Next day we decided to leave camp in place and do a day trip in the area. We headed north around Pilley's Island. At the north end we discovered a large sea cave at the headlands. Just in front of it, a small pod of whales was feeding. We sat there for about a half hour, waiting for them to surface, shooting photos, being startled by their size. This one surfaced just a few feet from my bow.
Whale in front of sea cave.
Kate in front of sea cave.
It was dead calm out. The forecast had changed - no wind for another day - we could have stayed longer at Exploits. But here we were, so we did a circumnavigation of Pilley's. We found a nice beach for a lunch spot, stretched out on the warm stones to rest, then used pebbles to play a few rounds of mancala. It was a lazy vacation day. Pilley's turned out to be bigger than we'd realized - it took all day to get back to camp.
We paddled right off our chart (red line). Pilley's is a huge island - total mileage = 17.4 miles. Our campsite put us in good position to paddle back to our starting point at Roberts Arm the next day. The forecast was for very high winds. It was time to head back.
That evening, a small boat with six young folks on it circled our little island. They were laughing and drinking, having fun on a Saturday night. They pulled up to where we were standing together. One person had a camera and took photos of us - again we were the local oddity. They said they were from Brighton, had just been over to the iceberg to chip off some ice for their rum and coke. They asked if we'd like a beer - and tossed two cans of Canadian to us - and then offered us each a chunk of the iceberg ice. Mark put them into a glass of Scotch and we sipped our fizzy exotic drink together. The Newfoundlanders asked us if we'd like to come join them for a game of 500, which we had to decline. Laughing and shouting, they zigzagged their way out of the cove and off to Brighton. We were alone in the quiet of sunset on our last night at Notre Dame Bay.
