Our Summer Cruise 2016

 

Monday, July 4

Happy July 4th!!

Went over to Boulet Lemelin, the Walker Bay dealer to see Francis, the Service Manager. (The operation appeared to be similar in size to Boyles in Little Current) He came over to the boat later in the morning to look at it and try to come up with some ideas for a temporary fix, the only option as they have no other dinghies, not even a trailer to get the dinghy out of the water. Unlike most marinas, they do not have a boat well and Travel Lift to launch boats. Because of the tides they store all the boats on cradles with axles and roll them down a ramp using a tractor at high tide. It's very efficient but some of the trailers for 40-50' boats have three and four axles and are quite massive.

While we were waiting for Francis to get back with us, we headed into Quebec by bus to do a grocery shop near the Old Port and have a coffee. By the time we got back in the early afternoon, Francis hadn't called, so went to see what he could do. Walker Bay had said the hull was not repairable and his management would not permit him to do some type of temporary repair for liability reasons. We discussed some options and he was willing to give me some materials I might need and to use his workshop.

Back at the boat, I did some disassembly under the dinghy lying on the swim platform and found that I could get access to the underside of the transom to add a backing plate. By dinner time, I had cardboard templates for reinforcing and backing plates cut out. Now I hoped that Francis had some aluminum plate.

Tuesday, July 5

Luckily, he had a good selection of scrap aluminum plate that I could have and with tools limited to a hacksaw, files and drill, I spent the rest of the day making up the brackets with a number of trips back and forward to the boat on the bike.

One of the Brackets - the Backing Plates were Similar

 

While I was hard at work, Judy went into town on the No. 1 bus to to set up a hair appointment and do some sightseeing.

Here's a couple of photos of Jacques' 1988 26' Nordic Tug. He built the dinghy from plans and did a great job of it.

 

 

Wednesday, July 6

Judy had been successful in getting a hair appointment and left early for town while I finished up the brackets and made several trips to the hardware and Boulet Lemelin's store for nuts and bolts. I did have the washers in my store of probably $500 worth of stainless fasteners! I was ready for installation by the time Judy got back from sightseeing and her haircut and we got the bracket installed on one side - a very messy, 2-person job with vast quantities of 3M 5200 (adhesive) to glue the brackets and backing plates to the hull. Ten nuts and bolts bolts completed the work just in time to clean both the hull and us with large quantities of mineral spirits.

Jacques, the owner of the 26 Nordic Tug, had stopped by earlier to invite us for drinks up at the Yacht Club in the evening and this turned into dinner with him and his wife. In addition to owning a bed and breakfast in the city, Jacques is hot air balloon pilot with his own company "Quebec Montgolfiers" and Sylvie runs her own consulting business. The chef did well and we all had excellent meals. Before we knew it, a few hours had flown by and we retired for the evening, well fed.

Thursday, July 7

The weather turned overnight and it was cold, wet, and windy most of the day although it did relent long enough for us to get a pumpout and get some reasonably priced fuel. It was convenient to do it today as Andre, the Yacht Club Manager apologetically asked us to move as he had to put a Member's boat where ours was. We actually ended up with a better slip with more of a view.

The Yacht Club staff were very friendly and accommodating throughout our stay and were treated like "temporary" members. They didn't even charge us a penny until the day we left.

Marina at Mid-tide (another 10' to go to Low-tide)

FINALLY, we heard that the dinghy hull had been released from Mexican Customs and was on its way to US Customs in Texas!. From there it ships to Quebec City. If it's anything like schedules to date, it will be at least three weeks before it arrives. We can't wait for it, so our plan is to drive out to Maine in the Fall with the trailer, take the dinghy to Quebec and wait while the new hull is fitted, drive it back to Maine and then head home. We will get to see more of Quebec City as well since the weather shortchanged us.

Friday, July 8

The rain had passed but it was very windy and cool. After setting up our repair plan with Francis, we biked part way into town (much of it in 1st gear due to the wind) and caught the No. 1 bus the rest of the way to the supermarket area where Judy had searched out all the good places to eat. Enjoyed our lattes, chocolatina and almond croissant...

 

We managed to avoid looking at these display cases of goodies all made on the premises.

 

After picking up a few groceries, we wandered through this trendy area with some unique stores ...

...and street art....

Highway Support

Judy showed me a few other places she had found including the Gare de Palais. While not as grand as Grand Central Station, it is quite an impressive building...

 

The Parcs Canada Quebec Building isn't too shoddy either! ....

Back at the old Port Marina, below, we saw Symmetry II, with Jim and Linda. We had met them in our first big lock on the St. Lawrence several weeks ago and agreed to call them as we passed as they expected to be leaving about the same time as us if our plans for next Monday worked out.

Just a Part of This Huge Marina

This facility is very new with beautiful tapered docks with rounded ends, built in edge guards and adjustable cleats. Although they float a certain amount, accommodating the 20' tides here is impossible so they have a lock system that operates about 16 hours a day. For a few hours each tide, they can leave both gates open. The lock system does have its drawbacks as you have to book a lock time at busy periods but it does have location, location,location on its side compared to the Yacht Club.

