Windsong to the Sea - Part 4 - Montreal to the Gaspe

My first day in New France began with a deluge. It rained so hard that the sun awnings on the docks collapsed and the twisted frameworks had to be cut away. Angela and I spent the morning running up and down the docks in our foul weather gear going laundry and getting groceries, while the rich and famous sat around us beneath the Biminis of their yachts and watched the skies descend on us. Once the rain stopped the chamois came out to buff away every drop so no yacht was scarred by a single water spot. Aboard Windsong the dock lines were released. I couldn’t afford another night with the rich and famous. We road down the rapids and crossed the river to Longueuil where we dropped a hook for the night.

We took the dinghy back to Montreal. The current was much easier to fight when planing along at 15 knots. And playing chicken with the steps of the thirty foot high concrete walls was far less stressful in a boat that bounces. We wandered the cobblestone streets, watched the buskers, and marvelled at the centuries old stone buildings. It was as though we had crossed the Atlantic to Europe.

On the grocery list in Montreal was a set of tide tables which allowed us to play the currents the next day and make a quick trip to Trois-Rivieres. We arrived so early, and the pulp mill was so smelly that we continued on down the Richelieu Rapids to Portneuf. For most of the day we enjoyed a boost from the two to three knot current. In the rapids themselves the current surged to five knots slinging us downstream at eleven knots true!

We considered anchoring at Portneuf but the anchorage was open to the predicted NE winds. So we entered the harbour and paid for a well. Good call! The predicted 10-15 knot winds wound up being more like 15-25. We departed in the morning and tried to buck the steep waves and headwinds to Quebec City. Spot, the sea cat, had long since proven her seaworthiness and earned her cabin privileges. She found herself and nice cozy spot on the low side near the boat’s centre of gravity. The rest of the crew wasn’t so comfortable. We gave up after an hour and had a rip roaring sail back upstream to Portneuf and spent a second night.

The next day dawned calm and clear. We motored past the picturesque Chateau Frontenac and locked into the Marina Port de Quebec in Quebec City by 11 am. We were now at sea level, and tidal range was so great that the marina had to be separated from the river by a lock.

If Montreal had felt like a taste of Europe, Quebec City was like the main course. We toured the Chateau, watched more buskers, and took a tour of the walls of the only fortified city in the New World. When we went to get Angela’s train ticket home, I was amazed that even the train station was built like a cathedral. We had our last dinner together at a Pizzeria in Port Royal, where Champlain founded the city 400 years ago!

Angela departed in the morning and I broke out my Sea and Ski special folding bicycle and resumed my tour. I took a guided tour of Place Royal. The history was amazing! It was a rough place to settle 400 years ago, the water was brackish, and it was so harsh that most of the settlers died in the first winter. As the city grew things didn’t get much better, the city frequently burnt due to sparks from the chimneys falling onto the cedar shake roofs. Upon their invention, slate roofs became more of a safety feature than fashion statement. But even slate was defenceless against British cannonballs that caused the city to burn once again. The final blow came from the dredging of the river to Montreal. This shifted the centre of shipping away from Place Royal and by the 1970's it had fallen to ruins. The gorgeous buildings of Scottish ballast stones that we see today have all been lovingly restored over the past 30 years.

My tour continued with the Citadel. I looked out over the Plains of Abraham and imagined the British troops advancing on this impenetrable fortress. It didn’t happen that way. The Citadel was actually built by the British after they captured the city to prevent the French from retaking it. It was also intended for defence against the Americans, and several guns were trained on the city in case of popular uprising.

I took my folding bike out onto the Plains of Abraham were I saw more Martello Towers like the ones in Kingston and made my way to Wolfe’s Monument. Currently on its fifth incarnation, it holds a place in infamy as the most blown up monument in Canada.

It was with a heavy heart that I left the walled city behind but it was now August 11^th. I had less than three weeks left to make it to Sidney, Nova Scotia, 700 nm away. I unfurled my sails and pointed Windsong once again toward the sea. I sailed past L’Ile D’Orleans where Dan Denomme’s ancestor made his family’s first home in North America. Across the river was Montmorency Falls where we tobogganed down the sugar loaf formed by the freezing spray during the winter of my high school Quebec trip. Somewhere between the ski hills of Le Massif and Mont Saint Anne I turned on one of my raw water taps and I realized that it had happened: THE WATER TASTED OF SALT! It was a moment I had dreamt of since my childhood voyages aboard her, I had sailed Windsong to the sea!

