After three days in Quebec City, we left in the dark. The plan was to stage the trip from Quebec City to the Saguenay River over two days and spend the night in Cap-a-l’Aigle. Cap-a-l’Aigle is the closest harbor to Quebec City that doesn’t dry out at low tide and it’s a long 70-nautical mile squawk. We studied the tide tables and left at 4:30 am and although we’d have to motor against a 2-knot current for the first two hours, for the rest of the trip we’d have a strong tidal current pushing us downriver. The forecast (from more than one source) predicted 15 knot Northwest winds to help us along so all appeared to be in order.

By 6:30 am we were in fog using our radar and AIS system to spot the big ships. By 9 am, we were nose into 14-knot winds from the east but the good news was the fog had blown away. By 11 am, the wind had died to a dead calm but we were in fog so dense we could hear the ships’ foghorns yet couldn’t see them. Whenever we are anywhere near those big ships, I start to pace. Fortunately, our AIS system identifies exactly where the ship is and all the details such as ship name, size, destination and its predicted course; a very handy thing to know in dense fog. At one point, according to our radar and AIS, we appeared to be “close on” a collision course so I called the ship. The captain answered me immediately. I think I read somewhere that the captains of these big freighters don’t ignore you if you call them by name especially if it’s a female voice on the radio; in this case I was happy to work that angle.

AIS display Tadoussac

After a few conversations, we agreed to skedaddle over to shallower water and the captain agreed to alter his course as well. Thanks very much to the captain of Sauniere, a 196 meter cargo ship! After a long slog, we hobby-horsed our way into Cap-a-l-Aigle in high winds. This is called a harbor of refuge and for us, it certainly felt like it. That was an interesting day to understate it; at one point, Blair asked me what Plan B was and for the first time ever in our sailing life, as the navigator, I had to say that there was no Plan B. There are no harbours that we could slink into that would not be dry at low tide and the only emergency anchorage was wide open to the Northeast which, perversely, the wind kept blowing from. So, in retrospect, I’m not sure we would have done anything different but we’ll be more wary of the coast guard weather reports for sure. Unlike the marine weather forecasts in the Great Lakes and Thousand Islands which are updated a few times a day, out here we get a 3:30 am weather forecast for the following 24 hours so it’s not surprising that they aren’t as accurate as we’d hoped. Beth called the coast guard to see if there are weather broadcasts more regularly and they told her she’d just have to listen to the one at 3:30 am; pretty frustrating.

Fog

The water temperature has dropped from a high of 22 degrees at Iroquois to 9 degrees in the Saguenay River and last night we used our diesel espar heater for the first time. We’re pleased to say that it heats the boat from bow to stern just nicely and made for a very civilized meal not to be bundled up in four layers.

Friday morning we arrived in Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay. From Cap-a-l’Aigle east, we’d been seeing kelp floating in the water and sort of a salty foam in our boat wake; even the water was a brownish green. The Saguenay river water is a deep dark blue and while the St Lawrence runs east, the Saguenay hits it at right angles creating an obvious rip tide.

Meeting of the rivers

The whales, dolphins and seals love this area where the two rivers meet because there’s so much food here. We motored slowly into the huge river mouth, hoping to see some whales or seals and were amazed to see lots of beluga whales and a few of the larger grayish minkes surfacing on all sides. Because some of these whales are endangered, there are pretty strict rules about boat behavior when you spot a whale; you’re meant to stay 650 feet away from the whales and 1,300 feet away from the belugas. If one of these guys happens to surface close to your boat, you’re meant to stop the boat and drift. We followed the rules but there were lots of whale watching tours that were darting here and there actively seeking out the whales; both the fast inflatables with their passengers dressed in survival suits and the larger cruise-type ships where you can view the whales from a toasty cabin behind plate glass windows.

Entrance to Saguenay

Since the first lock at Iroquois we’ve been seeing the same few boats that are making a similar trip. They lag behind or they jump ahead but at quite a few stops, we see them again. One boat, Bagatelle, is from Kingston and is a friend of our club manager, Liz Lazier. Bagatelle finally left us after dark late last night and headed across the St Lawrence to Rimouski to drop off one of their crew. Another boat, a 34.5 Beneteau called Wings, carry Chris and Mary Stewart and their daughters Ellen and Monica. They picked Wings up in Etobicoke and are bringing her downstream to their home in Summerside, PEI. Wings will leave us tomorrow to cross to Rimouski while we head up the river.

