Life in St. John’s harbour

We were stormbound in St. John’s for 15 days. There is a lot to see and beautiful trails to hike and it offers all the convenience of a city like abundant shopping and a laundromat. This felt good for a few days but after a week we agreed that a remote dock in the country side or on an island is what we prefer.

One of the highlights was walking parts of the East coast trail. It was a steep climb up a hill and got rewarded with the most gorgeous view to the ocean on one side and St. John's with Signal hill on the other side. Another great view was offered to us from Signal hill where our friend Eric drove us because it would have been a long walk through the city to get there.

This is us on top of Signal Hill. It was here on December 12, 1901, the first trans-Atlantic wireless signal was received from Cornwall England 3,500 km away.

Signal Hill from the East coast trail

Traffic jam on the dam somewhere on the East coast trail

A view of the narrows (entrance of St. John's harbour) coming down the East coast trail

More East coast trail beauty

Slippery "road" up the trail

Part of the time in St. John’s we were provided with a vehicle by our friends Eric and Ruth which we are very grateful for. This made re-provisioning so much easier. Thank you Eric and Ruth!

We docked at the south side of the harbour to be protected from the significant undertow that the harbour experiences and to be away from the huge ships and downtown. Although the ships where we docked still looked massive compared to Hakluyt. However, the very inconvenient thing was that they took turns running their generators and because we were downwind we continuously inhaled exhaust fumes. Every day we checked the weather online and walked up to Fort Amherst to check waves and wind and there was no weather window in sight that would have allowed us to leave. After 9 days we had the opportunity to move to the small boat basin which was so much better in regards to generators and undertow.

Fishing vessel "Caspian K", our giant neighbour on dock 21

Downtown across the bay

This is what the weather map looked like for 2 weeks

Finally in the small boat basin

Another highlight was that CBC called us and asked if they could get an interview for their radio show. They came the next day and surprised us with bringing a camera guy and we were on the news the following day. You can check it out by following the link below (you can skip to 16:16 min to jump straight to the interview)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Apb3dPmdyoA