I made my way into Cap-a-l’Aigle in the dark. As I wandered the docks I noticed that every boat with the exception of a half dozen small, extremely light displacement racing boats had radar. It reminded my of what Barry of Calypso had told me in the locks above Montreal. He pointed up to his radome and said that last time he was out east he made a little bargain with God. If God got him through this he would buy himself radar. I had survived three summers on Superior with out it, but was I now pushing my luck? Spot seemed to think so. On my way back to the boat I found her on the swim platform of a powerboat with a nice big open array radar!

It was calm the next morning when I departed for Tadoussac and the Saguenay Fjord. At the mouth of the fjord there were pods of Minke and Beluga whales and even larger pods of whale watching boats. None of the whales surfaced close enough for a successful photograph, but they were fascinating to watch through my binoculars. The fjord itself was absolutely majestic! Granite cliffs soared 1000 feet above my mast and plunged another 1000 feet below my keel. I took a mooring for the night in Baie Eternite. Moorings were a necessity because even in the shallowest part of the bay it was still 40 feet deep! The bay was aptly named. It was a place of eternal beauty carved by the eternal forces a glacier gouging its way over the eons through almost of kilometre of some of the hardest rocks on earth. It seemed so ancient and so untouchable that it would stay that way for all eternity. If felt like you yourself could sit there for an eternity and never fully soak in the vista. On one side were the 1000 foot cliffs of Cap Trinite topped with a 24 foot tall statue of the Virgin Mary. On the other side were 700 foot tall hills of Cap Eternite carpeted with pines. And looking out across the fjord were even more 1000 foot cliffs.

Hanging from the next mooring was Calypso who I had last seen in the Saint-Lambert lock just upstream of Montreal. I dinghied over and spent a couple of hours chatting with Barry and his wife Yvonne. He turned out to be quite a character. He was a retired Special Ed. teacher who had actually ended up being the Principal of his own Special Ed. School. He had tried everything from hang gliding, to trying out for the Olympic team on the Flying Dutchman, to working for the Peace Corps in Borneo.

The next morning I was still trying to soak in the vista so I decided to stay the day and hike up to see the statue of the Virgin. It was incredible to watch the boats in the bay shrink away to dinky toys as I slowly worked my way to the summit. The Virgin had her own story. In the winter 1878 Charles-Napoleon Robitaille’s carriage fell through the ice into the fjord. In his struggle to survive in the freezing waters he prayed to the Virgin Mary for help. After his escape, he decided to erect the statue as his symbol of his thanks. The 7000 pound statue was carved from solid wood then covered in plates of lead. It was cut into 80 pound chunks and hauled up the mountain on men’s backs before being reassembled at the top. After struggling up the trail with nothing on my back I could barely imagine what it must have been like for those men blazing their own way up under such a tremendous burden. That was clearly the days when ships were of wood and men were of steel.

I left Baie Eternite at 0600 the next morning to cross the St. Lawrence to the Gaspe. The winds were light but icy. The marine life put on another great show. At the mouth of the fjord was a large pod of Beluga, some Minke whales, and a huge group of seals. The seals were the strangest site as there near human sized heads kept popping up out of the water all around me. As I left the coast, a humpback waved me good bye with his tail.

As I approached the Gaspe I found myself on a collision course with a supertanker. I altered course to port. He altered course to starboard putting us back on a collision course. "Well, he has the right of way!" I altered course to starboard. He altered course to port. "Man what’s with this guy?" I altered course back to port. He altered course to starboard. "To heck with it, I’m getting as far away from him as I can!" I altered course hard to port. This time he didn’t follow. I’m sure that I’ve read this story in the "You think that was dumb?" section of Lats and Atts. Can anyone guess the punch line?

After successfully dodging the anchored supertanker, I dropped my own anchor in Anse a L’Orignal for the night. Pretty soon I would be reaching the northernmost point of my trip, farther north than Windsong had ever been. And as the St. Lawrence widened I would get my first taste of the open ocean before heading south into the Northumberland Straight and then finally to my destination in Nova Scotia. I had covered 1100 nautical miles without any serious problems. I could only hope that my luck would hold!