August 18 – 19

We had a nicely matched first pair of days on the Labrador coast: the first, windbound in a small cove just south of Cape Chidley; the second, traveling 50 miles down the coast on a perfect day. On the first day Finley decided that staying put would be more fun than beating our heads against the wind in the fog, and he was right. It was like those rainy days at camp as a child, when you had nothing to do but read, eat, and shoot the breeze. In this case it blew 20 knots or more and we were surrounded by bare rock so the feeling was especially cozy. The cabin has a little oil stove; good thing because the water temperature remains around 38° F.

The second day began cloudless and still. We set out early, making our way past one towering headland after another — mountains beyond mountains, all the way down the coast. The rock here is about 2500 million years old, granitic gneiss that has traveled the globe in that time and survived erosion and subduction to become some of the oldest rock on the planet. It is certainly eroded now — rounded by the Ice Sheets, then cut by valley glaciers so that the common shape a broad round mound half of which has been split away to make a sheer vertical face. These are the Torngat (spirit) Mountains of northern Labrador, as majestic as the Alps or the Sierras in their own special way. Imagine touring Yosemite in a sailboat, where the water level is at 9000 feet so you only see the last 3-4000 feet of mountain, and you’ll have a rough idea. But this is the arctic, so the vegetation is all different. Every surface that isn’t vertical or recently split is covered with moss or lichen, and every crevice and outwash plain is tightly felted with tundra plants. All grays and greens. 5 knots is just the right speed to almost take it in. So uniform, yet so various in shapes and textures that the eye never tires — incidentally while scanning for polar bears. None yet. Just tantalizing white rocks.

Our big project for the day, besides admiring mountains, was to find the site where a German U-boat secretly established an automatic weather station in 1943. We knew the cove, and we found the exact site by matching specific boulders and nearby peaks with a black and white photo in a sailing guide. You’d be as impressed as we were if you saw how endless and similar the landscape is. Of course we posed for photos that matched the guide. Several curious caribou were on hand, making their way effortlessly over this rocky landscape. They prance! When they run, the body floats weightless while the legs staccato the irregular ground with incomprehensible precision.

After anchoring and supper in a bay with a panorama of sharp peaks brushed with light snow from yesterday, a full moon came up over the mountains. Magic! The rest of the week looks to be fair. Coming down the coast in 2006, we saw none of this; all was fog above a few hundred feet.