Mantane, Quebec

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

048-50.520 N
067-34.500 W

Bonjour from Mantane, Quebec!

We had a nice cruise down the coast of the St. Lawrence between Rimouski and Mantane, which is where we currently are. What made it nice is that we were able to cruise right along the coast, typically between 3/8 of a mile and 3/4 of a mile off of the shore, which gave us a nice, close view. In general it was nice and clear, so we could see things MUCH better than the day before when everything was shrouded in fog.

Probably the most impressive thing that we was were the huge wind farms that were spread out along the coast. One of the largest, had over 75 wind generators (probably higher since I didn't start counting soon enough) spread out over about 10 miles. A few miles down the coast another farm started and it appeared to go much further in-land as I could see wind generators in the distance a long way from shore. Clearly they've made a huge investment in wind power.

If you were a bird lover, you would have loved today. The waters along some of today's path were covered with birds, primarily ducks, some geese and a large variety of sea birds. We only have a laminated card with rudimentary sketches of birds, but I can assure you that sheer quantity and variety of birds was amazing.

We pulled into Mantane harbor, which is a commercial harbor and attempted to anchor. We got the hook to catch, but not well. There's a very small area where you can anchor, so we were very limited as to our options. The good news is that the winds have been very light and drop to nothing at night, so we should be fine. This wouldn't be usable if the wind were blowing. The problem is that the next harbor is 30 miles away and you have to tie to fishing boats. I don't know about your French, but mine isn't up to asking!

Tomorrow we've got another 45 mile hop to Sainte-Anne-des-Monts where we'll pull into a marina.

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser:

We anchored in 10' MLW to the side of the ferry. Holding was poor. The guide states that you can tie to the old wharf to the W and I would suggest doing that in the future. The problem is the 10' tide and figuring out how to secure yourself. We met some people who anchored to the W outside of the breakwall, but had a lot of swell. This clearly isn't an option when the wind is blowing.

Log ID: 1261