Shore Leave
The long suffering crew of SHIMSHAL have covered many sea miles this summer through some remote and desolate regions and, undoubtedly, have earned some shore leave. For the last few hundred miles we have been picking our time to get south with the winds set generally against us. It just so happens that those headwinds strengthened just after we got to St Anthony halting our southerly progress. No matter, the sun was shining, the wind was blowing and it was time to explore some of Newfoundland from the land.
There's no car rental in town but we are now in explored country and our good friends on Alchemy have been this way before us. Thus we learned that the town's Buick dealership will hire us one of their cars. Tomorrow we are off by Buick to L'Anse aux Meadows to pay homage to the point where the Viking's dragged their longboats ashore and built a settlement a millennium ago.
St Anthony is a bustling town busy with RV's the size of buses which expand sideways when stationary to create a living space the size of houses. Most of their occupants, nearly all of whom are silver surfers, were up at the restaurant by the lighthouse this evening. A fine place gazing out at the blue ocean below with icebergs, whales and dolphins adding interest to the view. The sign for the tourists reads, "Those icebergs have travelled some 2,000 miles since calving from the glaciers of West Greenland and their journey has taken them 2 years."
We smiled silently and perhaps a little smugly to ourselves when we remembered that we were in Disko Bay, birth place of many of St Anthony's shrunken icy jewels, just 6 weeks ago.
We didn't tell the silver surfers in their wonderful wagons that we had arrived here following in the wake of the Vikings and the icebergs. Because today we are Buick powered landlubbers soaking up the sights just like the other silver surfers.
At sunset, though, we left the Winibagos behind and walked down the hill and back to the Government Dock where we clambered back aboard our beloved SHIMSHAL that has brought us safely from the shores of Scandinavia to the New World. A route that has taken us to some of the wildest and grandest places on earth and where the Winibagos will never go.
Once back on board SHIMSHAL we were proud ocean goers once again and pleased to be leaving the landlubbers behind.