Tadoussac is not as remote or quiet as we expected. Last night, we hiked the hill behind the marina and in a small cafe caught the impressive guitar act of Barry Dawe. Barry, a cross between Meatloaf and Pierre Bensusan, played nonstop tunes all night and we were mesmerized by his intricate guitar stylings and clear and beautiful voice; definitely a high point of our stay here in Tadoussac.

We’d only planned on spending one evening in Tadoussac and are chomping at the bit to head up the river to Baie Eternitie but the wind is not cooperating. If someone asked me what my impression of the St Lawrence east of Quebec was, wind would definitely figure in the description. In Quebec City, we changed our 135% sail for a much smaller 100% foresail and even that is sometimes too big. The wind is either non-existent or howling at 35 knots. Today, we decided to stay in Tadoussac because the forecast was for high winds “sur le nez”. We’ll sit in the comfortable lounge of the Tadoussac Hotel and get our emails, post this blog, read a little and maybe walk into town for an ice cream cone. For today that is our Plan B.

Tadoussac

Since we left the last lock on the St Lawrence, we’re aware that although it means the whole trip is ahead of us, it also means there’s no looking back now. To do a 180 now would be pretty awful; I don’t know how people ever make that slog upriver against the current. We said we’d sooner get new dockage in Montreal! It gives us a whole new appreciation for all the Quebec boats we see cruising in the Thousand Islands each summer.

Monetarily, we’ve gotten off pretty lightly to get this far on the St Lawrence. The average cost to pilot one of the big ships this far is $17,000. We paid $25 for each lock for a grand total of $175. We’re into ship spotting these days and have a handy dandy book called ‘Know your ships’ that lists all the big guys plying the Great Lakes.

Seadoos jumping wakes

Most of the ships that we are seeing now that we’re east of Montreal are all too big to fit into the locks. We’ve read that fewer and fewer orders are being placed for ships that can get through the Seaway. Most of the ships we’re seeing were built before 1998. Does this mean that shipping will dwindle on the Great Lakes or that the locks will be up-sized? Either scenario involves big money.

From Montreal, we made a short run to Contrecoeur and did an African Queen/Apocalypse Now kind of trip up a winding shallow river to anchor off this small village. We had an isolated anchorage beside a bird sanctuary in about seven feet of water. Surprisingly enough when we dinghied ashore and found their tiny grocery store, we were thrilled at the variety of food; sushi, meat (beef, bison and gulp, horse) as well as fruit and veggies.

Early morning chilled

Past Contrecoeur we pulled into an out-of-the way little hidey hole that felt just right to stay over in when today’s expected high winds of 30 knots finally materialized. Patrick, the owner of the Batiscan Marina strolled down the dock with his young son in tow to say welcome. Turns out, he used to live on St Joseph Boulevard in Orleans and was a DJ at ‘The Bop&’ in Hull. He told us his grandmother, Francoise Lemay Arcande was the first female captain on the St Lawrence and he and his wife, who is the chef at the marina restaurant, purchased this outfit two years ago after selling a successful 2000-person disco in Quebec City. The food was great and for Fete Nationale, he brought in a band from Trois Rivieres and blasted off about 10 minutes of fireworks in his little harbour for all to enjoy.

Blair continues to impress me with his iron clad troubleshooting. I tried to start our propane stove today and the automatic lighter would not click. He got down on his hands and knees in front of the stove, reached underneath and pulled out an AA battery and replaced it and voila! Im thinking that I should have stocked up on ‘Who’s your daddy?’ T-shirts.

Our overall impression of Quebec so far is power and prosperity. Around every bend in the river is a power generating plant with lines stretching south to the US and west to Ontario. When we check our AIS system to see what kind of big ships are out there, we see no less than 25 ships at any one time moving up and down the river, loading and unloading cargo. In addition, you can tell mega bucks have been spent to shore up the river banks with concrete or boulders to stem the huge wash from the ships and the damage from ice in the winter.

Concrete front lawn

We’re paying close attention to both our chart plotter and paper charts through this neck of the woods and glad we live in the Raymarine era. The French knew this river inside out for at least 100 years before the Brits arrived but they didn’t publish any charts so they definitely had a leg up on navigation; any British ship that went aground was a good ship as far as the French were concerned in those days. The French downfall, as far as chart plotting, turned out to be James Cook; the same one who circumnavigated the world twice. Cook was the navigator on a British ship in 1758/59 and with his help to map the way upstream to Quebec, the British finally were on an equal footing for the siege of Quebec City.

