Monday 22 June 2026--I vacate my room at Tides Inn & Social this morning, and go in search of coffee. Then drive down Red Point Road to Red Point, which defines the outer limit of Seal Cove, about a half a mile beyond the far end of the beach. There's a view from the car park to Wood Island, which shelters Seal Cove. A century ago, two hundred people lived on the island, fishers and farmers and their families. The advent of motorized fishing vessels lessened the need to live out closer to the fishing grounds, and the population drifted to Grand Manan after World War II. Today a handful of families, descendants of residents, summer on the island, but it's otherwise a ghost town, the houses not in use slowly rotting and collapsing. I imagine several small islands around have similar stories. The survival (so far) of White Head Island, which Ron and I visited last year, is a curious exception. [The CBC aired a story on Wood Island in 2020. You can read it here, or watch it here.]

Poke around the beach at Red Point for a while, and follow a short trail that doesn't really go anywhere. Drive back to the village and go for another walk through the smoke sheds to the beach, having some time yet to kill. The breeze blowing in off the water creates an odd little mini-fog drifting across the sands.

I go check in at the Vrbo, where I'm staying the next three nights. Receive a text from Sea Watch Tours, the operator I've booked with for tomorrow's boat trip to view puffins on Machias Seal Island, the whole reason I've returned to Grand Manan. The trip is canceled. For the past week, the weather forecast for tomorrow hasn't been good. I've checked daily, with fingers crossed--sometimes a bad forecast for a specific day shifts, or changes completely, in the week or so leading up to it. In this case, the forecast has just gotten worse and worse. So I am disappointed, but not surprised.

I dine on cold cut sandwiches, then head up to the brewery. Have a nice chat with a couple who took the puffin trip today. They had a splendid day for it. I'm cheered by Norway's 3-2 victory over Senegal.