Ship wreck then Piccadilly

Sunday 8/3

Another day begins in York Harbour, and a breakfast with Shannon. After breakfast we check her bikes battery, and it fires up fine now, after trickle charging it over night. The battery mounting bracket gave us a hard time, but we searched out a longer bolt to get it all back into the bike securely. She asked if I could ride out to get gas with her, just in case she had any problems. I packing up my gear, while she located her riding gear.

Last night I stayed up writing two days worth of blogs. It used up a lot of battery and I hadn't charged my second battery. So before breakfast I went out to the bike and swapped in a second drained battery for the bike to charge.

Perhaps you can see where this is going? The Harley was now fully charged and running fine. My bike now had a dead battery. We had used the full sized battery charger on the HD yesterday. So it was at hand for Strom connection. I was a little concerned because the LiFEPo4 battery took a full 10Amps for about 15 minutes. It continued charging at a high rate without getting hot and appeared fine after less than 45 minutes. Anne had a similar problem on her trip, where it also charged up quickly and then worked perfectly for the conclusion of her trip. Two cases now of a full drain down to nothing and quick charge up, those claims appear true. But this is also 2 of 2 that failed to start the bike one morning while on a long tour. So good and bad.

With both HD and Suzuki batteries charged, we fueled up and topped of the HD tire pressues. Shannon was all smiles, as this was her first ride on the bike in almost two years. She continued past her house, while I had planned to go to the ship. When she turned toward Bottle Cove, I continued to where expected the trail to start. A few minutes later Shannon came riding up. Apparently I wasn't listening too well, and the trail I wanted was on Little Port Rd. I thought she was going to visit Don, which was actually true. But I hadn't realized my trail was just below his house. We both stopped at Don's so he could take our picture with our bikes.

The wind was constant and strong. I slid the bike between a few cars in the gravel roadside going up a hill. Many groups of people took the hike to see "MSC BALTIC III" wreck. My trail out, photos and road walk back took about 90 minutes. The trail was good, and I spent half the hike talking with another hiker. The wind and waves pounded the ship and coast. The ship was against the rocks, but looked fairly good to me. The response team had drone no-fly zone signs and cameras monitoring the ship. I took photos from many angles and elevations. Then I started back on the fabulous new road they built to empty the ship. I was extremely impressed with how well the road was constructed. As the quantity of road photos will show They brought in an unbeleivable amount of ric-rac and gravel. There are deep drainage ditches and culverts, as well as access points for prior trails. The quality of this new road is better than many of the local paved roads, and it didn't exist 5 months ago. The road scales mountains and crosses swampy land, winding it's way over very 3D terrain. Some of the built-up sides fall away 20 feet, and every part of the road has deep runoff control ditches.

On my way by Shannon's house I performed the local tradition of horn beeps. I also did as I was told and stopped at the spring water pipe and refilled my water bladder and a previously unopenned 1.5L water strapped to my bike three days ago.

The ride back to Corner Brook and the Irving was uneventful. I grabbed a coffee, dinner sandwich, and Gatorades. Fueled up, lubed my chain, reset my clock, and topped off the clutch fluid.

Once I was on the highway, I headed to the campground Anne and I had used in Piccadilly. On my way past Stephanville I started a fruitless 7pm on a Sunday search for ground coffee. Everything here is freeze dried. If only I had remembered this coffee need when in Corner Brook.

Setup my $20 campsite just before dark. I chose a less windy spot at the back of a large field. Forcast calls for potential of rain overnight and a higher chance mid-morning.

After campsite setup I walked up the hill to shower. There is no cell service at my tent. Using the weak signal near the bathrooms I checked the ferry booking for tomorrow night. All attempts indicate no room for my bike anytime this week. I need to go to the terminal tomorrow.

Shower facilities hear are configured as two 3/4 bathrooms behind a small entry area. It works better than most setups. Good heat, pressure, and nice showerstall splash protection.

After showering, I walked all of the campground in the dark. No cell signal improvement was found anywhere in the campground. Back at my tent I wrote this, then called it a night around midnight.