Strong current

Tide and current have now raised their heads in a big way; there is no ignoring them from Trois Rivieres downstream. The river flows at rates from three to eight knots down to the gulf but twice a day, the tide pushes back and makes its presence known all the way up to Trois Rivieres where there is a four foot tide. Quebec City can have up to a 9 foot tidal range this time of year so we spend time every day consulting our tide tables to determine our coming and goings. There are three places you can stage your trip to Quebec City from; Trois Rivieres, Batiscan or Portneuf. At this time of year, Portneuf wins the lottery because it lets us leave at a decent hour in the morning to ride the ebb tide into Quebec.

The tide range at Portneuf is nine feet and the marina here has a nifty way of taking all this up and down in its stride.

Portneuf

Huge Y-shaped steel beams anchor the floating docks to rock piles. At high tide, the beams are level; at low tide, you’d have to be The Great Blondin to get across them. We tie our boat to the floating docks and hitch a ride; a ride that was so gentle, it didn’t disturb our sleep the one night we stayed.

Today is Monday and we surfed the tide into Quebec City this morning, hitting a high of 10.8 knots as we passed under the Pierre Laporte bridge.

Pierre Laporte Bridge

For the non-sailors out there, our top speed rarely exceeds 7 knots so there was some definite whooping as we slid downstream. We’re tucked into the Quebec Yacht Club, one of the oldest in Canada. And tucked is the operative word here. The layout is much the same as the old city I think; lots of short narrow side streets with dead ends. It’s great to finally be here though and we’re all set to do some serious exploring now.

Yacht Club de Quebec

Well our two week shakedown cruise in Lake Ontario didn’t happen. Some of the things that the cruise would have flagged as “must fix” items, immediately made themselves pretty obvious. We had a leak in our dinghy and a hole in our hot water tank. The dinghy turned out to be beyond repair so we dug a little deeper into our resources and shelled out for a new one. Blair replaced the hot water tank himself. This was a big job, involving moving our battery bank and disconnecting a gazillion wires and hoses.

The Mechanic

To save time we had West Marine courier the new tank to the UPS store in Ogdensburg. After I drove over the Ogdensburg Bridge for easily the 25th time since last fall’s haulout, our friendly UPS lady, Mary Jean, said ‘Boy, when you called to see if your package was in, I thought it was a mistake because your husband said at the end of May he wouldn’t see me til next June or so’. Does that tell you something when Blair has the need to actually bid farewell to UPS?

Our boat computer, which worked fine at home, is balking at connecting to the internet and downloading emails. The good folks at The Gananoque Inn said come on in and feel free to work in our air conditioned lobby and get your computer working. But after three trips in and way too many hours reinstalling software, it was still not working properly which was a major slap in the face to us given our former working lives. We really need a computer that will connect so we can stay in touch with our family so this meant a trip home to download software that might solve this issue.

So, we were desperate to slip the dock lines off and start heading east and yet I filled the car with gas twice since we officially left home. Our mantra for the last two weeks had been “Gotta get off the dock, gotta get off the dock! Blair was at the point where he wanted to check to see that the coast was clear before walking the dock length; if I heard either ‘when are you leaving’ or ‘Oh, I thought you guys had left’, I was at the point where I physically cringed! The up side of all this is that we got lots of good wishes, advice and the occasional hug from our boating friends at Trident. But it was definitely a happy day last Saturday when we slipped the lines at 7:30 am and finally left dock.

Goodbye Trident til 08

It’s now Wednesday and we’re in Montreal, a trip that we normally drive in 2 hours. To put it in perspective, we’ve gone 90 nautical miles from Iroquois, the site of the first lock, and we have 695 more miles to go to reach the end of the St Lawrence River. We are certainly glad to be done with the locking part of the St Lawrence River though; over the course of seven locks and three days, we were lowered about 225 feet. The locks were the high point of three days of steady motoring through narrow channels. Although the river is more than two miles wide in many areas and quite a bit wider where it joins various lakes, we had to stick to a narrow track which we shared with the big ships. Outside this track was very shallow water.

Staying in the white area

Much has been written about how awful the locks are but we all agreed that the hazards have been over emphasized; only one lock gave us problems and that was because we were fighting an 18-knot stern wind while trying to maintain position when the lock doors jammed in a half-closed position. The usual drill for transiting the locks was to tie up to a small wooden dock off to one side, climb up to the telephone booth at the top of lock, call the attendant and then wait until we were given a green light to go into the lock. Sometimes the green lights come fast and sometimes we sat and cooled our heels while the big ships chugged on past.

