We thought we had found our baby, but fell prey to our most common occurence: having our plans changed by circumstances beyond our control, or as someone more famous said, “If you want to hear God laugh, announce your plans!”
Backup slightly. When I first proposed to Judy that we find a boat that we could live on, I had some idea of what I was looking for: a heavy, full-keel, full-skeg rudder cutter rigged sailboat. Heavy, to be able to handle the inevitable gales that would come our way. Full-skeg rudder so the Orca’s wouldn’t be able to badly damage us in the Straits of Gibraltar, and cutter rigged so as to have some choices for sails in different conditions. More precisely, having a self-tacking jib, so Judy could handle things at night by herself until she became more proficient. The boat that ticked all those boxes is the Canadian built Bayfield 36, or more recently, the Gozzard 36. The only problem is the Bayfield factory burned in the 90s and they are no longer built and very few come on the market.
One day a few weeks ago, I was perusing the recent listings on Yachtworld.com and saw a new listing for a Bayfield 36 in Lewisporte, NL. And it was just gorgeous! So we quickly reached out to the broker and here enters the first circumstance: the Broker is in Dartmouth, the yacht is in Newfoundland and according to the broker, the manager of the boatyard in Lewisporte was in St. John’s for the foreseeable future because his father had just had a stroke. But not to be deterred, we booked a trip to NL for the following week figuring that someone had to be there who could show us the boat. The broker sent me a survey from 2021 which looked great, original engine but very low hours, fresh water for most of her life, spent a decade laid up on the hard as part of a divorce settlement (that must have been an acrimonious divorce!) and we started to get excited. We have access to a house near Gros Morne that we could stage out of while we moved things on board if the boat worked out, and we started to plan a potential summer sailing amidst the icebergs in Northern Newfoundland.
Finally the day came and we packed all our boat stuff (survival suit, lifejackets, foul weather gear, summer clothes, tools, sextant, and a rather heavy box of boat books) in the car for the trip to the ferry in North Sydney. We left Dartmouth around noon and arrived in North Sydney with enough time to stop in at Breton Brewing for a few drafts before getting in line for the ferry. The ferry crossing was a little bumpy and uncomfortable in the chairs, but were deposited in Port aux Basques the next morning little worse for wear. Enter winter, stage left!
Yes, it was still winter in Newfoundland. We left Nova Scotia in the grips of spring, and went back in time. It was still February in Newfoundland. There was snow on the side of the road, there was snow in the hills, there were many frozen ponds, and there was even snow falling from the sky.
We unloaded the car in the sleet, took a well-needed nap and went to the local pub for a bite. The next morning we got up and hit the road at around 8am to drive the 340km to Lewisporte to see the boat. We were both excited and tired. The assistant manager met us promptly at 1pm and showed us the boat. It wasn’t exactly as advertised. It looked like it had been taken out of the water last fall, and the owner had forgotten to do anything after he took the sails off. The dodger was still up. The running rigging was in a clump on deck beside the mast. The standing rigging hadn’t been slackened off and since metal contracts in the cold, was now rock solid. I started imagining compression cracks in the mast step. The brightwork was grey and flaking. The isinglass windows in the dodger were milky and ripped. The fenders were still hanging on the stern. The hull still had dried weeds at the waterline. There was lichen growing around the handrails on the deck and there was moss growing around the companionway hatch. But the worse was still to come: the butterfly hatch was cracked and leaking water into the cabin. There was about half an inch of standing water on the salon table and the port shelves behind the settee were soaked with water and rotting.
Seeing as moss doesn’t grow in the winter, we could only conclude that this was some serious neglect stretching back a few years. It was now 2:30 and we had to hit the road to get the ferry back home to Nova Scotia. We didn’t have time to go back into Norris Point to retrieve all our boat stuff, so another trip to Newfoundland is in our future.
But we remain undeterred. The search for our floating home continues!