Now that we are almost on the last lap of our northern adventure most of our crew are wearing clean shirts. They must have been surreptitiously reading the ship's blog! The Hawaiian shirt has walked it's own way into the laundry bag and and a slightly crumpled, faded, duck egg blue replacement has replaced it. Michael must have finally realised that palm trees don't thrive in Newfoundland and so he has changed his attire ready for when we tie up tomorrow outside the Lewisporte Yacht Club. Maybe he has a crevatte, blazer and yactsman's cap tucked away somewhere too? Probably not!
Every now and then a little bit of 4G data gets dangled in front of Joe and he's quickly onto it. A flurry of emails ping in from clients and customers eager for fixes and new functions. He taps away at his laptop building new searches and refining old ones before hitting "send" just as we sail out of harbour and snatch away his digital feed. While Joe works Michael taps into his connection and figures out how many worlds can be fitted into the sun. The answer, in case you are wondering, is 1.3 million.
We crept out of La Scie Harbour before breakfast on another calm and still morning. As we left the breakwater behind we passed close to the buoyed but sunken wreck of a fishing boat nipped and sunk by the ice in June last year. A reminder that, despite the summer warmth and benign conditions we are experiencing, we are still in rugged and uncompromising waters.
The wrinkled cliffs became even more dramatic and twisted as we rounded Cape St John and set a course for Fortune Bay. Rock arches, tree topped crags and circling, diving seabirds were all passed to our starboard. Then the wind filled in, as always, from the direction we were heading and as the magical coastline dropped behind dark, ominous clouds built above them.