FRIDAY 05 August
I had a rough night with my cold symptoms and got up around 3 AM. I doodled on my iPad until 4:30 and then arranged some pillows and cushions on the sofa so I could lie down on my back with my head elevated. That seemed to help, and I was able to sleep, sort of, until 6:30. Linda did not sleep well either, and was up by 6:45. Never underestimate the physical and psychological power of coffee in the morning.
A panoramic view of the municipal RV Park in St. Barbe, Newfoundland, from near the entrance gate. Our rig appears father away and smaller than it really is.
Although not a “destination” RV park, this place has more than met our needs and I wanted to share a few photos of the park and the Southern Labrador ferry terminal across the street. This ferry is operated by Labrador Atlantic. The Friday schedule had the ferry leaving Blanc-Sablon at 8:30 AM (Newfoundland time) and arriving in St. Barbe around 10:15 AM, so I wanted to get some photos of that as well.
Our rig in site #4 at SBRV Park, with 2-way service (water and electric). It has been a pleasant, quiet place to stay with added interest from the Southern Labrador Ferry operations and traffic.
The facilities building at the RV park is really nice, so we took advantage of that, first for showers and then to do laundry. And Internet access, of course. On the way back from her shower, Linda was chatting with our neighbor (two sites down from us), and learned that they had just come over on the ferry yesterday from Blanc-Sablon, Quebec. They are traveling in an Isata 3 Series class C motorhome, and had just traversed the Trans-Labrador Highway, which was only recently completed. Now THAT, is an epic road trip.
The Labrador Atlantic ferry terminal shares part of a building with a motel and restaurant, just across the street from the entrance gate to the RV park. The dock and staging area are ~ 1/4 mile on down the road.
After finishing my second cup of coffee I went over to the building and took a shower. The laundry room here has three washers and three dryers and we were the only ones using them, so it was a major laundry day, with towels and bedding in addition to clothes. Linda did the laundry while I walked down to the ferry dock around 10:00 AM to watch the unloading and loading operations and take a few pictures with my Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone. (I was not up to using the big camera today, and the quality of the phone photos is excellent.) Here are my selections:
The QAJAQ W ship at its dock in St. Barbe, Newfoundland. The area to the right in the photo was the staging area for passenger vehicles, pickup trucks with smaller trailers, and some smaller RVs. Most larger RVs and tractor-trailers were lined up, nose-to-tail along both sides of the road coming in.
The first vehicle to disembark was a tractor-trailer parked near the center of the ship, side-to-side.
The second vehicle out was also a tractor-trailer. It was parked in the far-right lane (as you face the ship). It was impressive to watch the driver steer this combo around to the center and straighten out enough to drive it off the loading ramp.
I was amazed by what came off of the ship next. This was a double tanker. My best guess was 90 – 100 feet long.
A Prevost H3-45 tour bus exits the ship. Not being articulated, like a tractor-trailer, it had its own maneuverability issues, but the driver handled it flawlessly. But I know how long it was … 45 ft! And it was a Prevost H model, so I had to photograph it.
Once all of the large vehicles were off the ship, I could see that the cargo deck was open on both ends and that there was also an integral loading ramp at the other end of the ship. I then noticed that the deck was painted with five (5) numbered lanes. Because of their size (width), the large vehicles were only loaded in four columns. But wait, there’s more! Part of the deck (to the left in the photo) raised up and smaller vehicles started coming out. And they kept coming, and coming, and coming. It was impressive just how many vehicles, of all sizes, configurations, and weights were on this ship coming back from Blanc-Sablon, Quebec.
Once all of the arriving vehicles (and some walk-on passengers) had disembarked, the crew started reloading the lower cargo hold of the ship with smaller vehicles. Again, I was amazed at how many they got in before closing the deck hatch.
