Batiscan, Quebec City, QC - June 19 - 21, 2011

Departing Sorel, we were excited as we had high hopes for a full day of sailing.  The forecast called for a westerly breeze so with our northeasterly course we planned to be sailing a broad reach.  Our initial course would through some islands at the southwestern end of Lac St. Pierre until we burst out of the river onto a lake setting with the far end of the lake beyond the horizon.  It felt as though we re really were at sea.

In actual fact, we had to follow a channel because the depths in many places beyond the channel were much too shallow for Kelly IV's 5 feet 3inch draft.  Regardless, the channel was mostly over a quarter mile wide and often much more than that.  The wide channel was easy to negotiate in our small vessel, even when under sail.  So we raised the main and jib and sailed the entire length of Lac St. Pierre, about 17 nautical miles.  The breeze actually proved to be out of the northwest and even a little NNW, so we were sailing on a beam reach and sometimes close hauled, but with the flat water and 12 – 15 knot breeze, we had a blast!

Ray and I split the helm duties pretty evenly, I had the helm when we first raised our sails, then Ray finished the final half of the sailing as we approached the very tall fixed bridge at Trois Rivieres.  The breeze seemed to be moving to the north, so we had to drop our sails and motor the last couple hours into the anchorage at the mouth the Batiscan River where it empties into the St. Lawrence.

Although there was probably some current when we were anchored at Long Sault Island, it was small enough to ignore it.  The wind was really the only factor we had to consider at Long Sault.  And anchoring with only the wind to take into account is how I have almost always anchored.  Now at Batiscan, we had to consider river currents for both the Batiscan and St. Lawrence Rivers, as well as the tidal currents of the St. Lawrence River.  According to the guide book, “the current at the mouth of the Batiscan River always sets easterly”.  This meant that the Batiscan River flow was strong enough to overpower the flow of the high tide as it flooded upstream.

As we pulled into the river mouth to select a spot to lower our anchor, a fellow sailor called to us.  He let us know that the Batiscan River does, in fact, reverse its flow at high tide.  On his way back home he rowed his dinghy by Kelly and stopped to chat.  We learned that Gerald was departing in a week or so, taking his boat “Gallop” across the North Atlantic to the Azores, then on to Senegal in Africa.  Suddenly my little adventure seemed pretty tame.  Of course, that is my plan, to keep things pretty tame.  Regardless, it is very exciting to be rubbing elbows with sailors like Gerald.

I decided to stay up a little late and make sure our anchor was OK since the change in the direction of the flow would take place at midnight.  Sure enough, about 11:30pm or so, Kelly IV stopped facing upstream and gradually began to turn until she was facing the St. Lawrence River where the high tide was flowing into the mouth of the Batiscan River.

We saw the same turning at each high tide while we were anchored there.  Since we were making good time, mostly due to good weather and currents running in our favor, we decided to stay two nights at Batiscan.  Our anchorage was right next to a small marina which had a small but very nice restaurant.  Ray and I dinghied in to sample a French Canadian delicacy, “Poutine”.  It is a hot dish of french fires and cheese curds, drowned in beef gravy.  It actually was quite good and that was my dinner for the night.  The owner, Sophie, was very kind.

Sophie

We were her only customers when her last customer left the restaurant soon after we were served.  She let us stay as long as we wanted to and even practiced her English with us, as our French was certainly nowhere near as good as her English.  We laughed and told stories and shared boating dreams and experiences.

The next day, we took our breakfast at Sophie's restaurant and met her waitress, Stephanie.  Once again the food, service and company were all quite excellent.  With our breakfast complete, Ray and I walked  the kilometer into the small town of Batiscan and bought some groceries.  As we were paying, a friendly gentleman asked if were were going to the marina and would we like a ride.  We were even more surprised when he told us he owned the marina and was Sophie's husband.  Apparently, she had told him about us and when he saw us in the store, he realized we must be the characters his wife had told him about.  So we didn't have to carry our groceries, but got a ride right back to our dinghy.

