted for the first two days of the voyage, and was interspersed by bouts of that other great Newfoundland weather: FDR, or Fog-drizzle-rain, which is, as the name suggests, somewhere in between all three. During the foggy bit, we ran the radar at regular intervals, and successfully navigated our way around a variety of Oil Rig supply ships, fishing boats, and car transporters.<br />
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An excerpt from my diary:<br />
"We have now been 30 hours at sea, and we are somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean. It's foggy. Lots of dolphins today. Lots in the morning, lots now."<br />
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That day, we saw 3 different species of cetacean, the most extraordinary of which did not look quite like dolphins, but had a much more bulbous, stocky form.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy Michelle</td></tr>
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They were in a huge pod of over 50, or perhaps hundreds, and were having a whale of a time jumping in formation through the waves alongside and behind us. Down below deck, we could clearly hear their excited chattering. Looking through a book of cetaceans in the north-western Atlantic, I deduced that they were probably of the species known as Grampus. I never before had any inkling that such creatures existed, so for me, they qualify as sea monsters.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0North Atlantic48.69096039092549 -41.835937523.902445890925488 -82.265625 73.479474890925488 -1.40625tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-20325759856301238082012-08-20T21:43:00.000+09:002012-09-08T00:30:08.418+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 8: Slipping the Lines<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In St. John's, we have been waiting.<br />
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Waiting for the miracles to come.<br />
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Now the time has come, and so have the miracles: the miracle of the right weather to start out in, and the miracle of the right rope - a specialist very strong dyneema rope which will help the mast stay up (an essential thing for any sailing boat to have).<br />
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The rope got delayed due to a ferry breakdown between the mainland and Port-Aux-Basques. But now the weather is all good (except for a little bit of Newfoundland fog), and the rope arrived, so all we need to do is attach the rope, slip the lines, and set out between the cliffs and head for Falmouth!<br />
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Our location can <i>probably</i> be tracked by clicking on <a href="http://share.delorme.com/?MapId=5fd1594b3e21419a9930c779768a3672">this link</a> and entering the password Taniwha5C . Good luck with that, it's worth a try! This service is provided by our newest crewmember, Nathan. He is a local lad who came to see us at the dock and expressed an interest in crossing the pond, and he has tall ship experience and a good quick-learning attitude, so Nick our skipper snapped him up as the latest recruit!<br />
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The route we will be taking will approximately follow the reverse of the path of Marconi's first successful radio communication:<br />
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Our course is likely to wobble somewhat more: Electromagnetic waves might travel in straight lines (and bounce off the stratosphere), but sailing boats almost never do.</div>
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Crossing the North Atlantic should take between two and three weeks, so here's hoping for some good winds in the right direction!
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0135 Harbour Dr, St John's, NL A1C 6N6, Canada47.5610057315948 -52.70587921142578125.056141731594796 -93.135566711425781 70.0658697315948 -12.276191711425781tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-71915603460846958332012-08-19T02:31:00.000+09:002012-08-19T02:56:20.391+09:00Preparations and Incidents: A Newfoundland Folk Tale in the Making<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The pontoon where the first incident occurred</td></tr>
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A couple of days after we arrived in St.John's, a fellow Englishman joined the Taniwha crew. <a href="http://matthinc.travellerspoint.com/" target="_blank">Matt Whitney</a>, like me, has been travelling without flying: he left England by bus for Gibraltar 8 months ago, and having crossed the Atlantic on a catamaran has been travelling in the Caribbean and the Americas. </div>
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During the time we have been spending in the harbour at St. John's, we have been spending time on various projects to ready the ship for the big crossing.</div>
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These projects included creating "The Snack Shack", a restraining area to store all the spare packets of crisps, nuts, biscuits and nibbly bits so that they don't fly around when we are on the lumpy ocean:</div>
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We also safely stowing the anchor and spare sails (a good chance to practice our knots), rigged the storm sails and series drogue to be ready for heavy weather, and cobbled together an autopilot system which will hopefully help us with the 1800-odd nautical miles of steering ahead of us. </div>
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This involved wiring together the various electronic instruments of a tiller pilot as well as linking the electric ram of the tiller pilot to a windvane steering mechanism that was already in place. (More interesting knots to tie.)</div>
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This project in particular had a backdrop of events that could in time become a Newfoundland folk tale to rival the ones I mentioned in <a href="http://sparkymarkyb.blogspot.ca/2012/08/aboard-taniwha-part-6-week-in-st-johns.html" target="_blank">my previous post</a>. The project necessitated the drilling of holes in the deck astern of the cockpit area, to hold an aluminium stanchion to support the motor arm of the tiller pilot. Drilling these holes and screwing bolts into them meant that at least one of us had to crawl into the dark narrow space behind the greasy steering mechanism in the back of the boat. Different stages of the project needed different activities in the cavity, so we took it in turns to crawl in there, using foam pads to cushion ourselves from the spars that form the shape of the hull against which the crawler is forced to lie. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The dark hole into which we took turns to crawl</td></tr>
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During my turn in the stern, Nick was drilling holes in the deck, and I was in voice contact with him to ensure that the holes went accurately either side of a beam that was supporting the deck. Being in voice contact made being in a narrow space relatively bearable. Nick had drilled the holes, and I was getting ready for a couple of bolts to be pushed through the holes, when suddenly all went eerily quiet. I heard a scream and a splash, and then nothing. I called out to Nick, but all voice contact was lost.</div>
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Lying there in the gloom, the hull struts pressing into my back through the cushion, I pondered my situation.</div>
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I could stay there and wait, or I could extricate myself and find out what was going on. </div>
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The first option was problematic inasmuch as I was now, without the reassuring contact with Nick's voice, beginning to feel rather claustrophobic in that small space, from which a fast escape would not be easy.</div>
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The extrication option was no more favourable, however, as it would require no small effort to get out of the space, and in all likelihood, whatever disaster had occurred would, I guessed, be over by the time I emerged on deck, with very little that I could do to assist matters, and I would simply have to crawl back into the space to finish the job. So I stayed where I was, avoiding claustrophobia all the while by sheer force of willpower.</div>
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I called out from time to time, consistently getting no answer from either Nick or Matt, both of whom had been around and in earshot until just before the silence began. I began to think that perhaps a strangely calm apocalypse had occurred, and I would emerge from my aluminium cave to find the world in a state of disarray, or even perhaps no living being remaining. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYxtlniPymcwoIE9ADwcXzRVgXtU00ezuh1LMrGfRcKcsipHzh_RD8BfLlvcaxWp8Bc_UyONgaVH5ZRNyILRci9kP0G2LN1-7FkPMwG2zjaLBG5f5a1ujTbJnSoD6bTrFz-EmldA/s1600/pont.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYxtlniPymcwoIE9ADwcXzRVgXtU00ezuh1LMrGfRcKcsipHzh_RD8BfLlvcaxWp8Bc_UyONgaVH5ZRNyILRci9kP0G2LN1-7FkPMwG2zjaLBG5f5a1ujTbJnSoD6bTrFz-EmldA/s400/pont.jpg" width="240" /></a>When I was on just on the verge of making the decision to get out of the space, Nick's voice reappeared, apologized for his sudden absence, and told me that a boat that had arrived opposite had had an incident that required both his and Matt's immediate attention.</div>
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After we finished attaching the aluminium stanchion to the deck, I crawled backwards out of the narrow space, and everything was explained to me. As I was not a primary witness, I will leave it to <a href="http://matthinc.travellerspoint.com/" target="_blank">Matt's blog</a> to provide a more accurate explanation of the story as seen from the outside. Suffice to say that it involved a boat and a falling dentist, and a lot of fending.</div>
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<== The boat that had arrived on the pontoon opposite was one we had first met at the harbour in Port-Aux-Basques<br />
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Very shortly after the incident, and while I was still under the deck wondering what was going on, there was another incident nearby which could not possibly have been linked, but elevates the whole scenario to the local gossip circuit, and possibly even to folkloric status. According to Nick, there were suddenly a lot of people running around the Harbourside Park area, (not 20 yards from our mooring) shouting such things as "Ya! Call tha Cops!"</div>
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By the time I had resurfaced, the cops had arrived and started an investigation, cordoning off the area with "POLICE - Do Not Cross" tape. They came to both boats asking for witnesses to interview. I did not offer my services as a witness, since I had only been able to hear the inside of the boat when the events took place.<br />
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Apparently there had been a stabbing, after which the stabbee, bleeding, had chased his assailant (apparently unknown to him) through the park and down the street, leaving a trail of blood drips that is still visible after several rain showers:<br />
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And there were we thinking we were in the more refined and calm end of St. John's harbour.<br />
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What with stabbings, wartime relics and repercussions, and enough ghost stories to fill volumes (being discussed by the staff of the laundromat I am in as I write this), don't ever tell anyone Newfoundland is a place where nothing ever happens.</div>
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0Queens Cove, St John's, NL A1C 1A4, Canada47.567000001126488 -52.70232796669006347.566330501126487 -52.70356196669006 47.567669501126488 -52.701093966690067tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-46248794428411194752012-08-15T11:56:00.001+09:002012-08-17T05:33:59.338+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 6: A Week In St. John's<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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St. John's is very much a working harbour. The only provision for cruising boats is a floating wooden pontoon attached by a wobbly gangway to the edge of the harbourside park.<br />
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The harbour authority man who welcomed us told us with a cheery smile that there was no water, no electricity, no toilets or showers, and no other facilities whatsoever.
