A day of nothing much sexy enough to document—coupled with no shore power—meant no blog post until today.
Back to Rimouski though, where we had another sunset before we left.
Yesterday the Saint Lawrence was as calm as Mahatma Gandhi. Smooth all the way to Matane. Smooth enough for showers and naps. Nothing much to see or photograph, but easy peasy.
When we reached the marina in Matane, we found it a bit on the small side for Misty Pearl. The guy at the dock initially thought he’d squeeze us in between a sailboat and a finger pier that may or may not have been long enough to reach our door, but despite the language barrier and the favorable exchange-rate we weren’t wedging our beam into a fifteen-foot opening. So we got a new face dock, but no power.
The slip just opposite our bow in the photo was the intended target. No chance.
Know how they hold floating docks in place in Matane? That’s right, with trailer tongues.
But actually the place was quiet, the grocery store was close, and the restaurant across the street at the hotel was awesome. We’ll happily run the generator for a few minutes in exchange for all that.
Unfortunately, the wind this morning was not awesome. It was the opposite of awesome. But the marina we wanted to reach today looked to be very sheltered, and the wind was behind us, and the predicted waves would follow us, so what the hell.
From a cruising perspective, today kind of sucked. We wallowed around the entire trip, trying to hand-steer in something approximating the right direction but ultimately serpentining like Sheldon Kornpett, DDS, when he had to dodge bullets after getting mixed up with Colombo’s zany caper in the very underrated The In-Laws.
But at least we’re back to a little scenery now that we’ve reached the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. For example, another cool lighthouse, this one at Cap Chat.
Wind turbines are a lot prettier when set behind more of those fields of yellow something-or-others than those set in the desert just before the obligatory I-10 stop at Hadley’s on the way to L.A.
The wind, however,—while sucky for boaters—isn’t only enjoyed by wind turbines. Kite-surfers who only have about a three-week window of summer don’t mind at all. Come to think of it, these are the first kite-surfers we’ve seen since Fort Lauderdale. Those Florida weenies wouldn’t stand a chance up here in the cold.
We gladly ducked out of the crappy waves and into the Havre polyvalent de Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. Marinas sound so much cooler in French. The entrance was easy to find since the charts place it just left of the “two spires,” which turned out to be pretty dang obvious.
Yup, there it was. We walked around a bit, ate at the pub, and settled in.
The thing we didn’t do is take many photos of stuff. But it looks like more wind tomorrow so we’re planning to stay another day. Plenty of time to make up for it.