We crossed the ICE limit sometime on Tuesday (1/07) afternoon and by Wednesday we were running up the coast of NF with poled out headsail and main. The wind had been building from early morning and we were making excellent time up the Newfoundland Coast having reached our waypoint at Cape Race just after midnight Tuesday. The water temperature had fallen another degree or so and was now about 3+C
During my watch 0900 to Midday Rossco sighted our first Ice Berg. Matt our Ice Master confirmed his sighting, to my inexperienced eyes it look like a big white cruise liner in on the coast. But no, Matt was right it was big berg, too far away for me to photograph with the camera in my phone (the only one I have).
Soon we had several "baby bergs" in sight. So great excitement all round as we closed on the second that was on our course as we made for St. John's Harbour. Matt pointed out a few bergy bits that were floating in the vicinity. These are of importance for us as they don't show up on radar. Mind you without Matt to point them out I found it hard to identify any of the first few Ice Bergs that came in view. Very faint echoes easily lost in the clutter.
Towards midday as we changed course onto the leads for St. John's Harbour, here we found to our surprise a Berg in the leads... So it was that we came close to one of these beautiful things. Up close they are both beautiful and scary, such a huge mass of frozen water and the bit we could see was probably between 1/10 to ⅛ of the total mass the remainder being below the water. This berg was cracked and fissured with smooth bits where it had floated in a different attitude previously. One of the dangers with these beautiful things is that they are inherently unstable and as the melt progresses they can roll onto a completely different axis unexpectedly. So while we got close we didn't get too close...
Matt close up to the Berg in St. John's Harbour leads.
PK, "all rugged up"
The First Berg or perhaps the second!
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