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Fortunately, we were saved from thirst, hunger and uncleanliness by Ken Ryan, the ex-commodore of the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club, who came down to see what boats were in. Ken and his wife Carol welcomed us into their immaculate and spacious home, which is full of beautiful pictures of yachts of various shapes and sizes. The following night, Ken and Carol drove us over to the yacht club - half an hour's drive or a day's sail away in Conception Bay on the other side of the peninsula.<br />
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Out in the bay we explored the beautiful rock formations of Bell Island, and dined like royalty aboard Ken and Carol's yacht, Relentless, while the sun set.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrVIFNjMaQousvrPKbYMoGb9Xxfe2XRk6vO6xt7i-odJBkATzisFuxVnXP5SiKJOh8mI8p9R6ZxBhWMBypQIZFo2qi2ldW6r-rL14KrYuWt5XLajGqKZnDQEJKH4M6SWApX153GA/s1600/GOPR0124.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrVIFNjMaQousvrPKbYMoGb9Xxfe2XRk6vO6xt7i-odJBkATzisFuxVnXP5SiKJOh8mI8p9R6ZxBhWMBypQIZFo2qi2ldW6r-rL14KrYuWt5XLajGqKZnDQEJKH4M6SWApX153GA/s400/GOPR0124.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bell Island and Clapper Rock</td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: left;">The coastline back on the St. John's side is just as rugged, or perhaps even more so.</span></div>
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This landscape culminates in Signal Hill to the north of the harbour, which has a varied military history. It was also the site of the first successful reception of a radio signal across the Atlantic in 1901, by the radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi.<br />
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There are a good many people in St. John's who, if you give them a grin and a minute or two, will relate the most extraordinary stories of local history and folklore. A self-described "homeless Canadian bum" who I met up Signal Hill told me about many things: the seal-hunters walking miles out to sea on the winter ice; the American bomber found frozen into the top of an iceberg that washed up in a nearby bay a few years ago (it had crashed in Greenland in 1942 and taken this long for the ice to work its way down to the sea and across the ocean to Newfoundland); and the fact that the Smithsonian Institute chose this area to study the condition known as SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder - since the winters here are so cold and depressing.<br />
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Another guy I met near our mooring pointed to a metallic appendage sticking out of a nearby building, and after I confessed I had no idea what it could be, he said "think submarine". It was, he said, a periscope taken from a German U-Boat that had been captured during the war.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The periscope atop the building across the road</td></tr>
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A firework display on Sunday evening gave us an accurate overview of the typical local weather: the firework display was on top of a hill, and the cloudbase was not much higher. As a result, the only visible effect of the rockets, once launched, was to turn the clouds pink and green and golden.<br />
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Nowadays, the town, like the fireworks, is booming - thanks to a handful of oil rigs offshore on the Grand Banks of the North Western Atlantic. The oil rig supply boats constantly coming and going from the dock next to where we are moored have loud engines that echo through the water directly into Taniwha's hull, meaning that we have an almost constant stereophonic remider that we are just an insignificant group of small pleasure-seekers in amongst the titans of heavy industry.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com1Queens Cove, St John's, NL A1C 1A4, Canada47.56705067439426 -52.7021670341491747.545624174394263 -52.741649034149169 47.588477174394257 -52.66268503414917tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-82473718787003408962012-08-08T11:54:00.000+09:002012-08-16T08:29:36.454+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 5: Rolling around to St. John's, Newfoundland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We left St. Pierre in fog, set sail in fog, and the fog persisted until 24 hours later, when, on the same tack, we were out in the Atlantic Ocean, well clear of Newfoundland's south-west corner. Having thought it would take two days to sail to St. John's, we were happy to find ourselves approaching it fast, and gybed around to head straight for it. After the gybe manoeuvre, I went down to my bunk for a rest, and awoke an hour or two later to find the boat bouncing around a lot, with frying pans and buckets bouncing around inside. The waves had got rather large, so I went up on deck to help steer while Nick and Michelle pulled in the headsail.<br />
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The waves were steep, and about 6 to 8 feet high, and we were having to steer along them to make our course, which made for a rather bouncy ride.<br />
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After a while, a squally rain shower approached us to add to the challenge.<br />
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The sea changed somewhat after we had passed below a huge twisting horizontal cloud and were heading towards the lighthouses on Cape Spear, North America's most easterly point.<br />
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Heading around the point into St. John's Bay, the wind and sea settled down considerably.<br />
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We took down the sails and as we motored across St. John's Bay towards the dramatic cliffs marking the entrance to the harbour, a warm moist wind blew down off the land, scented with the freshness of pine forests, and bathing us in a welcoming Canadian warmth.<br />
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</div>Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0St. John's Bay, St John's, NL A1A 1B2, Canada47.558920607496525 -52.65060424804687547.516047607496525 -52.729568248046874 47.601793607496525 -52.571640248046876tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-15248697798716936192012-08-06T09:53:00.000+09:002012-08-15T11:54:00.996+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 4: A quick visit to France!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After a straightforward and beautiful sail from Port-Aux-Basques, we came across a long island called Miquelon, then had to use our wits to sail through a choppy sea to get around the headlands of the next island, St. Pierre, to arrive into the colourful town of St. Pierre. Made up of two main islands (or, it could be said, three islands, two of which are joined by a narrow isthmus), St. Pierre & Miquelon is one of the numerous French colonies around the world, known colloquially as the DOM-TOM, that France insists on holding on to. We wondered why they don't just let Canada have it, and figured it must be something to do with National Pride (q.v. Falklands, etc.)<br />
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It is certainly well-protected, by decorative rusting cannons pointing out at the harbour, and also by a border policeman and a customs official who came aboard Taniwha to do a bit of a good-cop bad-cop routine. It was unclear whether they had a sense of irony, but I think they probably enjoy the whole palarver of coming onto people's boats and making sure they are not smuggling hoardes of immigrants... I couldn't help wondering, after all, where would any immigrants go, once they arrived on this small island?<br />
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Perhaps they would go and try to claim asylum at the cathedral, with its decorative fish-shaped door handles...<br />
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Perhaps they would search for some industry that has not fallen by the wayside...<br />
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...or rob the bank under cover of fog...<br />
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Perhaps they would wander the cobbled streets, as we did, in search of some real French food...<br />
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Perhaps they would line up at St. Pierre's only boulangerie too late to get hold of any freshly baked goods.<br />
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In a small one-bakery town, (although I later found a second one) this turns out to be a real possibility. The first morning, I turned up at the boulangerie with Michelle at 7:30. There was a selection of breads, croissants, pains-au-chocolat, -au-raisins, and quiches. But I had to get some money changed (Euros here, not dollars!) and the bank was not open until 8:30. Back at the boulangerie at 8:35, the selection was all but obliterated. There were still some baguettes, but almost all the good things in the croissant line were gone.<br />
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The following morning, I got to the boulangerie at 7:00 and joined the smug people in the first queue who get to stock up on French bakery goods and nibble them on the way home.<br />
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And after 48 hours of French Fog and French culture (and a galette and some runny cheese and some not-so-runny cheese), it was time to move on, and we disappeared into the fog, like the immigrant smugglers that we are not.</div>
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0N2, Saint-Pierre, St Pierre and Miquelon46.776669841356558 -56.175112724304246.773951341356558 -56.1800482243042 46.779388341356558 -56.1701772243042tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-68962037997900673402012-08-04T09:43:00.000+09:002012-08-15T11:26:51.226+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 3: Port Aux Basques - First taste of Newfoundland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As we sailed out from the bay we had been anchored in, we saw a motor launch heading straight for us. I jokingly said to Nick, "If they don't give way to us, we should call the cops!" The boat got closer and closer, and it became apparent that they were heading straight for us. They circled around our stern and drew up on our port side, and I realized that they <i>were</i> the cops! They were just coming to check up on us since we had our Canadian courtesy flag on display to show that we were not local. Unfortunately, our Australian ensign had fallen off the back of the boat in the first strong winds out of Québec, but these police did not seem to mind, as long as they had our Canada customs number.
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After a day's sailing through rather large and complicated waves, the wind dropped and we motored into the night, which suddenly became very foggy in the early hours of the morning.<br />
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As we got closer to the shoreline, Nick handed me a vuvuzela, which serves as Taniwha's foghorn!<br />
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Although I blew on it a few times, we did not really need the vuvuzela: we emerged from the fog into brilliant sunshine about a mile offshore.<br />
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Nick gingerly steered us into the harbour, never quite sure that there would be enough water to allow Taniwha's 10-foot keel to pass.<br />
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No sooner had we tied up to a slimy wooden jetty than an enormous ferry came roaring in through the channel we had passed through. Dominating the little harbour, the ferry executed a skilful handbrake turn to dock at the ferry port on the other side. This ferry that runs from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port-Aux-Basques and is the main link between the Canadian mainland and Newfoundland.<br />
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From the moment we tied up, a steady stream of locals pulled up in their cars, mostly to look at us - although some talked to us in the characteristic Newfoundland accent with its unique turns of phrase. For some reason, I could understand the accent almost perfectly: being from the British Isles must help a lot, as does having spent nearly a year in Canada: "Newfounese" seems to be a mixture of West Country, Irish, and rural Canadian, with the occasional touch of cockney thrown in.<br />
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Our most prolific visitor was a retired man called Brainer, who gave me a tour of the town in his car. He drove me along pretty much every street in the place, showing me where the many fish processing plants used to be, and where the few remaining ones are, as well as all the houses he had lived in, all the houses his ex-wife had lived in, and all the houses and cars his brother owns.<br />
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Port-Aux-Basques has two ends, separated by a plateau of wilderness a few miles long.<br />
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I first discovered the plateau when walking up the largest hill I could see, which had a radio mast on top. I spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering around on top, watching frogs basking on the shores of black ponds.
