It’s easy to get excited about things; to focus on what’s next; to think in terms of destination. This focus can be helpful. It’s defining. It can be taken too far. In my previous life of search and rescue, often those in trouble got that way because there excitement about a destination clouded there judgment about other things. We called it “get-there-itus.” A goal can be a good thing, but when the goal becomes the whole thing, you’ve come down with the disease.
On Sarah-Sarah, the next big goal – the focusing destination – is the city of Nuuk, in Greenland. It’s where we’ll top off the fuel. Two of our crew for the Arctic are meeting us there, Dan will be heading home. The rest of the voyage hinges around Nuuk. By now, had we not had an engine issue and our Captain had get-there-itus, we would be on a 6-day passage up the Labrador coast and making a beeline across Baffin Bay for Nuuk. Thankfully, Captain Scott has never met a plan he didn’t approach with a certain amount of skepticism or even contempt. This trip is not about the Northwest Passage or Greenland or even about making it to Anacortes. It’s a collection of all those things and every move, every decision, in between.
Bras d’Or (pronounced brah-door) was another one of Sam‘s ideas. When he mentioned it, Scott had to ask him how to spell it. It was not in our plans. Then Scott found out the another FPB-64 was also in Bras d’Or Lake1 and the plan changed. At about the same time as we were verifying bridge heights and talking to the other FPB about marinas and routes, Scott showed me the latest report from our weather routing service. I’d break it down into wind speeds and low-pressure systems but, basically, it said, “For the love of God do not leave Labrador for Nuuk before the 17th.”
Like a sensible crew, immune to those pesky nuisances other’s call “plans,” we changed hotel reservations and flights and have settled in for a leisurely-paced expedition through Bras d’Or Lake, a Unesco Biosphere Reserve that none of could even spell before we got here. I certainly couldn’t have reliably told you what hemisphere it was in last week and would have assumed you made the place up or that it was something from a Tolkien novel. “Meet Frodo three days hence at Bras d’Or, a golden loch beyond the plains of Minas Tirith.”
Now that we’re here, just at the bottom edge having come through St. Peter’s Canal yesterday, I would have made this trip if this place, alone, was the destination. We’re in the a 20 acre cove at the bottom of a quarter-million acre inland sea and I’m already blown away by how beautiful the place is. I couldn’t be more excited for the next three days as we slowly work our way through the lake and out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the other side. We’ll head up the protected side of Newfoundland, peek out past Bell Island, and head across to Nuuk at our best possible speed. But until then, it’s slow and easy and views like this.
Of course, all plans remain subject to change.
- Well put aside the stunning coincidence that two of eleven boats in the world ended up a few miles from each other without planning to make that happen. We’ll try and catch up to them on the lake if we can. ↩︎
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