Fishing and going to the beach
After another great night’s sleep, I had a nice breakfast of eggs, home made bread, and home made bakeapple jam. With our stomachs full, we then went for a nice walk through the village towards the wharf in Mutton Bay, to see if there were any fishermen at the wharf. We met one, and asked if he was interested in chartering his boat, to take us around whale watching. He informed us that his boat was pretty old, and that he wouldn’t feel comfortable taking us out in it, in case it broke down. All of the other boats at the wharf were from La Tabatiere, and were being kept in Mutton Bay because of construction on the wharf in La Tabatiere. Because of the lack of boats available in Mutton Bay, we decided to go for plan B, which was to go out on my father’s 16 foot outboard boat.My father keeps his boat in Red Bay, and since it was foggy, we decided to just go outside of the rapids outside of Red Bay, and try to catch some Mackerel, or Cod. The fog was very thick, and we saw plenty of Mackerel, but the were just not biting. We did manage to catch a few Sculplins, but they are not very appetizing, so we threw them back.
We saw a few other people out fishing too, and they also said that the fish were not biting. Of course the were able to catch at least one or two, so maybe it was just our technique. One of the people that we ran into was Victor, who is from Red Bay and is in his eighties. Whenever the weather is nice, he always seems to be out in his little boat fishing, and he just seems like the happiest man in the world when you talk to him. I guess that fishing on the Coast might be the secret to living a long healthy life.
After the wind started to pick up, we decided to go back to the house for lunch, and then down to the Sands for the afternoon. The Sands is a small beach just East of La Tabatiere, and is about ten minutes from the village by car. It is a great place for the kids, since there never seems to be big waves, and there are lots of shells and rocks to collect on the beach.
Just for fun, we decided to build a small dam across a stream at the end of the beach. It all started with the kids playing in the sand near the stream, and then turned into a full blown dam project. It was also a bit of a challenge, and we started with rocks and small sticks, and then filled everything in with sand to block it off. It worked relatively well, but there still seemed to be a small amount of water seeping through the sand in the dam. I told the kids that we would come back later in the week to see the power of Mother Nature.
Then we went back to the village, and had a meal of frozen crab, with bakeapples for desert. In terms of my favorite meals, it doesn’t get much better than this, except maybe for eating fresh crab or lobster on an island, with a trip through a field of bake apples for dessert.
We then came back to the cottage, and explored a small field down the road from our house in Mutton Bay. The kids absolutely loved the area, and ate lots of bake apples, and black berries. They also ran around on the mossy field, and said that they wanted to come back tomorrow for their mother’s birthday.
The evening was another one with a fire in the wood stove, a beautiful sunset, and going to bed early (I think it is all of the fresh air).