Fortune to Facheux Bay
Fortune to Facheux Bay
Sept 6 2025
We departed Saturday from the floating dock at Fortune, NL at 6:30 am local time. Newfoundland time is ½ an hour behind Saint Pierre which is 2 hours ahead of Rockport, Maine. That makes for a 1½ hour difference between Maine and Newfoundland which makes it surprisingly confusing when trying to reorganize the original watch schedule. But, regardless of the time in Rockport or St. Pierre, 6:30 am in Fortune corresponded to sunrise and we wanted to take advantage of as much available daylight as possible. Despite the time of year being within two weeks of the vernal equinox, we still had more than 13 hours of daylight available at this northern latitude. Facheux, our chosen destination on the south coast of Newfoundland, was 43 miles away. At the conservative estimate of an average speed of 4 knots, we estimated it could take as many as ten hours to get there, sailing and/or motoring, and we didn’t want to be anchoring in the dark.
Fortunately, the winds and current were strongly in our favor. With the motor at 1500 rpm and the genny deployed, we averaged a respectable 6 kts/hour, at times hitting 8 kts with only 15 knots of wind at our back. Whether from tides or ocean currents, there must have been a net current of 1.5 to 2 knots helping us northward[1].
As we were leaving Fortune, the sun rose into a clear blue sky but, as we passed by the island of Brunette, rolls of clouds were forming to the west and steadily moved east and turning the day gray.
Brunette Islands, Newfoundland
Brunette was reportedly a good location for spotting whales, but the only wildlife we saw enroute were shearwaters and gannets both flying and resting on the water.
Brimmer enroute to Facheux
As we approached Facheux, fog descended, bringing with it misty precipitation. Entering the fiord, the walls of the fiord were shadows in the mist. A few miles up the bay a fishing operation was visible, backed by a gloomy sky. By 1:30 pm, Burke and Brimmer had turned into Brent Cove on the west side of Facheux fiord and dropped anchor in calm waters.
Fishing operations in Facheux
Hill, Burke and Sam in Facheux Bay
[1]. Lillian long ago lost her speed indicator, so the only velocity we measure is speed over ground (SOG), making it not possible to compute the difference between the speed thorough the water and the SOG.