Waiting our turn

Now that we’re finally down to the right level, this doesn’t mean the water gets calmer. After exiting the last lock at St Lambert, we made a wide left turn around Ile St Helene to head up a short stretch of river to get into Marina L’Escale in the heart of old Montreal. We revved the engine up higher than we’ve done before and, in the face of a 6 knot current working against us, gradually watched our speed reduce to a half knot. Looking ahead it seemed that we were making headway because the water was flowing past so quickly but measuring our progress against the container ships docked against the sea wall, it was obvious we could have crawled upriver faster. We were on the verge of giving up and looking for a marina further downstream when Blair put out our foresail and caught a perfect wind that pumped our speed up to 2.3 knots. It was just enough to get us through a particularly rough spot and we sailed/motored on past La Ronde into the port of Montreal.

Madcap passing La Ronde

This is a happenin’ marina; right next door Cirque de Soleil has tents set up for their latest show. Across the park, is Place Jacques Cartier, a pedestrian-only mall that tonight has attracted thousands of people enjoying the warm summer night, sitting in open air cafes that Montreal is so famous for and just generally milling about. We took a taxi out to Laris and Betty Jean’s house for one of Laris’ renowned meals; an adventure in itself when our cabbie was pulled over by the police for some infraction which we weren’t quite sure about as we had trouble following the dialogue between the two in French. We’re glad to be tied to a dock tonight to get a good night’s sleep, perhaps do a laundry and most importantly, connect to a wifi to get our emails and post this blog. Our next big challenge is to make the current work for us to punt us downriver to Quebec City because after today, we know how it feels to have it work against us.

Leaving home, even if only for a year, is harder than we thought. We moved to Ottawa in 1982, settled in, made friends, raised a family and it feels like home now. This past weekend, we had our official Bon Voyage party with all our family, friends and neighbours. The absolute best part of it was that the entertainment was provided by all our talented musician friends.

Two of Us

I think (I hope) I talked to everyone who came; if I missed saying hi to anyone, my apologies! All night long I just kept thinking, “How great is this to have all these friends in one spot to wish us well on our travels!” The ear-to-ear grins on our faces will take a long while to fade.

The FunKtion

Keeping us on solid ground here in Ottawa is primarily Blair’s work (he is busy til the end of May) plus some last minute things that keep cropping up. Most importantly, we want to grab some quality time with close friends and family.

Heartbroke

We’re just starting to realize how long a year can be. Derek and Wendy helped us cut down two trees in our adjoining yards and when they said the wood would be dry enough to burn when we come back next year, I had a sudden heart clutch as to how long we will actually be gone and started thinking about what I am going to miss. Number one on my list of “will miss” is Sandy’s calm and confidence and Brooklyn’s joie de vie. When they visit us in the Bahamas, all will be right in our world.

People we will miss

Because we’ve been trying to tidy things up at home, Strathspey has been sitting at Trident Yacht club gathering dust (pollen) since May 12th. We’ve been moving things aboard but not doing the requisite unpacking (actually I have to confess that it is me not doing the unpacking). Last week, I moved stacks of charts and guidebooks aboard Strathspey but they didn’t get any further than the settees in the main cabin. I’m overwhelmed thinking about where to put everything we need for this next year. I don’t get any further than “where the heck are the guitar, bagpipes and violin going?” Sure, they aren’t necessary for the efficient functioning of the boat but they are good for the soul and this is what this year of cruising is aiming for.

Another cartload

We’ve actually not even thought about any of the usual items you’d normally pack when going on a trip so that tells you how skewed your thought processes get when going nautical. Sharon McC asked me how I was going to do laundry on the boat and although I blithely said “oh there will be laundromats in the marinas”, I have a feeling that it just isn’t that easy. To give you an idea of the space we have for clothes and personal items, there are six 12x3x12 inch drawers under our berth (enough room for six packs of printer paper if we had room for a printer, which we don’t). There is a cupboard with four shelves, 12x4x6 and one other cupboard in which we could possibly hang six shirts; shirts that need no ironing that is. So, not a lot of space…. Somehow, clothes seem to be a very minor item in our planning. We’ve spent so much time equipping Strathspey and perhaps five minutes thinking about what kind of clothes to pack. All I know for sure is that we will need polar fleece for our trip down the St Lawrence and bathing suits for the Bahamas – that conjures up a pretty odd fashion statement.

So, we’re in limbo right now; waiting for Blair to finish work, looking forward to doing our shakedown cruise in Lake Ontario to make sure everything works, wanting to hug Sandy and Brooklyn so much that they say “please … leave” and cutting our lawn one last time.

Many people have said to us “oh once you get to the Bahamas, you will just want to keep on going”. I don’t think so. We love sailing and we love the camaraderie of other boaters, seeing new places and the challenges of sailing in unfamiliar waters. But, we have a whole other life here at home that is precious, fulfilling and centers our world. We will be back next June, of that I am sure.