Under full stream

The prudent sailor takes information where she can get it. This port-to-port distance chart helped in our passage planning, although I had to squint.

Day 31 to Day 39: Quebec City, QC to Tadoussac, QC (days 18 to 19 of sailing)

We came and went through the city of Montreal without, save for a bike trip to a chart shop by Mrs. Alchemy across the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, with little touristic activity. Partially, this was due to our habit of sticking to the Seaway/big ship channel rather than diverting to "downtown" yacht clubs, and partially this was because we wanted to avoid crowds and, we hoped, COVID. We were determined not to pick up the bug not only due to the potential health risks, but because two weeks stuck on a boat ill was a worse alternative than two weeks stuck on a boat in self-isolation once we reached the "Atlantic Bubble" and a reasonable prospect of making our appointment with our winter shipyard destination.

Thanks to the magic of cross-referencing charts, I was able (in French, yet) to obtain the correct model to restock our spares.

So while the Montreal south-side suburb of Longueuil had the ability to meet our needs, we didn't actually see much of Montreal itself. Quebec City was different: it's more compact and while the opportunities for tourism per se were considerably muted this year, and rightly so, we did get to see a fair bit of it.

The housing on parts of Boulevard Champlain beneath the Cliffs of Insanity below the Plains of Abraham struck me as dangerously hopeful in terms of not getting a boulder through the attic.

We have found our decison to bring bicycles aboard vindicated, even though special care had to be taken to turn handlebars sideways, to watch for lines snagging and to secure them to the rails. Grocery getting involved backpacks and bungee cords and sweat: Quebec City is plateaus and hills and cliffs for the most part and the narrowness of the shoreline on the river, so critical to its defense when run by the French, means almost any provisioning is going to involve a steep climb uphill and the smell of wearing brake pads on the return leg. While the actual sea air downriver from Quebec City certainly began to affect the bicycles in terms of corrosion, the benefits of not having to take public transit (where available) or taxis (ditto for the smaller places) have been significant, as has the chance to see from the saddle the more ordinary parts of town. And our legs and lungs are fitter than when we moved aboard.

"Leave out the back way" is not an option.

The Yacht Club de Québec, once we found it, its seawall rocks composed of boulders the same colour as the surrounding cliffs, was a very nice place and we finally got to have a socially distanced brunch instead of whatever we could grill up in the galley. Also access to decent showers, a laundry not closed by COVID and a proper chandlery nearby were all huge pluses.

Lucas and his beloved poutine in an otherwise empty cafe in old Québec

We had a "medical incident" when we were asked to change docks after a much-needed refuelling. Backing down, I came a little too close to the stern rail of a docked boat, and she attemptied to fend off, cutting her thumb in the process. She freely admitted that it was unwise to put her hand between a moving (if ever so slowly) 16-tonne vessel such as ours and another boat and wrapped it up until we were back at dock. But when your animal rehabber wife tells you she required stitches, it was likely the case.

Why a thumb makes a poor fender.

A nice man from a nearby boat named Georges drove us to the closest hospital, which happened to be part of the University of Laval, and we waited about five hours to be seen. The actual stitching took about five minutes and Becky reports a "99%" recovery. The Québec health care system (despite the wait, there were more serious cases in front of us) seemd pretty efficient and cost us, as in our home province, nothing, but we were glad to get back to the boat that night.

Drive directly onto le chariot du bateau

One of the interesting sights at any yacht club is how they handle the practicalities of boat handling. In a strongly tidal place like Québec City, they favour the ramp and tractor over the Travelift approach. This consists of driving a wheeled frame at an appropriate state of tide and wind down a long ramp, driving the boat into said frame, lashing the boat to the frame and hauling it to wherever it needs to go in the yard. How they get the boat off the frame and onto jackstands or blocks wasn't clear, but it was mesmerizing to watch it done.

Regardez ce premier virage à gauche, et bonne chance!

On one of my Tour de France assaults grocery gets, not only did I take note of the beautiful neighbourhoods of the plateau's Sillery and Bergerville areas, but I also found a few interesting bits of signage. I believe, for instance, this is how my last name sounds in French, although it is an Anglicization of an Irish tribal name, I got to hear it read back to me all through la belle province.

If you are reading this on a phone, it says "Avenue Désy"

Around the corner was a little bit of horrible history and again, from a car, you'd miss these sort of things.

Seemed fishy to me.

Regardless, provisioned, rebolted, recovering and provided a pre-dawn tidal window (this was now a constant consideration in when we would leave a place, tempered by how far we thought we could get), we departed the city and headed ever eastward with an increasing compontent of north. Even a disconnected vent line on the shaft seal that put an alarming, but easily pumped out, amount of nearly Atlantic Ocean into the bilges was discovered and dealt with.

Sure, for you, this is a light jog. For Alchemy, it was a new record

We spent the first two to three  hours of our journey to Cap-a-d'Aigle, some 77 NM downriver, hammering into contrary tide with a side of wind that kept our speed down to about 4 knots. We did this to catch the turn of the tide partway around the south side of Ile d'Orleans, the large island in the St. Lawrence NE of Quebec City and to reach the "choke point" of L'isle-aux-Coudres. We had been counselled back at the club to go past this island at slack time, or at least with the last of it at our backs as it was very difficult to challenge the current at this spot.

This was with the current. Given my RPM at this point, I should have been doing maybe 6.2 knots.

That prospect was perhaps undersold. We had a ridiculous if rocky run and kept breaking speed records as we peeled around the end of d'Orleans.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

We got around the purported area of concern at about 8 knots, still fast, but manageable.  Cap-a-l'Aigle's marina was one of those that is hard to see  until you are practically on it, but it was in a beautiful, if increasingly rugged, setting.

Behold, the dawn cloud dragon.

The next day dawned very calmly, which allowed for an easy departure to Tadoussac. The river opens out considerably at this point and is some 10 miles across, so we could choose which "chenal" to take as there were far fewer concerns about depth and the buoyage remained excellently maintained, another reason we tended to stick to the shipping lanes.

Perfect for spotting whales. And seals. And gannets.

The run to Tadoussac was less than half of the previous day's tidal-current-boosted passage, but in reviewing the charts, I was a little concerned about the confluence of the Saguenay and St.  Lawrence Rivers in terms of the way the tide and current came out of the former fjord-like river at differing and sometimes contrary rates to that of the St. Lawrence. So, as has been so often the case, I had one eye on the clock and another on the river.

Seriously, an unusually calm day to drive a boat

Which is how I first glimpsed, even from the semi-restricted view from inside the pilothouse, my first whale dorsal fin since I was delivery crew on Bruce and June Clark's Bristol 45.5, Ainia, way back in 2009.

Lucas and Becky had spotted them, too, and this was about the first time I noticed the lack of a telephoto lens aboard. We lost count around 20 or so, and we also spotted a seal mum with a head the size of a garbage bin, and her cuter offspring, who was wearing a sort of kelp beret, as one does...alas, no footage as we were among other boats and had to focus on not hitting animals or vessels. As a side note, all those eyeballs forward caused me to notice what looked like a telephone pole vertically floating in the water, about 30 cm. above it. So I reported it to the Coast Guard, because that could seriously dent a sailboat.

Tadoussac is a busy place for sailing as well as whale-watching, and is very beautiful in spots.

We arrived at Tadoussac in the early afternoon, and after a bit of an issue finding our assigned dock, we settled in for some R&R. This was the place to do it, a village of 700 or so that swelled to service the tourism industry to about 3000. There's even a microbrewery. More in our next post.

Yes, the tide and the marina happily co-exist with that steep a slope in the channel.