Monday, 1 August 2011

Mile 894: The Pool (Turtles all the way down)

Our trip through Baie Fine to "The Pool" was pleasant.  The weather was nice, with some reasonable wind for most of the way down the long fjord called Baie Fine. In fact, we were under sail when we kissed the bottom just a little.  Linda sensed the information from the GPS, charts and her eyes were not synching up, and yelled up to me that something seem'd wrong (I was mopping the foredeck at the time), By the time I had taken 3 steps aft, the boat shuddered a couple of times and then kept moving.  By the time I was at the helm, it was clear we were in shallow water, just a little off the track we should be on.  After a short "discussion" Linda wheeled the boat around toward slightly deeper water, and we continued on our way.

After that we were very careful threading our way through the many rocks that lead into "The Pool" at the end of the bay (Baie?)  The charts don't have a tremendous amount of detail, and you have to put an uncomfortable amount of faith in the GPS contour lines.

Once we rounded the corner and were in The Pool, our next issue was to pick a spot to anchor.  10 boats there already, and not a lot space.  The wind had become fairly brisk and was swirling about, most from the West, but often from North or South.   We found our spot, and sank the hook into a mass of weed.  The depth sounder read 6 feet, but I put out at least 20' of chain before the anchor hit bottom.  We ended resetting the anchor before bedtime to get a better position, and to ensure we had a good set.  Doing that involved hauling 100 lbs of weeds from the bottom.

We had a nice dinner, and while hanging out afterward, Linda thought she saw a water snake swimming by the stern of the boat.  Upon closer inspection it was a turtle, and on even more scrutiny, it was the biggest turtle I've ever seen.  It was just shy of 2' long, lightly covered in algae and other marine growth, moved rather slowely, but ended up parking itself at our transom, staring at us like a begging duck.  The call for bread went out, and shortly we had some leftovers ready for feeding.   The turtle ate quite aggressively at first, but eventually mellowed a little bit, and kept begging for more.   Occasional pieces of bread would go astray, and the lock fish population would attack it like piranhas.    We we totally amazed at the size of this turtle.  Eventually we grew bored of it, and it of us, and it quietly swam away.

Later that evening it re-appeared, but to our surprise, there were two this time, and the second one was even bigger.  Our best guess was about 2.5' from head to tip of tail.  This one was much more shy and didn't approach the boat.

Further research suggest that these turtles are quite old, and extraordinarily large for snapping turtles (if that's what they are).  We also learned that they will often bump against the boats until startles owners come out to see what the noise is, and offer some food.

We watched the second of two National Lampoon movies after that.  Senior Trip ... don't bother.  When that finished, we came on deck and realized that we must have been keeping the whole Bay awake with the movie ... oops.  We then settled down for some spectacular star gazing.  Satelites, shooting start, and an incredible lightning show.  The sky was clear, not a cloud to be seen, but the whole North-Easter horizon was constantly flickering for an hour or more.  Couldn't hear anything, and it was way too long to be fireworks.  I turned on the GPS and waited for the radar to download.  When it did, I saw a very large, very intense storm cell over ... southern Quebec!  Over 200 miles away.   There must have been lightning in some very tall clouds.  After we had out fill of staring skyward, we ducked beneath our bug screens and headed for bed.



Chris

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