Our last day in Canadian waters began with a bang; a series of bangs actually, as the first grey light of dawn was hailed by duck hunters firing shotguns into the mist. How they could see what they were shooting at in the thick fog was beyond me: I could barely see as far …
Quickly through Quebec
“No worries,” I had been telling everyone for the last month—everyone who had pointed out that to go through the Chambly Canal the mast would have to come down—“It’s mounted on a tabernacle; we can get it down at anchor, if we have to.” Little known to us, we WOULD have to lower it …
The charts we bought in Newfoundland for the St Lawrence River have a neat feature: a letter inside a little diamond leads you to a table in the margin that tells you what the current will be doing just there at each stage of the tide. It was hopelessly confusing for me to figure …
Almost There: Home Stretch on the Unrelenting River Read More »
Matane, Quebec, is on the south shore of the St Lawrence River just at the edge of where it narrows enough to be called a river and not an open gulf. It’s a pretty big town, and the artificial harbor was created for ferries—car and passenger mostly, but there’s also one that takes train cars …
I’ve never been good at reading tide tables—not because I can’t muddle out an answer from them, but because my answer is usually wrong. So digging out the tide table book we’d procured in St. Anthony, I handed it to Danielle, who delights in tweaky mathematical calculations. Soon the cabin was littered with tiny bits …
Natashquan, Quebec, was until very recently the literal end of the road. Though it now goes a few miles further to Kegaska, for many years the highway connecting that part of the coast to the rest of the world stopped there, making a very obvious demarcation between between French-speaking Quebec and it’s English-speaking outports. While …
There was ice on Ganymede’s decks the morning we left Harrington Harbor. No surprise—it had been chilly enough to have a roaring fire in our little wood stove the night before. Still, it added urgency to our already ardent desire to push south and west. Happily the wind was fair, if a little strong, and …
La Tabatiere, which evidently comes from a French word meaning “The Tabatiere,” is the hub of the outport settlements between Cape Whittle and Blanc Sablon. Though the unassuming harbor is completely open to the northeast, a gargantuan wharf built for the ferry has a little nook behind it in which small boats can hide from …
Our first stop in the province of Quebec, at a little place called La Falaise, was all among rocky islands smothered in deep moss—moss more than ankle deep, with occasional hidden boggy patches to add interest. It would have been a pleasant place to spend a couple of quiet days, but Tropical Storm Gabriel was …
“Dig out some more rice while you’re down there,” I called, upending the last little bit out of the ready jar into a pot. “There isn’t any more down here.” Danielle puffed, straightening up red-faced from the depths of the forward locker which she’d been organizing. “No more at all?” This could be serious. Of …