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Leaving Port-Aux-Basques, we soon found ourselves agaion surrounded by fog, and started to hear the fog horn of what must have been a rather large ship. We guessed that it must have been one of the leviathan ferries - fortunately we could see on the radar that it was over 2 miles away. In a clearing, we got a confirmed sighting of the ship, passing about a mile off our stern, but still looking pretty massive.<br />
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A few miles on, Michelle spotted a large and dark strange shape in the water ahead. Our first thoughts were of whales, but the shape was unlike any whale imaginable. Michelle wondered aloud whether dugongs inhabit these waters, but as the creature lazily sculled its way past our starboard side, we could see that it was a HUGE leatherback turtle, over a metre long! We later learned that these creatures come up north to feed on the plentiful jellyfish that inhabit these waters in the summer.<br />
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That night, shortly after sunset, we saw what looked like a bright red light on the side of a huge ship on the horizon. This light got wider and wider, and then started getting taller and taller, and as it rose into the sky, we realized that it was the moon as we'd never seen it before.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com1Newfoundland and Labrador 470, Channel-Port aux Basques, NL A0M, Canada47.472662868613419 -59.024047851562547.129386368613417 -59.6557618515625 47.815939368613421 -58.3923338515625tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-46955026634219613612012-08-01T18:00:00.000+09:002012-08-14T06:49:23.829+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 2: Gaspé to Iles de la Madeleine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Gaspé was a nice little port to spend a couple of days relaxing and doing a variety of essential boat maintenance. I also slept for a long time, did a lot of washing up, and played my accordion a few times. We met a fiddler from a boat moored down the dock, so we did a bit of evening music-making, with Annili on the recorder.<br />
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Annili decided to leave the boat to expolore more of the Gaspé area and the Canadian "maritimes", so we were now down to 3 crew, and set off into the calm bay under motor.<br />
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Back out at the end of the long channel, we found enough wind to sail, and made a few tacks to pass the next headland south, around to a rock and town known as Percé.
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Percé means pierced, and that well describes the rock, which includes a beautifully proportioned rock arch as well a teetering stack on the seaward end.
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Due to localized wind changes, we had to motor through past the rock and past the Ile de Bonaventure, which is where most of the local gannets come from.<br />
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Rounding the island, we found ourselves back in the wind, with the right direction to take us all the way to the Iles de Madeleine on a single tack!
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In the evening, while Nick was at the Navigation table testing the long-range radio, and I was cooking supper, we heard a shriek from Michelle, who was up on deck, steering. We went up and she said she'd heard and seen a whale breathing very close to the boat. We kept our eyes skinned, and moments later, the water suddenly broke directly astern of the boat, and not 20 metres away, a huge whale jumped right out of the sea, before falling away with a big splash. Amazing. We were stunned. One of those experiences that cannot be captured on film but will be remembered for the rest of life. But I find myself wondering - as <a href="http://sparkymarkyb.blogspot.ca/2011/07/approaching-kodiak.html">I wondered 13 months ago</a> what effect radio waves have on the comfort of surrounding whales.<br />
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Again, we sailed throught the night, and just before midnight, Nick and I again saw dolphins, playing around the boat and darting through the water.<br />
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In the morning, we were heading straight for the Islands, with a small island called Le Corps Mort on our starboard side. This is a very well-named rock, looking in silhouetted profile very like a dead body recumbent on the horizon. After made a two-hour-long tack to get around Le Corps Mort, and then sailed along the South coast of the Madeleines, past red cliffs peppered with small houses, and a long beach backed by sand dunes.
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We found our way in through a buoy channel to the other side of the sand dunes, and as Taniwha's keel is too deep (10ft.) for us to risk entering the ports around here, we anchored in the bay. It is a very relaxed place.
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The full moon rose as the sun set.
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The high pressure weather has given way to a front coming in, and we are spending a rainy day at anchor. Sailing requires such intense activity and concentration that the prospect of going ashore to explore (especially in the rain) is not as inviting as a bit of space in between the notes.
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We entertained the idea of inflating the tender dinghy and motoring ashore, but after a quick morning swim in the not-too-cold waters, the day got progressively windier and rainier.
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So we are spending the time here drinking hot drinks, maintaining sails, and catching up with ourselves.</div>
Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0897-1191 Québec 199, Havre-Aubert, QC G4T 9A7, Canada47.239122612872634 -61.83860778808593847.066789612872633 -62.154464788085939 47.411455612872636 -61.522750788085936tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-15259235290801430182012-07-28T12:00:00.000+09:002012-08-10T03:34:30.736+09:00Aboard Taniwha - Part 1: Québec City to Gaspé<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Taniwha </i>is a 50-foot racing yacht built in the 1980s, one of the last racing boats built of aluminium before carbon-fibre became the norm. The boat has been based in the Detroit area for a few years, and is now embarking on a big adventure.<br />
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Taniwha's Kiwi owner Nick, and his Australian partner Michelle have been mostly based in the UK over the last few years, and have recently been spending more and more time in Sassy, near Detroit, working on preparing Taniwha for the high seas. Their mission: to sail to New Zealand!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slipping the lines at Québec marina</td></tr>
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A Taniwha is a sea-monster in the Maori tradition, and is known for being sometimes ferocious and sometimes benevolent and protective.<br />
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While I was waiting in Québec, Nick and Michelle were sailing Taniwha across Lake Erie, through the Welland Canal (past the Niagara Falls), across Lake Ontario and down the St. Lawrence River. I was following their progress (<a href="http://www.facebook.com/taniwha.frers" target="_blank">click here to view!</a>) as they passed by many of the same places as me: Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, Trois Riviéres.... It was late on a Sunday evening, 22nd July, that I heard that Taniwha had arrived in Québec. I went down to the marina the next day, and was welcomed aboard. At the time, Annili, a German girl I had met in Toronto, was also in Québec City, and having heard from me that the boat could do with some extra crew, she decided to join us too.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Québec City disappears over the horizon</td></tr>
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For a couple of days, we were passing along the buoy channels that guide tankers and container ships along the St. Lawrence River. Our main navigational tool is an application on an iPad that plots our course over zoomable digital versions of the navigational charts of the area. This is so indispensible we have come to call it "The Oracle".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A cargo ship looms as Nick checks his bearing and Michelle consults "The Oracle" </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Calm evening at the first night's anchorage</td></tr>
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The first night, we anchored in calm weather off to the side of the channel. We slept peacefully, but were suddenly woken at 3am by choppy waves, and a strong wind blowing us towards the shore. So we set off, and it's a good thing we did: for the next hour or two, we were heeled right over, with just a smallish foresail, in a wind that was 35, gusting up to 45 knots! The wind died down throughout the day, and we passed amongst several pods of belugas, around the area where the fresh and brackish waters of the river mix with the salt water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjwwft9akuRhyphenhyphenqSlIZTwFsPDHiSv5SLQ6_fmhjf5CtML2AFEkVNxL7tAiLJ5eqQzza2LcFfN206rJSzIC0-YduLi8V07xBoY1bmaYUsobAmBwVc54rK0JyBmuDAGsn-XdPPOUnPQ/s1600/GOPR0197.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjwwft9akuRhyphenhyphenqSlIZTwFsPDHiSv5SLQ6_fmhjf5CtML2AFEkVNxL7tAiLJ5eqQzza2LcFfN206rJSzIC0-YduLi8V07xBoY1bmaYUsobAmBwVc54rK0JyBmuDAGsn-XdPPOUnPQ/s400/GOPR0197.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking out for belugas</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5lHYa4J5LxAAJ8gf1jVBZWTG3b2UVKCiyoIMTGsVcsmsFgduXrNFLVbVM7DmH2r_h-Sqx8HQQYjfZ_xzOF_NrCjmkEdU3fx3qNLgKLHGNwO89UEzjPNi9jwRkDUbf0R_lRSzI5g/s1600/GOPR0233.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5lHYa4J5LxAAJ8gf1jVBZWTG3b2UVKCiyoIMTGsVcsmsFgduXrNFLVbVM7DmH2r_h-Sqx8HQQYjfZ_xzOF_NrCjmkEdU3fx3qNLgKLHGNwO89UEzjPNi9jwRkDUbf0R_lRSzI5g/s400/GOPR0233.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Colour change where salt and brackish waters meet. The small white dot on the left is probably a beluga.</td></tr>
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We anchored briefly in Tadoussac harbour where we saw some sort of whale slowly rolling its way around the boat, and took turns swimming off the boat in the cold waters.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRgnWhd9sD-w3sqFBIvXJlYEKq0HHaLY3Suyvd5YYZ0s9FW2zvMSt-WmjVkZwi517SYlKCeqPBn11byKsmaEO8ZJTfG_DdhdkuSaG7OF42YynMcSHNwbiGj-ZOSAqUYi5sIQzzw/s1600/GOPR0262.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRgnWhd9sD-w3sqFBIvXJlYEKq0HHaLY3Suyvd5YYZ0s9FW2zvMSt-WmjVkZwi517SYlKCeqPBn11byKsmaEO8ZJTfG_DdhdkuSaG7OF42YynMcSHNwbiGj-ZOSAqUYi5sIQzzw/s400/GOPR0262.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cold but refreshing!</td></tr>
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We then found a more idyllic anchorage in a rocky bay just around the corner, where a seal inquisitively wandered around, and dragonflies preying on small flies got lynched by angry mobs of the smaller insects.<br />
