Whales, trails and touching bottom

Tadoussac is one of those picturesque spots where under a thousand people live in the winter, but easily three times that number work and play there in the summer, including sail racers...even during the pandemic!

Day 40 to Day 46, Tadoussac, QC to Ste Anne-des-Monts, QC (days 20 to 22 of sailing)

We pulled into Tadoussac mid-afternoon after an exceptionally calm motor from Cap de l'Aigle and some whale and seal sightings. The current from the Saguenay River where it met the St. Lawrence was noticeable, but we had timed the tides to avoid drama and docked with only a little bit of it...we couldn't see the numbers of the assigned dock and ended up just throwing our lines to friendly fellow boaters in a mixture of English and French. Tadoussac would be the last place we would visit where we could expect a) at least a few speakers of basic English and b) a standard sort of Quebecois French that we didn't find occasionally baffling.

As an example of how steep the east side of the marina entrance is, this is what the sonar revealed.

The tidal range at Tadoussac, as was the case until "around the corner" of the Gaspe peninsula, was impressive at around five to six metres. The sloping seabed both in front of the beach and to the right, inside the marina, made for some interesting vistas.

Tadoussac is known for its whale-watching boat trade, and it's a busy one. We were somewhat shocked at seeing crowded smal ferry-type ships carrying about 400 passengers leaving and returning several times a day to the adjacent docks, many without masks. We saw more strict mask use in the village's grocery store, which was more eclectically stocked than most in rural Quebec with various cheeses, drink options and charcuterie, which we assume was also due to the high volume of summer visitors. Places to buy local crafts, visit historic sites (for a place occupied for over 420 years, the village has seemed to have limited appeal as a place to live year-round), and it's a pretty place to explore, if requiring good legs for the steep hills. But the crowds seemed surreal to us; not only as sailors are we generally solitary by nature, but the pandemic did not prepare us for hordes of people, many unmasked, that we encountered in Quebec City and this small place.

"BEER": Seems to be a word that transcends language when socially distant.

Of course, in hindsight, the failure to mask, as well as the close-quarters barbeque we avoided at the yacht club on our second night there, seems at the time of writing to have backfired, badly. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our couple of days there and planned for the next stop in the increasingly small and isolated number of ports ahead of us as we trended NNE down an ever-wider St. Lawrence.

After we left Tadoussac, we saw, unusually, we thought, a US Coast Guard cutter travelling up the St. Lawrence. We learned later that it's part of some exchange program in which Canada and the U.S. can operate in each others' waters for "security reasons". Does that smell tinny to you?

Without having to take the pandemically and environmentally questionable whale-watching tours on offer, we saw so many surfacing whales on even this short stretch (plus seals and interesting sea birds) that we lost count; I was kept busy helming away from the whales we saw as I did not want to get particularly close to any potential cetacean mum/offspring pairings.

Alchemy at Rimouski Marina, a well-equipped spot where we stocked up as the options downriver really started to narrow even as the tidal ranges expanded.

Passage planning is always a factor in cruising: the crew never can be sure that diesel will be easily obtained (as in "on foot or on bicycle"); that food and drink will come in the variety or amounts desired for a good stock-up; or that the smaller places will be even open to any boats beyond those belonging to the locals. So examination of cruising guides (this one was very helpful), paper charts (preferred by us for planning trips and working out distances and therefore likely time spent in transit via walking the dividers) and weather concerns based on as granular forecasts as we could obtain. More than once, the weather for us either failed to materialize as predicted, or, in places, was much stronger than forecast and/or was from the NE direction (wind over current), which we had been warned was not worth bashing into and, closer to shore, could prove dangerous. Despite our desire to get

Rimouski's marina had some beautiful, seaworthy boats, as might be expected: This was a Fisher 34 motorsailing ketch...

The under 50 NM trip from Tadoussac to Rimouski actually involved a spot of navigation: we crossed from the north to the south side (actually NNE to ESE, but we were used to pretending, at closing in on 49° North, that we were "making our easting" when in fact we were pointing at Newfoundland's west coast). This brought us into variable, but far from gale-strength, winds, rain and fog. As we were passing some islands (L'île du Bic and some of its smaller offspring), we even turned on the radar, even though the ship traffic was relatively light and more or less distant. All had cleared by our suppertime arrival.

...and this was a vast Beneteau Oceanis 55 off our stern.

Arrival at Rimouski only required elevated French, which I had been trying to restore, to reserve, via a phone call or over the VHF, a designated slip. We also found it necessary to mention our draft (1.9 metres, or 1.8 m. plus a margin for waves inside the marina) so we could tie off appropriately should Alchemy "touch bottom" at lowest tide.

The keen-eyed will note that this tender has travelled a long way from Mimico Cruising Club.

Rimouski is a middle-sized town of some 50,000, as opposed to the big villages more common in the Gaspésie, and had a Canadian Tire, so we picked up several of the "one-pound" Coleman canisters we used on the on-deck barbeque. We also started to select foods suitable for "at sea" snacking, as we hadn't decided at this point whether we were going to go "inside" to Nova Scotia via the Northumberland Strait; or divert to Gaspé city itself; or just head out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence to les Îles de la Madeleine and then to Sydney, NS at the north end of Cape Breton.