A quick trip around the Farmers' Market yielded a big container of Quebec strawberries. These are not the normal organic strawberries we get at home but the small ones that are red all the way through - delicious - and they produce a double crop so you can get them into September as well.

Quebec City is hosting the Transat Quebec City to St. Malo, France, Sailing Race for the ninth time since 1984 and the bulk of the fleet will start on Sunday. The Race is held every four years and has nineteen Class40 yachts taking part, five Multi50 boats, two monohulls in the Open Class, and two in the Ultimate Class including the highly-anticipated 131-foot multihull Spindrift 2 (the world's largest racing tri) and the MOD70 Musandam-Oman Sail. Class40 monohulls first earned their stripes some years ago and are constantly pushing the limits when it comes to performance. In this highly homogenous class, professional offshore racers rub shoulders with keen enthusiasts promising a race of the highest caliber. The Multi50s will fight a close race with their superfast fast trimarans. The Ultimate Class trimarans, which will attempt to beat the crossing record of 7 days and 20 hours set in 1996 by Loïck Peyron on Fujicolor II—a 60-foot Orma trimaran. They will leave Wednesday, hopefully to arrive with the bulk of the fleet in France. Here are some of the fleet making final preparations for Sunday...

This One Isn't in the Race but May Work if the Dinghy Repair Fails!

MOD70 Musandam-Oman Sail and the Four of the Multi50s Behind

A Couple of the Open40s

Not Much Comfort Here

All-Female Crew on Cinnamon Girl - No Hairdriers Allowed!

Back at the boat, the second set of brackets/plates went on much smoother than before although laying on my back on the swim platform while it jumped up and down left me quite uninterested in food for the evening.

Not Too Pretty But It Doesn't Leak

Our weather has not improved, still cold and windy.

Saturday, July 9

Same weather as yesterday so we hibernated on the boat before meeting up with Jacques to take us into Quebec and visit a typical residential area, one where he used to live. It is always interesting to us to see how and where the locals live and work rather than just seeing the touristy parts. Although rain threatened, we spent a couple of hours, walking the streets of the Quartier Saint-Roche before heading back to Jacques and Sylvie's B&B that they have owned for eight years.

 

 

 

Back at Jacques and Sylvie's B&B - Hayden's Wexford House - over coffee, we learnt more about the history of the house (it was a tavern until 1928 in an Irish working class area supporting the docks) and about Jacques' background, which included working with the Inuit on developement of government facilities in northern Quebec, learning to fly, working in France, and more recently boating. Both Sylvie and Jaques are accomplished artists as well.

 

 

 

Jacques and Sylvie

 

 

 

Sunday, July 10

Another cool, rainy day in store but may brighten up later in the evening - hope so as we would like to leave tomorrow.

We treated ourselves to a relaxing breakfast at the YC this morning, with the "La Madamoiselle" for Judy and "Le Capitane" for me. "Le Commodore" looked like too big a challenge even for me.

That's been three excellent meals at the YC now and we found out yesterday that the chef has a freezer with frozen meals that he sells. We picked up two large portions of Coq au Vin, wild salmon fillets, Portuguese soup, chicken soup, and potatoes dauphinoise - 5 good meals for only $35.

It was soon time to bundle up and head out to the end of the breakwall to get a spot for the start of the 2016 Transat Race Quebec City to St. Malo, France. The rain held off but the wind was howling.

Sylvie and Judy (somewhere in there)

From our vantage point, we saw the boats head from the Old Port past the YC to the starting line about a mile upstream of us. One of the mid size trimaran's came by us at 17 kts with the center hull just kissing the water an dthe other 8 ft. out of the water - flying! The start went off with only one boat over the line - I guess doing a back and over again isn't a big deal when you are racing around 3000 miles!

In minutes, the four Multi50 trimaran class boats came into sight running around 15 kts. The wind was such today that they could make a long tack downstream and then a short tack across the river, before continuing on another long tack.

Two of the Multi50 Class Trimarans

Even at this point in the race you could see differing tactics by the captains. The river part of the race which is about 350 miles can have a significant impact on the overall result and requires much use of current, tide, and wind information to work the optimum course.

Another of the Multi50 Class

After giving the Multi50s a 15 minute head start, the rest of the fleet left the line and within a few minutes the majority of them were just offshore following the same tactics as the multihulls but with boats tacking in close quarters.

 

 

 

The excitement over, we headed back to the boat to get things ready for our departure tomorrow and have an early dinner - not that we really needed one after that breakfast....

Later we met up with Jacques and Sylvie again at their house to go to a concert at the Transat Race Party Barge. A band called Brise-Glace" (Icebreakers in English) that plays traditional French and English maritime songs, was performing and Jacques' nephew is a member of the 4-man group. He plays banjo and the rest of the group plays, drums, accordion, guitar, drums and tambourine. Interestingly, the drum is actually a bodhran (an Irish frame drum). Much of the band's music comes from the Bretagne and Normandie areas of France and it is strongly influenced by Celtic music.

Brise-Glace

After an excellent concert, we walked back to The B&B through the lit up streets of Old Quebec, something we will have to do in the Fall.