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The following day, the wind was light, but we followed the St. Lawrence river eastwards, gradually losing sight of the north shore, as we followed the south shore.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpcqQU3tyFlURm5UEC0JkLYcStOnxqZrxqM2ATu3Wmz4Ncttayz0wBOadMY5IGLYSJhDFoH1U7DGct-szXzibfhHX3xU2zuAClHbJ6XL0fvyhiL5mCOHC_-lt1z-mkEknuOZyy6w/s1600/GOPR0414.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpcqQU3tyFlURm5UEC0JkLYcStOnxqZrxqM2ATu3Wmz4Ncttayz0wBOadMY5IGLYSJhDFoH1U7DGct-szXzibfhHX3xU2zuAClHbJ6XL0fvyhiL5mCOHC_-lt1z-mkEknuOZyy6w/s400/GOPR0414.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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In the evening, after some wing-on-wing sailing and a beautiful sunset, the wind dropped totally, so we motored through the night, and in the morning, we popped into the small town of Sainte-Marie-les-Monts to shower and replenish the diesel.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Annili enjoying a peaceful morning on deck</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn3RrVbGnf_fF_qxD9N1Dw3kmgLX9QuRjZz2DRh6uWszVSgc_KhE1h8fHf3BzPHuMLllclx9wYZYX8tajTTRgn8v88epMrwFy0beQMaGfc_F6aCF-xuoU2ebG2gIkkph6-v7FxOg/s1600/GOPR0594.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn3RrVbGnf_fF_qxD9N1Dw3kmgLX9QuRjZz2DRh6uWszVSgc_KhE1h8fHf3BzPHuMLllclx9wYZYX8tajTTRgn8v88epMrwFy0beQMaGfc_F6aCF-xuoU2ebG2gIkkph6-v7FxOg/s400/GOPR0594.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Motoring into Sainte-Marie-les-Monts</td></tr>
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Setting off along the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula, the fun really began. A bit of wind appeared, then dropped but not completely, so we decided to try out one of the spinnakers we have aboard.<br />
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We raised the spinnaker successfully, but no sooner had it filled with air, than the halyard unclipped, and the spinnaker fell, looking very like a slow-motion film of a balloon bursting, into the water. We dragged the spinnaker from the sea, and decided that we would leave the halyard aloft and send one of us up there to fetch it the next time we were in a port.<br />
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The next thing we tried in order to capitalize on the light winds was to lower the foresail and raise a larger one. But as the foresail came down, the top of it got stuck on a piece of fabric - part of the letter "S" from the boat's red identification letters had detached itself from the sail, and stuck to the forestay, which prevented the sail from lowering. So we raised the sail again and had a think. It was clear that at some point, someone would have to go aloft to remove the sticky "S", and whoever went up might as well get the spinnaker halyard back from the mast top on the same journey. It was also clear that we could not do this while in a port if there was any wind at all, as the foresail had to be unfurled to get at the fabric, and wind would make the boat want to sail, which in a port is not a good idea. So the answer was that since we currently had light winds and calm seas, now was the time for action!<br />
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I volunteered to go up the mast. Nick equipped me with a harpoon-type implement cobbled together from a boathook, a knife and a bit of duck tape. He also provided a harness; I provided my own helmet (accsnowb). I looked, according to the crew, like some kind of surreal superhero. And I felt like one too. Nick hoisted me up on another halyard, while Michelle kept the boat on course, and Annili was the official photographer. On the way up, it was clear that I could barely reach the "S": even by hanging onto a mid-forestay and reaching forward with the harpoon, I could only scratch at it, with not enough leverage to counteract the strong adhesive.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMJyzHOtPgn5ZGvgVZmgDO93m6BAj-e6zZdgG5OO8zjVDTPEdN7z1Jqq0fCEveOl7LcmncJ0nbkBc0qEW6TcafmuzFlwkJKVj3xA-T_XEtsCrOEU0S_6DvmMY95GXulz_BUXTpYw/s1600/mast+no+leverage.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMJyzHOtPgn5ZGvgVZmgDO93m6BAj-e6zZdgG5OO8zjVDTPEdN7z1Jqq0fCEveOl7LcmncJ0nbkBc0qEW6TcafmuzFlwkJKVj3xA-T_XEtsCrOEU0S_6DvmMY95GXulz_BUXTpYw/s400/mast+no+leverage.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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So I went up to the mast top to retrieve the original halyard. It was <i>beautiful </i>up there! As I got further up the mast, the horizon opened up and the seascape widened out, allowing me to see much more than from deck level. Also, as I went up, the wind picked up, so by the time I got to the top we were sailing along pleasantly. Nick realized I was enjoying it so much that he left me up there for a while.<br />
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I eventually made the reluctant decision to come back down to the deck. On the way down, I went forward again to have another crack at retrieving the red "S". Nick rigged up yet another halyard, further forward than the mid forestay, so that I could pull myself further forward still. I also lengthened the harpoon to get even more leverage, but even with this configuration, and standing with my two feet balanced on the mid-forestay, the "S" was stubbornly resisting the knife. The only way I would be able to tug it away from the forestay would be by hand. And to get my hands on the forestay, I realized I would have to play the superhero move. I aimed my hand at the forestay, and in a leap of faith, pushed my whole body through the air, lunging to grab at the forestay - and it worked! It was a scary but essential bit of corporeal spatial engineering, and I could now hang off the forestay with one hand while I pulled the sticky fabric off with the other. And that was that!<br />
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Two jobs done successfully, I was lowered down to the deck, ecstatic at the adventure of it all.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglrhJI2ETvE9HFeHvRITIfTEDIIhHSqBSvpjbcLR7rjhi7HqNh-RcdYa0puQDfUfcEHFoVLMyxUCC34Nsu6JznIwYP7iDsdcaBF5Jxc4ZOUsC_zqK0bQVkYtYE2qxA9aVgjm1dQw/s1600/GOPR0612.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglrhJI2ETvE9HFeHvRITIfTEDIIhHSqBSvpjbcLR7rjhi7HqNh-RcdYa0puQDfUfcEHFoVLMyxUCC34Nsu6JznIwYP7iDsdcaBF5Jxc4ZOUsC_zqK0bQVkYtYE2qxA9aVgjm1dQw/s400/GOPR0612.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yet another beautiful dawn</td></tr>
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We sailed through the night, and early in the morning, Nick and I found ourselves surrounded by dolphins! They were in groups of 3 or 4, about 15 creatures in total, rushing through the top of the water.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2q1zr-F8y1wmHYpu41I2hhJfkmlheUBZmmSKVMgWMiKj6DBfn6FWSRd4dil4hXFlIzsrF1B8Md_Wrt8zvC2I67MPnjJ7-XV5LXdJZIsbvbPgqVBOS7zBrcpK9rwSdr_GeKrAjOg/s1600/dolphins.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2q1zr-F8y1wmHYpu41I2hhJfkmlheUBZmmSKVMgWMiKj6DBfn6FWSRd4dil4hXFlIzsrF1B8Md_Wrt8zvC2I67MPnjJ7-XV5LXdJZIsbvbPgqVBOS7zBrcpK9rwSdr_GeKrAjOg/s400/dolphins.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's a pair of dolphins! Honestly!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaTIe8I-xAtlB3XhsI7Q3aEug05_oI1x65HWVHvhMsMrj6KnQkoElHvJ08h3lhuRDff80omHISBmTO2YEaqtTge2AS0jl1iraGKDqrGhBO11z-NJN-DbDkN6RAWLZBOiEj7a1wgw/s1600/GOPR0642.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaTIe8I-xAtlB3XhsI7Q3aEug05_oI1x65HWVHvhMsMrj6KnQkoElHvJ08h3lhuRDff80omHISBmTO2YEaqtTge2AS0jl1iraGKDqrGhBO11z-NJN-DbDkN6RAWLZBOiEj7a1wgw/s400/GOPR0642.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michelle steers for the end of the cliffs</td></tr>
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y<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nick checks the sails as we prepare to tack</td></tr>
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After rounding the spectacular cliffs of Cape Gaspé, we tacked up the channel and went into the harbour, passing through crowds of gannets performing their kamikaze skydives into the water.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSU_4g8_O2VxEFXx2_oUklhY_Vkhe1yXhwx0JqEZ6OjxfZT3AY6L84nIUWLDk0twdi9MfRs3rZc3FaSScTmVrfVHXoKIxgBcJDqIxy6ygcRGvDB7mKAJCn3zuZtn7JKyo6uvIpdg/s1600/GOPR0864.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSU_4g8_O2VxEFXx2_oUklhY_Vkhe1yXhwx0JqEZ6OjxfZT3AY6L84nIUWLDk0twdi9MfRs3rZc3FaSScTmVrfVHXoKIxgBcJDqIxy6ygcRGvDB7mKAJCn3zuZtn7JKyo6uvIpdg/s400/GOPR0864.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Final approach into Gaspé</td></tr>
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com3Rue de la Marina, Gaspé, QC G4X 3B1, Canada48.8271811715155 -64.4777727127075248.8062751715155 -64.517254712707526 48.848087171515495 -64.438290712707513tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-21264016139001426692012-07-20T02:09:00.000+09:002012-08-07T03:51:30.268+09:00Québec<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Montréal</i><br />
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After arriving in Montréal by train from Ottawa, I felt (to the greatest extent since arriving in Korea) that I had arrived in a foreign country. And yet I hadn't even crossed an international border!<br />
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It was clear from the beginning that French is the first language in Montréal, although English is certainly widespread, to the extent that the city is functionally bilingual. Suddenly Canada's insistence on bilingual cereal packets started to make sense. Even the "Stop" signs here are in French, which is more than can be said for France.<br />
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The French spoken here, however, is not the French I was taught at school.This is Québecois, and even after a month in the province, I cannot profess to be able to understand it perfectly.<br />
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In a similar way to Toronto, Montreal is a melting pot, but it has a different sort of quirkiness. There seems to be something of a grungy laissez-faire attitude that gives it a rebellious charm. There is copious graffiti, mostly very creative, which somehow makes the city feel loved and well-lived-in, like an old well-worn pair of jeans.<br />
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Montréal has a variety of architecture, and in many parts of the city, the sidewalks are marked with little metal strips which give the dates of the buildings on either side.<br />
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Many buildings have staircases leading to the apartments on different levels.<br />
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The Jazz Festival was in full swing when I was there - I wandered past a multitude of open-air stages with a variety of bands, and experienced a wonderful late-night jam session with the daughter of "the late, great Duke Ellington" as she insisted on calling him, and some high-energy saxophonists.<br />
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Three days was not nearly enough time to get a full appreciation of the city, but I found some interesting aspects of it, and was also there long enough to get caught out in a couple of heavy short rain squalls.