No, I never learned what happend to Steve Martin I.

All available options required fresh nautical charts, appropriate weather windows, and full tanks and rested crew. The first provisional stop was the slightly smaller than Rimouski town of Matane. We balanced the relatively short 45 NM run against a gale warning that, coming from the west, would have aided us, and decided to give it a go on August 25.

Alchemy at the far eastern end of the compact marina at Matane. Yes, we "bounced" here.

The gale warning manifested, unfortunately, as we came down the narrow entrance to the Matane Marina. We had been assigned a slip part of the way toward the northeastern end, but our attempts to turn into the slip were defeated by SW gusts to about 40 knots, insofar as I was able at the helm to pay much attention. And no, I don't think a bow thruster would have helped much. We ended up at the far end, more or less plastered against the dock. We didn't count on the strong southwesterlies to keep us there for a few days.

Windswept, the Matane shore was just at the point where the north shore of the St. Lawrence could be easily seen, although the clouds above it suggested the land below the horizon.

It wasn't a bad thing. Matane had grocery stores and hardware supply places within longish walks, and the weather, while steadily cooling off as August waned, was pleasant save for one gusty and rainy day. At this point, almost all commercial transactions were in French, so I was kept très occupé if at a loss sometimes for certain terms . Given that I hadn't spoken regularly in French for four decades, I didn't self-castigate.

Bottled up: We warped off and had a fellow push our bow off one of the docks to the right, and still had trouble making our turn out of here, the wind from the south west was heavy and constant.

Steady and sometimes strong SW winds kept us in Matane for four days until August 29. During that time, we settled more or less lightly on the bottom at low tide, a situation that, I realized, was not particularly dangerous, but which caused me to double up some lines in case the wind reversed and we were being blown off the dock. This didn't happen, and in fact the wind remained so strong that we burst a fender on the dock. That's fine, fenders are expendable and half of our cylindrical "Taylor-type" are ones more fastiduous boaters have thrown away for us to salvage.

Speaking of recycling, this old fishing boat is now evidently a Matane hotel's garden shed. Note the masts of the marina in the background revealing the tidal range in the well-protected basin in every direction excepting SW winds...

We've never hesitated to reuse and recycle marine gear when appropriate, because we dislike waste and we simply do not have the kind of "dock queen looks" with Alchemy that make us particularly interested in impressing others. We have no objections as to how others choose to enjoy their boats, and it is very clear to us that pristine varnish and surgically clean topsides are aspirational to many, but this is hard to achieve on an ocean-capable vessel, where function tends to top looks, and a slightly off-colour paint touch-up resists rust as well as a complete redo in Awlgrip.

Ugly, yes, but the cable ties were further insurance to keep the "keeper" secure.

During our wait for a break in the wind sufficient for us to get out of the basin and back on track for the far end of Quebec, we made a further refinement to the rudder pin repair, even as I had to admit the water was getting somewhat chilly for sub-surface rachet and wrench work. I was pleased to acquire some spares at a local quincaillerie (hardware store) entirely in French, thanks to some prewritten cribn notes for unfamiliar terms, such as grand collier de serrage, or "large hose clamp". I would only check and slightly dog down the nuts again in Gaspé and during our self-isolation in Port Hawksbury, after which we were fine all the way to haulout on Nova Scotia's South Shore...but I'm getting ahead of events.

It was downriver from Matane that the shoreline really amped up the drama. The mountainous region here is called "Chic-Choc" and the locals make a nice rum with that name we were able to sample.

After an "exciting" departure involving getting our bow swung off the end of a dock by one of the huskier marina employees, Alchemy being reluctant to turn to port at low speeds with a breeze on the beam, even when warping off, we ventured to our next stop in increasingly calm waters another 45 NM to Ste. Anne-des-Monts, a town of some 7,000 folks, about two of whom spoke English, a pattern that would persist jusqu'à ce que nous naviguions au coin de Gaspé.

Approaching Cap Chat, about 10 NM short of Ste. Anne-des-Monts and one of the 'bumps' on the coastline that was much more impressive in reality than on the chart.

This unilingual French situation was not as much a problem for me as was the Gaspésie accent, which was different to my ear from that of both Trois-Rivières and that of Tadoussac. I suspect this was in part due to the evident problems with dental care as we reached the smaller villages downriver, but it made for some interesting miscomprehensions, particularly when my rusty French and groping for words or more complex verb forms exceeded more than the English of the locals gleaned from bilingual package labelling or perhaps distant radio or TV stations. On the other hand, it was nice to visit places virtually untouched by cable television and clearly underserved by internet access, although we were always able to get a couple of bars on the ship's wi-fi for things like weather forecasts.

Big sky country, but those clouds were always whipping past.

We would need those forecasts with the advent of September at the 49th degree of latitude.