Why would anyone sail west?!

I think it could be delayed for quite a while - maybe even a century.
Best PoD would be some type of Portugal-screw in the early/middle 15th century, which butterflies the invention of caravels away and maybe even stops or at least slows down Portuguese explorations. That`s not beyond doable, I think.

The fishermen around Newfoundland are no argument for the type of "discovery" which we saw IOTL, even if they aren`t touched by the PoD above. Think about the analogies between Subarctic North-Western America and Arctic North Eurasia - lots of Europeans in the 15th century and long before that knew that there was a lot of land along the Arctic Ocean, and it was full of seals and the like. Yet, next to no-one gave a damn. I don`t think Newfoundland and the like are necessarily very much different.
 
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