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<i>Québec City</i><br />
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Québec City is a gem. I had been forewarned of its beauty by several people, and I have to say I agree. It is also very touristy. Whether it is touristy because it is a gem or it is a gem because it is touristy is unclear, but does not matter.<br />
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From the moment I stepped out of the station, I felt like I could be in a small town somewhere in France. The central area of the city is essentially a fortress perched high on a rock above the St. Lawrence river.<br />
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The day I arrived here, the town was setting up its summer festival, which provided many free and ticketed outdoor events throughout the city. In addition to this festival, there are two major evening sound and light shows - one is a presentation by Cirque du Soleil, underneath the road bridges that carry the highway down from the high part of the city to the low part; the other is a historic projection of images on industrial buildings near the harbour.<br />
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Québec is a city of distractions, but they seem to be mainly worthwhile distractions. One major drawback of the touristiness is that the busking options here are severrely curtailed: auditions happen in Spring, and the licenses apparently cost a large amount of money. There are street performances going on ALL the time, most of which are focussed on circus tricks and acrobatics with a lot of audience participation; there are also a number of musicians who, even with allotted time slots of one or two hours, were raking in heaps of cash from the plentiful stream of tourists.<br />
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Throughout all of Québec province, there is a conspicuous lack of Canadian flags. The flag of choice here is the Québec national flags: four <i>fleurs-de-lys</i> around a white cross on a blue background. Québec, although a part of Canada has been recognized as a nation within the country. In the past, there has been rather a lot of anti-Canadian feeling in Québec, but this seems to have settled down somewhat; this year's protests in Montréal and Québec City seem to be more focussed on frustration with the Québec national government.<br />
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Québec is the only city in North America to have kept its full set of city walls.</div>
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Like many old towns, it also has a full complement of narrow little streets and intriguing back alleys.<br />
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<i>Trois Rivières</i><br />
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If Montréal is Québec's Toronto and Québec city is its Ottawa, then Trois Rivières is its Kingston. Rachelle from Saskatchewan, who I had met on <a href="http://sparkymarkyb.blogspot.com/2012/06/the-canadian-part-2-jasper-to-toronto.html" target="_blank"><i>The Canadian</i> train bound for Toronto</a>, was on a French immersion course in Trois Rivières, so I went there for a weekend to explore the town and practice my French. It is also totally francophone - which is why people go there for French immersion courses.<br />
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My French immersion started on the road, as I decided to hitchhike there.
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This gave me 4 hours of French conversation. My first lift was with an old lady from a small farming village, who had such a strong accent that I almost had to revert to smiling and nodding. My second lift came from a lady who used to be a French teacher, so made sure I understood everything she said. She was driving home to Montreal the long route, via the charming little village of Deschambault-Grondines.<br />
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Trois Rivières is also full of interesting old buildings: it is supposedly the second oldest European-built city in Canada, and has cottages, barracks, and a variety of churches, seminaries and convents.<br />
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My transport back to Québec City was provided by Marc, Rachelle's French teacher. Thanks to his clear way of speaking, I was able to have a full deep conversation with him about Québec's history and politics, and the benefits of living in Lévis, the city just across the river from Québec. (Where else, said Marc, can you go out to a world-class rock concert and return home by ferry?)<br />
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Back in Québec City, my main activity became waiting. I was waiting for a boat to come along and whisk me away further East. As I waited, said boat was making it way from the Great Lakes down the St. Lawrence river, which gave me time to pare down my luggage and get back into a sea voyage mentality.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com29 Rue Sainte Élisabeth, Trois-Rivières, QC G9A 4Y3, Canada46.332706224442489 -72.5344848632812544.927557724442487 -75.061340363281246 47.737854724442492 -70.007629363281254tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-52067881510483185452012-07-01T21:00:00.000+09:002012-07-20T08:31:49.034+09:00Ontario - Part 2: Being CanadianHaving no ticket between Toronto and Ottawa, I was planning to hitchhike all the way, but having no idea where to start hitching, I went by bus as far as Kingston. <br /><br />
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For a while, Kingston was the capital of Canada, until Queen Victoria decreed that it was too close to the US border and thus too vulnerable to attack. Wandering around the centre of Kingston, one really feels that one could be in a small town in England or Wales.<br /><br />
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My accommodation in Kingston was a camper van. The owner of the van was Andrew, and his parents kindly showed me all around the town, and around the
river basin. From here, the first flight of locks starts the Rideau
canal that joins Kingston and Ottawa over the hills and through a series of lakes.<br />
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Andrew's parents also have a cottage near a Provincial Park north of
the city, and were kind enough to take me there for a day, to experience
what being Canadian in the summertime is really all about. <br />
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Being on an island in a lake, their cottage is only accessible by
canoe, and we spent a beautiful day there canoeing around, repairing the
outhouse which had got hit by a falling tree, and swimming amongst
sunfish and watersnakes in the balmy waters of the lake, in between
sessions sitting cooking in the home-built wood-fired sauna.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canoeing across Otter Lake</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
The following day, I had arranged to go and visit Bruce, a friend of
my mum's, who lives in the Lanark area of Rural Ontario. Bruce had
agreed to come and pick me up in Kingston. I knew which shop we had
arranged to meet outside, so waited there at the pre-arranged time. It
was only after 45 minutes wait that I realized I was waiting at the
wrong branch of the right shop, on the right street, but at the wrong
intersection. By the time I got to the right place, Bruce had already
given up on me. So it came to pass that I reverted to Plan A and hitchhiked out of Kingston.
