Toudassac marina

Thursday June 25, 2015
48 08.308 N
69 42.911 W

There was a small restaurant above the marina office that served breakfast. We could not leave till about 11 AM because if the tide and so we decided to enjoy breakfast out. The menu was 100% French so we had plenty of fun placing our orders - the highlight was how the waiter identified spinach - think about Popeye. After breakfast we still had time to kill so we ordered up a taxi and went into town and strolled main street.

The 40 NM run was pretty peaceful. the wind seems to come in fits and starts - most of the day the wind was less than 10 MPH but we had an hour of so with a strong westerly, sometimes gusting to 35 MPH. As we neared the Saguenay fjord we started scanning the sea for the expected heard of whales.

Our initial target for the day was the confluence of the St Lawrence and the Saguenay Rivers. The water here is very deep (1,000’ plus in places) and apparently whales like it here and come to breed. Whale spotting was the local tourist activity. In 3 ¼ years of boating we had yet to see a whale and this was one of the reasons we had chosen this northerly route.

On the dock that morning in Cap-a-l'aigle we were told to pop into “the third bay on the north side” as that was a favorite spot for the Beluga whales. We did as instructed and did not seen a sardine, and we moved on.  As we approached the confluence area we spotted a bunch of whale spotting tourist boats and headed in that direction.

The water was certainly very deep. Our depth finder only manages to see to about 250’deep and then has a tendency to just make up numbers. It gets quite disconcerting when the depth alarm goes off (it is set at 3’ under the keel) when the chart tells you the water is 800’ feet deep.

We crawled around the general area at idle speed without success, disappointment mounting. I did see a black hump ½ mile away. Then we both saw a beluga approaching us, quite close. It surfaced three times for a breath then disappeared, never to reappear. The whale was 100% white and 3’ to 4’ in diameter. But that was it. After another 30 minutes we were getting cold and set off for the opening of the Saguenay river/fiord and the Tadoussac Marina.

We had called the marina a few days ago, but they did not take reservations – they had tried taking reservations sometime in the past, but it “just did not work out!” We called them on the radio about a mile out, asking for two spots. In my best “Frenglish” I explained that “nous somme deux bateau a 15 metres”. After some delay we established that they had room for only one boat. We asked if we could raft the second boat and they said OK. We were quickly in and secured and Cavara was attached to us shortly thereafter.

It looked like a cute little holiday town and we ask and received a recommendation for dinner and walked into town after we had cleaned up. Deidre and I ordered the same thing and our meals were spectacular. I wish I had taken a photo.