Mile 1018: Escuminac

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Escuminac Current Location: Escuminac Fishing Harbour Date: June 27 Mile:  1018 Locate: Ramble On Locate: Finnish Line 2.0 Google Photo Album

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After spending two nights at anchor in inner Miramachi Bay (Bay du Vin), we pulled anchor to continue south.   This meant retracing our path through the mine field of lobster trap floats that we passed coming in.

The winds were calm and it's direction steady in our anchorage, but it picked up slightly as we started to head out into outer Miramachi Bay.  Not enough to sail, and given the amount of dodging and weaving we would have to do, having sail up was just another complication.  The wind was on the nose, so no big loss.

A trail of gulls waiting for the chum dump!

We left through same channel as we came in (Portage and Fox Islands).   There are some buoyed channels here that we followed carefully, though we probably had a little more leeway to cut corners if we had felt more adventurous.   But, our thinking was partly that "they wont put lobster traps in the narrow channel".  The fishermen/women don't seem to share that thinking, a channel is just more sea bottom where lobsters might be and there don't appear to be too many other boats around at this point in the season.

Can you count them?

From our anchorage until we exited inner Bay du Vin, I counted at least 1000 floats from the vantage point of standing on the bow. And there were more than that amount again once we exited and started heading south toward Escuminac.  They are typically dumped from the back of the fishing boats in a long row, perhaps 1/4 a mile long with 4-8 traps and floats.  Sometimes you can find the lanes between these moderately straight lines of buoys, other times they seem more random or perpendicular to your path.

(video:  payday for the gulls)

In the end we (me!) bumped off a few just as we started to approach the Escuminac Harbour.  Lose focus for a few seconds and one creeps up on your blind spot.  No foul ... no harm ... this time!

Harbour full of fishing boats

Linda had called the harbourmaster but only was able to leave a message.  This harbour was filled with purely fishing boats.   Apparently this is the largest inshore vessel fishing harbour in Canada.  After we entered the harbour, sure enough, full of fishing boats, we circled around trying to determine where we might fit.

After a quite a few more circles, it became clear that the fuel dock was busy with the fishing boats who simply backed into the dock, leaving their boat in reverse as they then fuel up.   We decided to delay a fuel fill for another time as we were probably low on the priority list.

surrounded!

How to get up?!

Eventually the harbourmaster directed into the outer basin (where the smaller fishing boats resided) and we found a wooden wharf to tie to.  Out comes the fender board and all the fenders.  Attempting to align ourselves with a ladder was our  big challenge otherwise we'd be trapped aboard.

Finnish Line rafted with us as there was little other space anywhere else.   Entering the harbour, we had our eyes glued to the depth sounder.   Six feet'ish most of the time, but down to barely 5 at times. Linda saw one 4.8' as we were exiting the next morning! 

According to the harbourmaster, we were the first transient recreational boats into the harbour for the season.  Our tradition continues!