Three rides in as many hours got me as far as the home of my third
lift-giver, which was a luxurious trailer in a park on the side of a
long and beautiful lake.<br />
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<br />
The trailer park is apparently rather looked
down upon in Canadian and American culture as not such an ideal living
situation. But this place was idyllic!<br />
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Trees, water, beautiful sunshine... what more could one possibly want‽<br />
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<br />
After a swim in the lake, I contacted
Bruce and found that I was not too far from his home, so we arranged
that he would pick me up nearby. <br />
<br />
I stayed with Bruce for 3 days, exploring the surrounding countryside by various means of transport. The area was originally settled by Scots, as is
reflected in the local names of places and rivers. Many of the local
inhabitants are descendants of the original settlers. The land is
farmland but being very stony, is apparently very difficult to farm.It makes for good cycling country, though.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note the well-built wooden fence, of which there are many in the area.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perth</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We also enjoyed fresh vegetables from Bruce's highly productive garden that needed a lot of watering given the lack of rainfall.<br />
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On my last full day with Bruce, we went with a friend of his for a kayaking expedition along the Mississippi river (this is not the American Mississippi, but a much smaller local river). <br />
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We went up along the Clyde river, a tributary of the Mississippi and
found the way blocked by a beaver dam. Never mind, though - we continued
in the Canadian way by ramming the dam and heaving ourselves and our
kayaks over it into the upper stretch of water, and did the same going back downstream: <br />
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Having experienced
kayaking over a beaver dam, I began to feel like a Real Canadian! <br />
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The final stage of my Canadianization was Canada Day, for
which I chose to be in Ottawa, the capital city. <br />
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I set out in the morning, adorned myself with
Canadian Flags, and walked into the city along the northern end of the
Rideau Canal. <br />
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I started to pass more and more people dressed in red and white, and was glad I had dressed for the occasion.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0900-1004 Pike Lake 9 Route, Perth, ON K7H 3C5, Canada44.787439606012441 -76.34202003479003944.776169106012439 -76.361761034790035 44.798710106012443 -76.322279034790043tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-74865348568558677792012-06-21T17:00:00.000+09:002012-07-20T08:37:02.545+09:00Ontario - Part 1: Being International<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Ontario is a Huge province, even by Canadian standards. I planned to attempt to fit the entire province into a single 'blog entry, but this was futile. Two 'blog entries is still not quite enough, but that is what I must do...<br />
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The penultimate day-and-a-half aboard the train was spent entirely within Ontario, travelling through forest which was interspersed by a great many lakes. I have no idea how the designers of this railway could ever have even started to survey for planning to build this railway. It seems to pass through otherwise completely impenetrable forest for thousands of kilometres. It must have been like digging a tunnel through the forest.<br />
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The section of Ontario just north of Toronto is known as "cottage country" as it is where a great many inhabitants of the Greater Toronto Area have "cottages". These are not cottages as we know them in England, however, but holiday homes and weekend getaways that range from mere shacks in the woods, to castles on lakeshores. <br />
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As we got closer to Toronto, the landscape became more and more
developed and the cottages became grander and more castle-like, and very
soon we were passing through suburbia. I stepped down from the pampered
life aboard the train, into Canada's larget metropolis.<br />
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It was immediately clear, wandering the streets of Toronto that there were a multitude of national groups living there. The fact that the European Football championships were on at the time I was there made this even clearer: cars passing by were often bearing the flags of Portugal, Greece, Italy and such like. Perhaps this happens even when football (or soccer, as it must be called over here) is not an immediate concern.<br />
I spent a few days in the city wandering around, sampling some of the varieties of cuisine and enjoying the contrasting architectural forms. <br />
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The latter range from a university campus very reminiscent of parts of
Oxford and Cambridge, to a great crystalline window crashing through the
carcass of a grand 1920s building. And towering over all are the
downtown skyscrapers, themselves dwarfed by the CN tower, ever present
on the horizon.<br />
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I spent a day away from the city on the typical tourist's pilgrimage to the Niagara Falls. As these falls are mythologized beyond realism, I was not expecting to be impressed, but surprised myself. I fortunately made the decision to walk to the falls along the river from the bus station, rather than taking a city bus or walking through the town. This gave me a view of the deepening canyon, and a more naturalistic approach to the falls. The American falls, which were the first that I saw were incredible enough, but the horseshoe falls on the Canadian side of the river are as phenomenal as their reputation would have one believe. It was a sunny day, which gave rise to an aspect of the place I had never cnsidered: there is a permanent rainbow in the vicinity of the falls! I was surprised how close it is possible to get to the top of the falls, and felt no need to engage in the tourist activities such as a walk down into the tunnels behind the falls, or a boat trip on the river below. Instead was content to sit under a tree near the falls and read. In staying still for a long time, I became aware of the most amazing phenomenon: as the sun sank towards the horizon, the rainbow bubbled its way out of the gorge. <br /><br />
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I then wandered into the built-up area adjacent to the falls, and
experienced the most dire of geographical culture shocks. I fancied I
was suddenly in Las Vegas or Blackpool or some such monetary quagmire.
Everywhere there were towering blocks of casino hotel and billboards
encouraging me to part with my money in various ways, by spending an
evening with this or that minor celebrity or attending the tackiest
seeming side attractions. Someone had mentioned to me that one thing
worth visiting was the nightly light show at the falls, but after the
rainbow's most exquisite natural light show, I felt no need to wait
around for the man-made projections on the falls in the evening, and got
the early evening bus back to Toronto.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com06650 Niagara Pkwy, Niagara Falls, ON L2G, Canada43.079859671204837 -79.07873153686523443.079134671204834 -79.079965536865231 43.080584671204839 -79.077497536865238tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-69196232272350112432012-06-15T13:00:00.000+09:002012-07-18T10:29:41.221+09:00"The Canadian" - Part 2: Jasper to Toronto<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white;">Leaving Jasper by train was magnificent. Although we passed through increasing rain showers, the clouds were somewhat broken, so the majority of the mountains were visible, and unbelievably dramatic.</span><br />
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This majestic scenery was over all too soon as we wound down through forest, out of the rain and the Rockies into Alberta's farmland. As the train pulled into the industrial outskirts of Hinton, I overheard one of the other passengers say, "Man doesn't make it very attractive, does he?" I found myself wondering whether Woman would make it any more attractive...<br />
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Travelling in the sleeper class was a whole lot different from the economy class I had experienced on the way from Vancouver to Jasper. I knew that the ticket included all meals, but was not quite expecting the quality that entailed: 3-course meals three times a day, with six pieces of cutlery for each; extra muffins and patisserie for anyone who had to wait for breakfast, and bowls of fruit scattered throughout the carriages.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dining Car laid out ready for a meal</td></tr>
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After the first evening meal, I wandered along to the rear of the train, which is a carriage with windows all around the back. Here there were many bowls of fruit, hot drinks on tap, and a gaggle of retired Texan ladies fawning over pictures of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations. Arriving there just at the same time as me was a singer-songwriter guitarist. As she was tuning up, I imagined myself to have wandered into a private part of the train, but then realized that this was all included!<br />
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As I had found <a href="http://sparkymarkyb.blogspot.ca/2012/06/jasper-part-1-civilization.html">in Jasper</a> and <a href="http://sparkymarkbaldwin.co.uk/accordion_snowboarding.html">in Whistler</a>, travelling with an accordion really opens doors. Karen the guitarist said I should go and fetch my accordion, and so I did. Although we didn't jam as such, I did play a few tunes for the gathered audience, many of whom thought I was also a hired musician on the train. <span style="background-color: white;">The following afternoon, during my wanderings along the various sections of the train, I heard an chirpily enthusiastic English accent say, "Are you going to play for us?" so play I did, and I stayed at that end of the train until my call for supper.</span><br />
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I visited the economy end of the train a number of times over the next few days, and I began to feel almost like a kind of aid worker taking music to the starving refugees of some place from which culture had been banished.<br />
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Every now and then along the route, our train had to stop to allow freight trains heading the other direction to pass us. It seems that most of the railway across Canada is single-track, and freight transport, being the main income of the railway, has precedence over mere passenger trains. Being in no particular rush, I was quite happy for the train to go a little slower. I was very content to be on the train for a good long while, feeling that even three days was far too short a time.<br />
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The sleeping accommodation on this train was different to any other that I have experienced. It was probably most similar to the Russian train in which I crossed Europe in May 2010. In the daytime, the bunk was folded up into an impossibly small space, above forward and backward facing seats.<br />
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During the evening meal, the carriage attendant would come and fold out the beds in some impossibly complex series of key-turns and lever-pulls. The first time I returned to my berth to sleep, I walked straight past it as it was so completely different a space than the daytime configuration.<br />
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I realized soon after inhabiting my upper bunk why it was cheaper for this than the lower bunk: the lack of windows meant that there was no way to experience from one's bed that wonderful pleasure of overnight train travel: waking up in the early morning light to experience a strange landscape, different to that which has been left the previous evening. I was able to experience this joy by getting out of bed, however, as the bunks opposite, not being inhabited between Edmonton and Saskatchewan, were still in the daytime configuration.<br />
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After sitting for a while and looking out at the early morning strangeness from the other side of the carriage I went back to bed,as it was still a while before breakfast time. <span style="background-color: white;">The second time I awoke on that first morning, we were already in the prairies. I had somehow been led to believe that these lands would be far flatter than they actually were. Only briefly did we ever pass through anything nearly as flat as the Fen country in the East of England. Also, I somehow had an image of the prairies being wild grasslands, so was a little disappointed to find that all the land that we could see from the train was cultivated for agriculture, or quarried for Potash.</span><br />
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Some time between breakfast and lunch, I realized that this train had showers on board, and decided to sample the delights. The shower room was surprisingly spacious, and the flow of water was properly strong. It was a pleasure to be warm and wet and to watch the water trickling down through a small hole onto the tracks below.<br />
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Life on a long train journey is really rather leisurely, and it is easy to lose track of time. If it were not for the regularly announced mealtimes, and the darkness of night-time, the time of day would cease to exist at all.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The train in Hornepayne, wildest Ontario</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waiting in Hornepayne to get back on the train</td></tr>
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</div>Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com05 Ave, Hornepayne, ON P0M, Canada49.217036466170875 -84.773426055908249.214443466170877 -84.7783615559082 49.219629466170872 -84.7684905559082tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-26849332953206122472012-06-12T16:00:00.000+09:002012-07-17T03:49:44.390+09:00Jasper - Part 3: Tourism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I had been considering trying to get to Miette Hotsprings, but when I telephoned them in the morning of t<span style="background-color: white;">he following day</span><span style="background-color: white;">, all I got was a recorded message saying that due to excessive rainfall, the temperature of the pools was no longer hot enough, so they would be closed until further notice. My plan B was to go and see the lakes of Maligne River: Medicine Lake and Maligne Lake. Since the distances involved in my goals were not walkable, I decided to try my hand at hitchhiking, and around 11am went to stand on the road outside the Maligne Hostel, playing my accordion as I waited. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">I was picked up after a very short time by a couple of Belgian ladies who asked if I didn't mind that they would be driving very slowly in the hope of seeing wildlife alongside the road. I didn't mind at all. So we joined the tourist train of cars driving along the road and helped contribute to the traffic jams that occur whenever a bear, deer or <i>mouflon </i>(bighorn sheep) is spotted alongside the road. Such wildlife-spotting traffic jams occur regularly in places like Whistler and Jasper, and probably everywhere that tourists and wildlife share space. A side-attraction is seeing the various risks taken by those tourists who seem to be oblivious to the fact that even one of the smaller black bears could render them lifeless - or at least do some serious damage - with a swipe of the paw. It is amazing how much psychological protection is afforded by the roadside crash barrier. For the most part, black bears will continue grazing and ignore the tourists and their cameras, but you can never know how close is too close until it is too late. And what constitutes "too close" is always dictated by the bear.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Black" Bear shining brown in the sunshine grazes oblivious to tourists</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">We drove on up the road, losing the river somewhere in the forest, and after a while, we came to the first lake.</span><br />
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Medicine Lake has a very curious property: the water level changes considerably based on the outflow through the various tunnels of the canyon. In fact, there is no visible river flowing out of this lake, as all parts of the river go underground here before emerging at different points in the canyon. <span style="background-color: white;">For me, the most wonderful aspect of this lake was the profusion of dandelions that abounded along the shore. </span><br />
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Not quite sure why, but i just love these flowers! Apparently black bears also love dandelions, so it was no surprise that there was a mother and two cubs grazing around the lake. There was the usual crowd of tourists with cameras keeping a sensible distance away.
