6 July, 2015 Monday  Showers are 9.5 and “in which Tommy goes to a wetting!”

     Before this morning’s shower at the Marina, I had Portneuf Marina and The Royal St Laurent Yacht Club tied for best shower facility, but Cap a L'Aigle Marina got a 9.5 from me putting them at the top of the list.  Very clean, hot and a dry place to get dressed!  Nice work.

     Tommy, our “chat de bateaux”, was having a little trouble with manners and had visited both neighboring boats in the marina. As we were finishing breakfast we heard a splash and both new at once what had happened.  Tommy Overboard!  She must have missed her jump from boat to boat. She had to swim down the port side of the Willie Dawes and came to me where I was kneeling  down waiting for her.  Turns out she is pretty heavy when wet,  so she had a little trouble getting out on her own so I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and got her on the float. Once there she took a flying leap aboard the neighboring sailboat, Demon du Midi, and almost went below soaking wet.  With a little coaxing she was back aboard the Willie and smothered by Kathy with towel in the cockpit.  Shocked and cold, she was wide eyed for quite a while.  She hadn’t been overboard in several years,  since 2011. Lesson learned?  Lets hope.

We got underway at about 0830 and raised sail right outside the Harbor of Refuge.  Flat calm.  Perfect whale watching conditions, and there they were, Belugas, on demand.  Several small groups of belugas as white as the driven snow.  Very hard to photograph, sort of like a porpoise, lots of backs and splashes,  but Kathy managed to get some good tail shots which are very good.

Near the light house on the Pointe Des Roches we spotted a bunch more Beluga so we came in close to the light.  Before we knew it we were surrounded by beluga, some with young, which are a little on the gray side.  With no place to go we sat right there knowing we weren’t supposed to get too close.  As soon as we could we moved on.

Still calm with a flat sea we made for Haut-Fond Prince light, described to us as resembling a bowling pin. It was hazy here and the water temp had plunged to 46 degrees.  66 at Quebec, 56 at Cap a L’aigle. The light air was chilly but as soon as we made the turn toward Tadoussac the warmth of the land was evident and we started to peel the layers off.

At the mouth of the Saguenay Fjord I saw a minke breach and we watched  more Beluga that were coming in against the tide.  Just beyond the shallow entrance we dodged the three ferries that were playing musical chairs with the two ferry landings.  

We continued up the fjord at a slow pace sometimes in over 600 feet of water and came up close to a narrow but tall waterfall on Cap Noir, where I baulked at coming any closer than 30 feet from shore as the depth was getting to be under 300 feet,  no kidding!

     Due to the extreme shoreline depths in the Saguenay River there are few anchorages.  We had gotten some local advice from a fellow in Pont a L’Aigle on where to anchor so we continued on 15 miles to anchor just East of Ile Saint Louis in 30 feet of water.  Water temp back up to 61.

     The long narrow inlet with high sides, deep water, and a narrow shallow entrance is what I know of as a fjord.  From our travels on the Inside passage to Alaska we used to call that “Maine on Steroids”  but now we are calling Saguenay “Maine on steroids”  and British Columbia and SE Alaska “Saguenay on Steroids”