Next, it was the Big Boys turn. The way the staging area is arranged relative to the loading ramp, the big tractor-trailers did not always have a straight-in approach. I admired the ability of the drivers to manipulate these big rigs onto the ship. Even after boarding they might have to pull them to one side or the other into their designated lane and get them straightened out so as not to block an adjacent lane. I never saw one of them have to back up to accomplish this.
Two Tour buses (MCI J4500) had been parked at the terminal building this morning and then moved to the staging area by the boat. Lacking articulation, the were perhaps even more challenging to maneuver into place, but the drivers did not seem to have any difficulty putting them exactly where the boarding crew wanted them.
They saved the best, or at least the largest for this crossing, for last. This tractor was pulling a low-boy trailer with an auxiliary pup at the end. It was transporting a portable worksite building and some associated cargo, and was wider than a normal semi. Two axles on the trailer, one on the pup, two drive axles on the tractor with a bogie axle ahead of them, four tires on each axle, and the two steer tires. That’s 7 axles and 26 tires. They had left space for him in the one of the two center lanes, pulled him right in, lifted the integral loading ramp, and lowered the bow (or stern) to seal it up.
The QAJAQ W, loaded and seaworthy, pushes away from the dock (bow/stern thrusters) and then pulls out into the basin. It did not turn, as I expected, and headed out as oriented. Unlike the Marine Atlantic ship M/V Highlanders, when had a definite bow and stern, it appears that the QAJAQ W can sail in either direction. Visible in this photo is the passenger deck, which presumably had comfortable seating, bathrooms, and a snack bar.
The QAJAQ W makes its way out of the harbor towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It will take about 1 hr. 45 min. to reach the dock in Blanc-Sablon, Quebec. Any vehicles headed directly to Labrador will cross the border roughly 30 minutes after they disembark.
With laundry and photos taken care of, we had a late breakfast of vegan egg and cheese sandwiches and split a banana. We planned to stay in camp and have an easy day otherwise. I took my laptop computer to the building and published the blog post for yesterday. As long as I was online, I downloaded e-mail and went through it quickly. There wasn’t much that needed attention, so I marked most of the entries “read” without actually looking at them, and deleted some obvious spam. I had hoped to take the time to actually clean up my inboxes, filing or deleting e-mails as appropriate, but that tends to be a tedious, and time-consuming, job and I wasn’t feeling up to it. Maybe at our next stop, as we will be there two nights and plan to just rest and continue to get over our colds. We both lay down around 1:30 PM and took naps for a little over 2 hours.
When I got up, I made us both a cup of tea as hot liquid seems to make us feel better. Besides, we were slightly chilled as it was overcast and drizzly most of the day, and the high temperature never climbed above the mid-60s F. I off-loaded all of the photos from this morning and then selected and processed the ones for this blog post.
As an aside, right after putting the new litter tray into service, we discovered and addressed an issue with the design that allowed urine to escape even through Juniper-the-cat was using it correctly. It’s larger, and she seems to like it, so all is well on the kitty bathroom front.
Dinner was ramen once again. My choice. Kind of like vegan chicken soup. And grapes, green and red. We like grapes. There were already four other RVs here when we sat down to eat at 6 PM, and another one came in as we were finishing our meal. That made six, including us, An SUV with a cartop carrier, and another one pulling a pop-up camper, came in around 7:30 PM. The RV Park can probably accommodate 18 rigs, if they are parked correctly, although some sites do not have any services. We suspect that most the rigs that have arrived today will be boarding the first ferry in the morning. The ferry was scheduled to depart Blanc-Sablon, Quebec at 6 PM (Newfoundland time) and arrived in St. Barbe at 8 PM, sounding its horn as it came in, so we might pick up a few more RV in the park tonight. It will certainly be a relatively busier night compared to last night, but we expect it will be just as quiet.
I don’t usually post the blog entry for the day until the next morning. Because we are traveling tomorrow, and my computer won’t connect to the park Wi-Fri from the trailer, I decided to post this evening before going to bed. If anything of interest happens before midnight, I will mention it tomorrow’s post.
…