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />We continued up the road which wound round the lake then passed between snowy peaks then over a slight rise and down to Maligne Lake.<br />
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Maligne lake is the largest natural lake in the Canadian Rockies, and contains Spirit Island, one of the most photographed islands in the world. It is very popular for canoeing and also has a large number of sightseeing pleasure boats on it. This end of the lake seemed very touristy, although peering into the distance, I could just see the majestic mountains at the other end of the lake which are, <span style="background-color: white;">no doubt, </span><span style="background-color: white;">along with Spirit Island, the reasons for the tourism. Although tempted, I did not fork out the money for a boat trip or a canoe rental, but explored the woods along the lake shore on foot, and found a trail through the woods to a smaller quieter lake beside which I sat and played my accordion.</span><br />
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Hitchhiking away from Maligne Lake proved impossible using the traditional method. Despite there being only one road, the only cars who even acknowledged me were those that already seemed to contain more people than seats.<br />
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So I resorted to hitching by tongue instead of thumb: waited in the car park, I asked anyone who approached if they happened to be heading down towards Jasper. Although the first few peple I asked had full vehicles, this strategy of vocal connection seemed to humanize me in the eyes of those who may not have picked up a traditionally posted hitchhiker. Then I met an Austrian-Canadian named Steve. At first he was wary, but after finding out that I was British, his trust level increased, and he agreed to take me part way to Jasper - although he was headed East so could not take me into town. Amongst telling me about his life as a furniture maker and cattle farmer on his farm in Alberta, Steve gave a possible explanation of why people in these parts are loathe to pick up hitchhikers: some years ago, a couple were murdered by someone who had hid in the back of their camper van while they were filling up on fuel. This story has nothing whatsoever to do with hitchhiking, except to reinforce the concept of the vehicle as one's personal space into which one should not let anyone who one doesn't trust. It is devastating, then, that stories such as this then somehow lead, by extension, to a general mistrust of hitch-hikers.<br />
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Steve told me he was heading to Miette hotsprings on his way home. He said the springs might have warmed up by the time we got there, as it was already late afternoon. It was tempting to accept his offer of a lift up there, but I knew that it was an hour's drive to Miette. Not knowing how I would get back to Jasper and not wanting to hitchhike in the dark or risk missing my train the next day, I decided to forego the offer. I was also anticipating that there might be a chance for a reunion of Sparky and the Troubadours with Leif and Liz at the hostel.<br />
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Steve dropped me on the highway just by the entrance to a path known as Bighorn Alley that led back to Jasper. I initially thought it was so-called as the path went alongside the railway and was therefore frequently subjected to the sound of the horns of passing trains. But seeing the sign at the entrance to the trail, I realized that the name refers to the animals.<br />
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I walked back into town and didn't see any longhorn, but did see large numbers of what appeared to be logs sticking out of the grass. As I looked around, however, and the logs started to disappear and reappear at random intervals, I realized that these were not logs but ground squirrels, and moreover, I was completely surrounded by hundreds of these creatures!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ground Squirrels - invisible to the camera in their natural habitat</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">From Jasper, I was frustrated by not being picked up hitchhiking, but walking all the way back allowed me to see a family of elk crossing the road near the hostel. </span><br />
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Back at the hostel, there was no sign of the Troubadours, so I busied myself preparing my baggage for the train journey the next day.<br />
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Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0Range Road 262A, Jasper National Park, Improvement District No. 12, AB T0E, Canada52.726741279587614 -117.6402926445007352.707511279587614 -117.67977464450074 52.745971279587614 -117.60081064450073tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-26517948987695701602012-06-11T23:00:00.000+09:002012-07-17T04:55:53.607+09:00Jasper - Part 2: Wilderness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There are many hostels in the Jasper area, and most are "wilderness hostels" - huts in the woods with only basic ameneties. I decided to spend a day walking to the Maligne Canyon hostel and stay for the night before returning to the main Jasper hostel the following day.<br />
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Some time before noon, I set out and walked through the sunshine down the road to the highway. Despite enthusiastic thumbing, none of the passing cars or mobile homes picked me up, so it started and remained a walking day.<br />
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I first returned to the place where the rivers meet, to see the confluence in the sunshine.<br />
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From there, I wandered through the woods to the nearest bridge and crossed over the Athabasca river to a vast rock known as Old Fort Point. Here, I was surprised to learn that the Athabasca river flows all the way to the Arctic!<br />
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Continuing through the woods (along local footpath 7b) I met a park ranger who recognized me from the night before. He advised me that since it was already 2pm, I should probably take the more direct route to the hostel, as there were still another few hours to go. However, I felt I should follow the advice of a fellow Englishman I had met in the hostel, who had told me that the bottom of Maligne canyon was just as worth going to see as the top.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /> I decided to take the longer route which cut across through the forest to the Athabasca river and then up the Maligne river. </span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
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Walking up along the Maligne river, it seemed first to be a relatively normal, though picturesque, river rushing through the woods. As I continued, the path wound along at the bottom of the wooded slope at the river's edge, and crossed a number of small streams. Most of the streams, although rushing, seemed to come from nowhere.<br />
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These were the springs from which the underground parts of the Maligne river sprung back to the surface. Further up, the river valley narrowed into a rocky canyon that got higher and steeper as I went further up.<br />
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As I gradually got further and further up the canyon<span style="background-color: white;">, more underground streams appeared at the sides, and the amount of water in the visible river got less and less. The canyon got more and more spectacular as I continued upstream.</span><br />
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The canyon also got narrower, and the path crossed it by a series of footbridges. I remembered that I had in my backpack a length of nylon string. Deciding that this was too good an opportunity to miss, I spent some time attaching my camera to the string and lowering it down into the canyon to obtain some rarely seen views of the canyon.
