I wanted nothing between me and the ocean. And now we have this place on Change Islands in Notre Dame Bay off the north-central coast of Newfoundland.
We spent a lot of time in the community, so people got used to seeing us. I put out word that I’d be interested in buying a house as our around-the-bay home. In 2005 something became available—and was affordable with some left over to be able to consider renovations (prices are noticeably higher now).
The house is just a bungalow converted from a two-storey house by an older couple who no longer needed the room and simply removed the top floor. But for us, it means we can arrive with our loaded van and within half an hour be on the water with the groceries put away, the water running and the beer cooling. That’s the joy of it.
A big part of the charm is that it’s a little bit hard to get to: it’s a five-hour drive from St. John’s, then a 20-minute ferry ride and another 20-minute drive. So it really is a temporal and spatial separation from regular life. And where else can someone have a view that looks straight down Dildo Run!
And you know what’s amazing? We paddle with icebergs, whales, sea ducks and dolphins. And there are some areas that, when it’s calm, the water is so clear you can see down 40 to 50 feet. It’s like an aquarium.
And there’s such variety of paddling. Within 10 minutes from the house you can be paddling in everything from Level 1 to Level 4 conditions with nothing between you and Greenland. But no matter which way the wind blows, there’s always somewhere sheltered to paddle, around the many islands and little passages. It’s incredibly beautiful.
In fact, it offers such variety of padding conditions that the Newfoundland kayak Company (Dan is a certified instructor) ran a Level 2 course out of our place. We even had people bunking in the garage. That’s something we’d certainly do again.
Leslie Grattan is an independent environmental consultant and Dan Miller is a retired federal fisheries biologist turned full-time paddler and photographer. The affordability of properties in Newfoundland’s outport communities make it fairly common for folks in St. John’s to have a home “around the bay.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine as part of a feature on kayak dream homes. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