Before we got back to Kelly, we stopped at a two masted schooner anchored just west of us.  The owner invited us aboard and we got to talk with him and look around his schooner.  He and his girlfriend with another crew are planning an August departure for the Azores, then on to Africa!  Four boats were in this anchorage and two were world travelers!

Once back on board, we began to tackle a few minor projects.  Ray secured the small 175 watt inverter so we wouldn't keep knocking it on the floor, while I completed my splicing of the new 75 feet long dock lines.  We also spent some time getting more familiar with the guide book, the sailing directions, tide and current tables and the charts.  Gerald stopped by again to share some of his anchorages that he uses along the St. Lawrence, further downstream.

With some work required at the masthead, Ray volunteered to go aloft.  While he was there he took some great pics from Kelly IV's masthead.

Ray aloft

Gerald's sailboat in the Batiscan anchorage

Kelly's foredeck from the masthead

Kelly's aft deck from the masthead

As the afternoon wore on a very smart looking Southern Cross 28 pulled into the anchorage and dropped their hook just behind (west) of us.  They were the first US boat I had seen since leaving Port Dalhousie.  I called out to them and they invited us over.  Once they got settled, Ray and I took some drinks, climbed into the Pudgy and motored over to visit “Oh My!”.  We discovered that Lee, the owner from Grosse Point, Michigan, had sold the boat to Malcolm, a Newfoundlander.  They and a friend, Jim, were delivering the boat to St. John's, Newfoundland, and had left Michigan on June 2nd.

According to the guide book, we needed to depart Batiscan about 7 hours before low tide at Quebec City, for the best trip avoiding contrary currents.  That meant leaving about 11am, so after a final cup of coffee with Sophie and Stephanie, we returned to the dinghy and Kelly IV.  We waved our goodbyes to our schooner friend and Gerald on “Gallop” and were on our way.

When pulling up the anchor we discovered that the Guardian was wrapped in the chain.  It seems that as Kelly turned in the tide she just kept wrapping her chain around the anchor.  We were lucky we didn't drag the anchor, as the chain was blocking the flukes from digging in just as the branches did in Belleville.  Soon after we got underway, I went forward and replaced the Guardian making the CQR our primary anchor again.  I felt that the CQR was much more likely to reset if it pulled out.  Also, when we anchor in Quebec and further downstream, we'll be facing similar challenging anchor settings with opposing wind and current.  If the Guardian got fouled on its own chain as wind and current changed, then I felt I couldn't trust it under those circumstances.

The breeze was light most of the day so we were motoring once again.  Our entertainment included several freighters both upbound and down.  The channel in this part of the St.Lawrence is rather slender.  The river appeared quite wide, but we were traveling at high tide.  From our reading we learned that at low tide along some sections, the entire river width disappears except for the main channel.  In one spot where we saw only two small islands, the chart showed a very large expanse of dry land, during low tide.  At another stretch called the Richelieu Rapids, both sides of the channel are strewn with numerous large boulders, all of which were underwater and unseen as we motored by at high tide.

Approaching Quebec City just before low tide, we passed a few more freighters, but one decided we needed a bit more excitement.  Our typical passing maneuver is to keep to the far right side of the channel.  That way the freighter sees that we are well out of their way and we are as far from their large wakes as we can safely be.  We keep right for freighters passing both upbound and downbound.  You'll recall we are downbound on this trip.  The particular freighter in question was upbound and at first seemed to follow the same as his predecessors by keeping to his right so we'd pass each other “port-to-port”, or just like cars do on a two-way, two lane road.  Then with only a half mile between us he kept steering to his port which put us at risk for a head-on collision!  Ray was at the wheel and quickly turned Kelly to port so we passed safely starboard-to-starboard, as if we were on a European highway.  This was the only occasion where the freighter seemed a serious challenge to us.  All other passings have been fun and exciting to watch, but uneventful from a safety perspective.

Once past this challenge we were under the “Pont Laporte” (Laporte Bridge) we were in Quebec Harbour.  We turned out of the current, through the anchorage just east of the Yacht Club of Quebec and “dropped the hook”, our trusty 35 pound CQR anchor.  We are now 691 nautical miles from Erie, PA.