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I arrived in the evening at the top of the canyon, where there was no sign of what strange and marvellous formations are so near by. After exploring the area, I eventually found the hostel, which consisted of a small group of cabins in the woods by the river.<br />
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The water supply came from a big tank in a shed, and the toilets were outhouses. There were also strict rules about keeping food only in the kitchen cabin, as the area is often home to several bears. According to the warden at the hostel, there were presently six grizzly bears between this hostel and Jasper town. Since wildlife observation forms part of his duties for the National park, he knows every bear and pack of wolves that is in his territory.<br />
Originally from Austria, the warden settled in Jasper in the mid-1980s, after travelling the world. I had to agree with him that Jasper is surely one of the top places to be.</div>
Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09636019936195284467noreply@blogger.com0Maligne Canyon Hostel, Jasper National Park, Improvement District No. 12, AB T0E, Canada52.919453968436528 -117.9956102371215852.918855468436526 -117.99684423712158 52.920052468436531 -117.99437623712159tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-24822328980912770842012-06-10T19:30:00.000+09:002012-07-14T13:04:07.096+09:00Jasper - Part 1: Civilization<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white;">Arriving in Jasper reminded me - for no apparent reason - of arriving in Ulan Bator. Perhaps the shape of the station was similar, or perhaps I subconsciously pre-empted the similarity of the structure of my stay there - a couple of days in a hostel, a couple of days adventuring through the "wild" and another stay in the hostel, before departing. It was raining slightly when I arrived, and I learned that there had been a greater-than-usual amount of rain this year. I caught a shuttle bus to the hostel, where I experienced culture shock due to an atmosphere totally different to that on the train. Rather like the hostel I stayed at in U-B, the HI-Jasper was crowded with people who were engaged in various exciting-sounding activities in the area. Feeling a little lost in the crowd, I relaxed and wrote my diary, and chatted with one or two people. I had just decided to go to bed, when someone asked me if that was an accordion I had over my shoulder, and if I would demonstrate how it worked. I played a few notes, and very quickly </span><span style="background-color: white;">a small crowd gathered, consisting largely of those I had been talking to. I continued playing, and Emily, the girl from the front desk approached, and asked if I would keep my playing short, since it was nearly time for the quietness curfew. She added that if I wanted to do a show the following evening, I could have a free night's stay in return. Which sounded like rather a good idea to me.</span><br />
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I finished playing, and wandered through the kitchen on my way to bed. In the kitchen were another couple of people who were interested in my accordion. Liz and her son Leif were on a road trip from their home in Juneau, Alaska to California. They told me they were fiddlers, and we should get together for a jam the following night. <span style="background-color: white;">Passing by the front desk, I told Emily that there would now be 3 for the next night's gig, and she said she would arrange everything and went to talk with Leif and Liz. </span><span style="background-color: white;">I helped her write a sign, and somehow, between the four of us, we came up with the band's name. Despite the fact that Liz and Leif had once been in a band called Taco, and I played with the Takoband in Japan in 2004-6, somehow it did not seem appropriate to regurgitate this name based solely on serendipity, so we became Sparky and the Troubadours.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hey! I don't remember any free popcorn!</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The following day, someone mentioned to me that there was an open mic / jam session at a bar called the WhistleStop in town. So I decided to go and investigate. I hitched a ride into town with some of the hostel staff, who were appreciative of my soundtrack to their driving. Turning up at the WhistleStop, however, my whistle was indeed stopped: the jam session had been the previous evening. Instead, I found a shelter from the rain in the form of a four-sided information board, under which I stood and played to the four walls, myself, and some presumably rather confused passers-by who could only see my lower legs and feet.</span><br />
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I walked back to the hostel, and on my way, I passed by the place where the rivers meet. This is the main thing I remembered from visiting Jasper 20 years ago. One of the most stunning and interesting aspects of Jasper, the confluence does not seem to appear in guide books or tourist literature. The Miette river is a brown colour and flows down from wooded mountains to meet the glacially-fed Athabasca river, which is a blueish-grey colour. The confluence of colours creates patterns and swirls that continue for many hundreds of metres along the Athabasca river - it is possible to see exactly which water came from which river, and the interference patterns that result are hypnotizing.<br />
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The "concert" in the evening was an informal affair. We took up our places on one of the tables in the common area, and were announced to those gathered in the room. Sparky and the Troubadours proceeded to play together for the first time, exploring the synergy between their Irish-based folkiness and my free-form meanderings and sporadic chord changes.<br />
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</div>Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0Whistler's Mountain HI, Jasper National Park, Jasper, AB T0E 1E0, Canada52.851925187013613 -118.1118249893188552.849528187013611 -118.11676048931885 52.854322187013615 -118.10688948931885tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-30952843780080151642012-06-09T16:00:00.000+09:002012-07-14T13:06:10.375+09:00"The Canadian" - Part 1: Vancouver to Jasper<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">At the Pacific Central Railway station in Vancouver, I was surrounded by musicians. They were involved in some sort of promotional</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">on-board</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">music</span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;">programme called Tracks on Tracks, the majority of which I would miss out on, partly due to being in Economy class, and partly due to leaving this train in Jasper.</span></div>
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The musicians were all accommodated in the Sleeper class section of the train, and the only two I met were taggers-on who had got involved by dint of being friends of the organizers.</div>
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Soon after 8pm, I was ushered into the economy carriage, where I carefully chose a seat with no seat behind it so that reclining could be performed without the need to disturb other passengers. I need not have worried about this, as there were very few people in the carriage: indeed, there were few enough that I felt comfortable squeezing a few chords out of my accordion. Along with the bright sunshine streaming through the window, it was a good start to the journey. It felt good to be getting on a train again. Trains have a greater feeling of potential than buses. The wheels connect to the rails, and the rails run to the destination - the traveller therefore feels connected to the destination in a direct way. My first destination was Jasper in the Albertan side of the Canadian Rockies.</div>
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Soon after I put down my accordion, a man came along the carriage, and, telling me what a good choice of seat I had made, settled in to the equivalent seat opposite. Although he was carrying a guitar case, he was not involved in the "official" music scene aboard the train, and I noticed that he was wearing a Victoria busking license. I had done some busking last summer in Victoria, so we talked for a bit about busking and music. Or to be more accurate, he talked, and I listened. His name was John, and by dint of being an ex-railway freight yard worker, he has a free pass for unlimited travel on the railway. He seemed largely obsessed with food, but also covered a wide variety of other topics, all of which flowed together in one long stream-of-consciousness, based<span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">partly on the miscellany of </span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">snacks, vegetables and tins of tuna </span><span style="background-color: white;">he produced from his bag,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">partly on</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">what was passing by the windows, </span><span style="background-color: white;">and only occasionally based on what he had been talking about in the previous sentence.</span><br />
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It takes effort to listen actively, and my activity on this train journey consisted largely of nodding, chuckling politely, and looking out for gaps in the dialogue that were long enough to allow me time to turn around and look out of the window at the spectacular scenery.<br />
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One of the joys of overnight rail travel is waking up early in the morning to find oneself passing through unfamiliar landscapes. On the morning of this journey, I woke up twice in two different and disparate places: first was a greyish desert land through which we passed along one side of a big winding river valley, as freight trains passed along another railway on the other side of the valley.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early morning Kamloops desert</td></tr>
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Having dozed off, I awoke for a second time, to the sound of people wondering how long ago "it" happened. In my somnolent state, I wondered if the end of the world was with us 6 months early, but looking up, I realized the nature of "it": Near the station was the burned-out shell of a petrol tanker, dripping with foam, with a group of firemen standing around and starting to gather up their hoses. We later learned that the tanker had stood there for 3 days unmanned, and the fire had started apparently spontaneously.<br />
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This was Kamloops, which seemed to be surrounded by fewer trees than I remember from when I passed through 20 years ago; perhaps this was an optical illusion stemming from too long spent in Whistler's coastal rainforest, or perhaps many trees have been logged and not replenished.
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The journey to Jasper took around 20 hours from Vancouver, and apart from the times he was asleep or wandering the length of the train, John gave me a running commentary all the way. He told me about all sorts of things (I wish I'd had a tape recorder - a whole book could be written of what he told me) including the way the trees have changed - the pine beetle has devastated much of the forest, as can be seen by the patches of reddish-brown colour in the mountains in between Kamloops and the Rockies.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Canadian Wilderness</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The elusive Mt. Robson</td></tr>
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Entering the Rockies, we passed by the elusive Mt. Robson - "only 100% visible on 14 days per year," according to the train announcer, and clearly less than 50% visible on this particular day - then Moose Lake, one of the largest lakes in the Rockies.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moose Lake</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;"> On the final approach into Jasper, numerous black bears were seen running into the woods from the grassy sides of the railway line. This prompted announcements over the train's PA system of "Bear on the left! <i>Ours à la gauche!</i>"</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spot the bear, anyone?</td></tr>
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John told me he's seen so many bears in his life that it is no longer a big deal to see them from the train. I must say that after living in Whistler for an autumn and a spring, I feel pretty much the same way.<br />
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We were now in the Rockies, and the railway town of Jasper was just around the corner.</div>
</div>Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0315 Connaught Dr, Jasper National Park, Jasper, AB T0E 1E0, Canada52.880112191458835 -118.078479766845752.877716691458836 -118.08341526684571 52.882507691458834 -118.0735442668457tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15247295.post-45812018895245212512012-05-31T21:00:00.000+09:002012-07-18T02:47:40.230+09:00Whistler<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sproatt Mountain and Alta Lake</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">The time has come when I must move on from Whistler.</span><br />
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Whistler is a strange town - it is a wonderful place with amazing mountains and - the primary draw for most of its visitors - fantastic skiing and snowboarding. The town is very much a resort: the original reason for its development was to host the Olympic games. Now that that has happened and the Olympics are over, the town seems to have something of an identity crisis. There is a subtle undercurrent of paranoia that Whistler will lose the interest generated by this event, which leads to the feeling that it needs to continue providing exciting events to ensure that people keep coming. Since people will surely keep coming for the mountains anyway, I don't think Whistler needs to worry so much (is it actually possible for a town to worry?)<br />
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Whistler is home to a large variety of people from all over the world: dominated by Aussies, but also including (in no particular order) large contingents of Québecois, Brits, Japanese, Swedes, other Europeans, Kiwis, Mexicans, South Americans, Filipinos, Koreans... The majority are either passing through or came here from elsewhere and stayed. There are, however, two groups of people whose roots here go back further than even the deepest-rooted Canadians: Whistler is situated at the meeting point between the nations of Squamish and Lil'wat. Fortunately, there is a wonderful cultural centre (Olympic-funded) that assists with an understanding of the traditional cultures of these two groups of people.<br />
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Stability in my life seems to lead to an absence of diary writing and blogging, but by no means an absence of activity. While a lot of the time, I joined my brother in the "ski/snowboard, eat, work, <span style="background-color: white;">sleep,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> snowboard/ski</span><span style="background-color: white;">" life-cycle of the ski-bum, the following links document some of the other activities I engaged in during the time I was living there.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://performancearchitecture.blogspot.com/">Performance Architecture</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.accordionsnowboarding.co.uk/" target="_blank">Accordion Snowboarding</a><br />
<a href="http://sparkymarkbaldwin.co.uk/whistlerbottles.html" target="_blank">Whistler Bottles</a>
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I have been living <span style="background-color: white;">with my brother</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">in this international ski resort town for the last 8 months. He has gone back to Europe and his beloved Chamonix. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">I now resume my journey's eastward momentum.</span>
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</div>Sparkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04242603279839418147noreply@blogger.com0Hwy 99, Squamish, BC V8B 0P6, Canada49.862775853413211 -123.1594848632812549.698833353413214 -123.47534186328124 50.026718353413209 -122.84362786328126