A Beluga Swam Under Our Boat !!

After a rocky night where we about turned a couple of times with the change of tide and we swung wide constantly. Leaving our anchorage the first night after Quebec City, we were up early and treated to a stunning sunrise

.  
There is a strong current pushing us along as the St Lawrence and all the lakes empty out into the sea.
But as we get closer to the sea there is an incoming tide that we now have to take into consideration when we plan, so leaving and arriving anywhere has to be at the best time which is usually the turn or slack tide.

Today we are heading to Port De Refuge De Cap-A-Laigle and we have left at 5am so we expect to arrive at 2pm, we don't want to be any earlier or later.

The marinas now cost less, we are away from larger towns and cities but like this one is named  they are literally ports of refuge, there is no where else to stop.

Each town has a silver spiralled church

Skr Resorts 

On our way down the river we passed so many pretty towns that look sooo French.

Each town has a silver spiralled church and there is usually a sister church on the opposite bank.  A few of the towns had their own ski runs, some were just a couple of runs. but some were huge resorts with lots of runs clearly visible on the mountainside.  The scenery is changing becoming more mountainous and rocky.

At one point we passed a river mouth where two huge mountains formed a funnel and the wind howled down almost knocking us over, the seas became like a washing machine, huge, choppy and confused.
Craig had to take control of the wheel and steer a course through the waves, once we were out of the river mouth the winds abated and the sea calmed down again.

I wouldn't like to live in that village beside that river.

For the first time we are in salt water, we had to taste it to check.  No more washing my smalls in the River.

At De Cap-A-Laigle we docked quite easily there was a local there who grabbed the lines for us.  Once we had secured Adriana and paid our fees to the lady who ran the marina (who did not speak English but she had a young boy working with her who did)  we took ourselves off for a walk to stretch our legs, its just a tiny marina with a small café.
The road out was very steep and there was nothing much to see, so we headed back down grabbed a couple of beers and people watched from the public space that had chairs positioned looking out to sea, it seemed to be popular with the locals.

We sat in the sun and watched the ships pass by.  Its whale season and still school summer holidays so lots of people were out and about.

Another beautiful sunrise as we head to Tadussac

We had a beautiful day heading down to Tadussac, the water was so still and flat.  I spent just about the whole time scanning the water, I'd say using the binoculars at least half the time, If there were any whales, mammals or interesting fish popping their heads out of the water I surely would have seen them.

But we saw nothing, our friends Sharon and Brian who had done the same route 2 months earlier had seen lots so we were very excited to be there looking.

A harbour or common seal did pop its head out of the water, then another a bit further on. Their heads look like staffys and they pop up as if to check you out and say hello then off they go again, they are quite comical.   

We arrived at the entrance to the Saguenay River slightly early so we sat and drifted towards the entrance slowly to pass some time before making our way up stream.

This is what all the planning was for we had to time the slack tide so that we didn't get rushed past the entrance. We made it in without incident.  

I'm sure that the planning would have been necessary if we didn't have such good weather.

Sharon and Brian had told us that there were mooring balls at Tadussac that belonged to the Marina, so after a quick squiz around to see which ones we could use. I hooked our chosen one on my first attempt whew.  We quickly tied off, tidied up and dropped the dingy. 

We keep the dingy up on davits hanging off the back of the boat and the engine secured to Adriana while we are moving long distances so its a bit of a process getting it ready to go ashore and putting it back when we are done.

Tadoussac is all about the whales, they have 13 species that visit and we are here at the right time of year !! Sperm, Blue, Mink and Belugas to name a few plus seals and dolphins.
The Saguenay River flows out into the sea and this seems to be where the whales find an abundance of food.
There was a constant stream of whale spotting boats loaded with tourists coming in and out of the harbour. Fast open boats carrying 30-40 people at a time and some larger enclosed ones that were on a more leisurely schedule.

First stop was the marina to pay for the mooring ball, $30 is a lot better than the $105 at the previous marina we don't need power or water supplied but wifi is always good.

Outside the whale information Centre -  Craig Belga Whispering

Tadoussac is so pretty, all the houses are painted different colours 

Then we were ready to have a look around, we walked past the marina back towards the river as we had spotted a crowd on the rocks and wondered if they had sighted whales ?

But no one was jumping up and down in excitement or even pointing towards the water.  A short stroll along the boardwalk brought us to the whale visitors centre we had a quick look inside.  

