Heading to Labrador!

On Tuesday, we had reservations for the morning ferry across the Strait of Belle Isle from St Barbe to Blanc Sablon. We walked across the street from our campground to the ferry ticket office, purchased our reserved ticket, and were told to proceed to the ferry line-up area.

Different from the Marine Atlantic ferry that we took from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, where we made a reservation and pre-paid for our passage, on the Strait of Belle Isle ferry, you make a reservation and pay $10 to hold it. Then on the day/time of passage, you go to the ferry office and purchase your ticket. The reservation fee counts against the cost of the ticket. If you don't have a reservation, you can show up and go on a space-available basis. Holding a reservation also puts you higher in the queue if your reserved ferry happens to cancel and you have to wait for a later one -- those with reservations on the earlier ferry have a higher priority than anyone without reservations (but behind those that had reservations on the later ferry). I'm not sure why it is different - I wonder if they have more times that their service is interrupted by weather or other causes. It appears that there is only one boat running this route, the Qajaq W. (https://www.gov.nl.ca/ti/ferryservices/schedules/j-pollo/)

We had reservations for the 10:30am ferry -- the instructions indicated that we needed to purchase our ticket and be in line at least 1 hour before the reserved ferry time or we would lose our reservation status and deposit. (We had gone over the day before to try to buy our ticket and were told that we couldn't buy it until the day and time of the ferry.) Accordingly, we got there to purchase our ticket by 9:15am, went back to the rig to tell Miss Kitty, "We'll be back as soon as we can!" and were in the Jeep in line a few minutes later.

Qajaq W coming in from Blanc Sablon

Front opening

Ramp starting to lower...

... lowering...

... almost down...

... down and first truck coming off...

... first truck exiting the ferry.

This ferry has two decks -- the upper, open deck has trucks and RVs and anything over 7' (? I think) tall. The lower deck is for passenger cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. The upper deck unloads first and then the cars came off.

Loading - they loaded most of the upper deck first, and then loaded the cars and pickup trucks into the lower deck. After those were all on, they closed the hatch to the lower deck and finished loading the upper deck (as trucks would end up being parked on top of the hatch to the lower deck). Anyone needing handicapped access had to be on the upper deck as I guess the elevator only serviced the upper parking deck and the passenger deck (not the lower deck).

As we were driving onto the ferry -- the hatch is open in front and to the left of the white van in front of us.

This video shows loading -- in case the embedded video does not work, you can also find it here: https://youtu.be/Hj1v6uTj7lo

Loading onto the car deck -- note that they are not loading the vehicles as tightly as they could have -- there were 6 lanes in the lower deck, and they loaded the vehicles into just 4 lanes (I think near the back there may have been a few cars put into the lane between ours and the one to the right).

We walked up the stairs and saw the canteen area (serving breakfast if we wanted it)...

... passed through some of the "airline seating" areas on the passenger deck...

... and headed out to watch the boarding continue -- you can see that the front of the ship is still raised, and the hatch that allows access to the ramp to the lower (car) deck is still raised.

Over in the parking area, there is one car left (it had handicapped parking so was going to be on the upper deck -- we had been in line right behind them and had to bypass them to get onto the ship) -- as well as a number of other vehicles - trucks, RVs - to go onto the upper deck. They would close the hatch before loading those last vehicles on the upper deck.

It turned out that there were some trucks that did not make it onto this sailing. This may have been because they did not have a reservation and thus not guaranteed a spot, or... it seemed that there had been an inspection done by the province/government on Monday that delayed the ferry's departure (about 3 hours, we found out later) -- which may have meant that there was only one departure on Monday rather than two. If that was the case, vehicles with reservations on the Monday later ferry would have carried over to the Tuesday morning ferry, but with priority behind the Tuesday morning reservations.

We were out on deck level where the seating and canteen areas were -- there was another higher deck that we could go to. Since the ship had come in with this part in the front, we thought that this might be the front for the crossing, but it turns out that this ship can go with either end as the front (so it doesn't have to turn around at one terminal or the other for the vehicles to be able to drive off).

Looking out across the Strait of Belle Isle - somewhere over there is Blanc Sablon.

Selfie from the top passenger deck on our "cruise". We got to visit with the young man who is in this picture over to the right -- he was from Prague, Czech Republic, visiting Newfoundland and Labrador on his own.

We were hoping to see some icebergs on the ferry ride -- there's one!

Zoomed in a bit - interesting shape!

There's another one out there...

Close up on the second one. We didn't really get close enough to appreciate the size of the icebergs.

We were enjoying being in the back because we were out of the wind, but we decided to see if the view from the front would be better...

... it might be a nice view, but it is chilly in the wind! But, I found that if you stand behind the lifeboat, at least the wind is not so strong!

Coming in to the ferry terminal at Blanc Sablon

It was very interesting to see how slowly and deliberately the captain brought us gently to dock.

Coming into the ferry terminal at Blanc Sablon. In case the embedded video does not work: https://youtu.be/kKhDAX8vBWk

So, Blanc Sablon is actually in Quebec, not Labrador. Quebec is French-speaking, and on Eastern time -- an hour and a half behind the Newfoundland timezone. We would drive a few miles to re-enter the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) province (we would now be in the Labrador(L) part of the province) and to return to Newfoundland time. The ferry operates on Newfoundland time on both sides of the crossing, regardless of what the local time is in Quebec -- thankfully! We just made sure that our phones and watches did not set automatically and we were good.

View of the coast from the ferry (I think this was probably Quebec, but I don't know for sure).

We spent much of the ferry ride inside -- we went to the canteen area and found an available table. We had packed our lunch so enjoyed that and then Carl "rested his eyes" and I listened to my book. After about an hour and a half trip, we were given the message to return to our vehicles.

Returning to the Jeep

Waiting for the hatch to open

Driving a short ways in Quebec... we stopped at an overlook...

This is overlooking the harbor where the ferry comes in.

Just a few miles further...

... we were welcomed back to Newfoundland and Labrador!

More on our trip in the next post! We did not take the laptop with us, so I'm processing through pictures to complete a report on our adventures! Hope not to bore you too much!