Off up the hill we passed a number of pretty painted homes then some café and ice cream shops until we found a microbrewery/pizza establishment.  It was very busy and as much as we would have liked to sit outside there were no outside tables available - but we were ok to sit inside we commented that we have incredible views all the time anyway and we could people watch, the pizza was delicious served with a pot of warm olives.  Craig chose a stout not realising it was 8.5% alcohol.  It was served with a small dark chocolate to compliment the tastes.  He was on his ear when he finished.

The whole Tadoussac village surrounds the bay and the scene is dominated by the red roofed hotel, we stuck our head inside to have a look it was so quaint and old fashioned like stepping back into another era it was built in the 1920's and is still a functioning

hotel with a huge sitting room looking out over the harbour and a grand old dining room.   

Looking back at the old red roofed hotel from Adriana

On up the hill past the ancient church with its interesting old graveyard to the only supermarket in town.

We only needed butter and some ham for lunch but walked out with some  baguettes and choc biscuits as well, as you can imagine it was quite expensive being the only supermarket in such a tourist town.
We bought what we thought to be inexpensive beer 12 for $19.95.  Yes so cheap because the alcohol content was 0.05 - lolly water.  But we were back at the boat before we realised and could not face the dingy ride or the walk back up the hill to change them, ah well they will get drunk sometime.
Back to Adriana and we had a lovely couple of hours sitting on the bow with a beer and chips soaking in the beautiful sunshine watching the passing parade of whale watching tourist boats.

It is getting colder the overnight low is forecast to be 9c almost time to get the winter pjs out.

The next morning we were up and away by first light out of the bay and on our way down the river... I was on high alert scanning the horizon all around us.
I have mastered how to stand in a rocking boat looking through binoculars, without  giving myself a black eye.
Here it comes
First of all we saw fins rising out of the water a long way off - actually in the direction of our planned route - then we saw huge sprays of water coming straight up so very high for being so far off in the distance ..
Then Craig yells its Belugas,  these are different whales to what we were looking at in the distance these ones were right next to us and pure white.  They swam past us - there were maybe 8 of them, then 2 turned around and swam back right under our boat !!

I think we were crying we were so excited we were jumping from one side of the cockpit to the other.  Pinching ourselves that we were here doing this !!

We had turned the engine off and we could hear the whales in the distance when they blew and see their huge bodies rising out of the water as they swam on a parallel path to us. 

We still cant believe we were there and we saw Beluga whales so close like that, we still cant believe we bought a boat in Canada.

There were dolphins and porpoise swimming past and lots of seals popping their heads up to say hello, the huge whales in the distance and the Belugas that had swam past, it was surreal.  We waited another 20 minutes or so but the moment had gone and it was time for us to keep going.  So back on went the engine.  Around 9am we realised we had a bit of wind so up went the sails and with the current helping we cruised along doing 7 knots.  It is so nice to sail and not have the noisy smelly engine running.  This was our first sail since that hideous night coming into Kingston Harbour.  We had tried to sail a couple of times coming down the river but either there was not enough wind or there were too many motor boats or big freighters.

We did sight another pod of  Belugas a bit later that morning.  

Still more whales blowing too far away to get to on our timeline but we were happy having seen so many Belugas and all the other unidentified whales. 

The red roofed hotel is still in sight when we were visited by Belugas

They swam under our boat 

Not sure what its doing but its a Beluga 

Many hours later there were still seals popping up their staffy type heads to say hello.

A huge leopard seal swam so close we could see its spots.  Harbour Porpoises were around all day they are really shy and all you see is their fin come out of the water as they come up for air, they mostly travelled in pairs.  

The water was so still

We were still passing silver spiralled churches

We had planned to stop and anchor at Parc National Du Bic but we made it there around lunchtime and decided to keep going.

Its hard when you change your plans and don't have a plan B in place we were scouring Navionics looking for the next suitable place to stop.
We still have a strong current and prevailing and forecasted winds have to be taken into account. 
The afternoon had been as surreal as the morning, we had motored most of the afternoon as the wind dropped out completely

Leaving stunning flat seas with he clouds reflecting on the water it was hard to distinguish the horizon.

It had been a big day

Moving through the water Adriana's wake was the only ripple, if there were more whales I would have seen them.  I was exhausted from being on whale watch all day.

We did find a beautiful anchorage just off the river flow called Pointe Mitis we dropped the anchor in a pretty little bay with a huge red and white lighthouse on the point.
We kept hearing these strange guttural noises and we eventually worked out it was seals on the rocks close by.
The propane gas ran out as we were cooking dinner we thought we had half a tank in the second bottle but maybe it has a leak.
But that was ok we only had to make some rice and reheat a frozen curry
The sun was setting as we were going to bed and we witnessed the most stunning sunset, there was not a breath of wind so an easy quiet night.