This is a totally different trip! The wind and weather have been against us. Instead, we are gunkholing our way up the northern Quebec coast… it is beautiful. We will get to Labrador …just later than we thought.

June 27^th

We left Sept Iles at 10ish into fog. With radar on and B&G tracking we headed to the Mingan Islands, 104nm away. If we averaged 5knots that would be 21 hours, so anchoring at Quarry Island at 7am. Well, it wasn’t far off. The west wind did build over the day, pushing out the fog, so sails went up. The sun tried to shine between fog banks and we were in T-shirts (!) midday. The best part was getting the Gennaker sail to fly! It is a huge green and yellow sail, attached at 3 points only (other sails are fully attached along 1 side). At 8 knots of breeze, we were doing 6knots speed! At one point the Navionics was having us arrive at 3am. But, no worries, the wind died to 3knots so we practiced taking the Gennaker down in light winds—all good. Winds were variable but we kept at it and sailed most of the way to the Mingans. We each did a three hour shift, comfortable inside our new weather curtain; and wearing our floater suits:). We put the anchor down at 6:30am, June 28th. Naptime!

Lots of whale sightings (Fin & Minke) and a few seals to greet us to the Mingans. No puffins yet, but their cousins, the Dovekies are cute. Seeing Guillemots, Terns, Sandpipers (when walking Quarry Beach), Loons, Eider Ducks and the huge Greater Black-backed Gull and Herring Gull (orange mark on yellow beak) plus others. Our bird book (Eastern and Central North America) lists 24 Gull species!

Having anchored here before, we decided to hike around the other side of the island, 11km of shingle, sloping beach – Youza!.. A good workout but wanted to walk backward the last 2km!

June 29^th

To Havre St.Pierre

This is possibly the last town for a while as we make our way further up the north coast of PQ.  We spent 5 days here last summer repairing the windlass, so we knew our way around. The game changer was having the bikes! Managed to do all our errands in the one day, filled with diesel and water, bought the amazing Fumé de Maison Salmon for a future pasta dinner, had lobster rolls and a fantastic dinner at La Promenade. I like this town!

June 30^th SW Winds

Best day of sailing so far this year !  Off the dock at 9am; winds built from 8 to 20 over the day, so we hoisted our Gennaker at 10am. Despite having owned the boat for 6 years, we had not taken the time to fully set up the boat to fly this sail, and based on the condition of the sail, I am pretty sure it had never been used.

Of course, gybing it (switching it to the other tack/side of the boat) was a less than graceful process that we had to figure out.  With a full racing crew a spinnaker gybe is a graceful dance, with the sail remaining full through the process and the boat accelerating out of the gybe.  With just 2 onboard it looks a little more like Morris dancing (look that up!!) until we figured it out.  It took us a couple of tries, but eventually we figured out that the only way to control the sail was to sock it (pull it into a tube), drop it to the deck, flip it to the other side of the boat, hoist again and launch it.  This takes some coordination, communication and patience!  Steve and I have hand signals and, having raced together, we know what is “supposed” to happen. We blasted along at a comfortable 8-9 knots making it a short and easy day.

We only took the sails down at 6pm (completed 43 nm) arriving at Baie Jolobert (Lat 50.16.068; Long 62.25.274). Strong east winds and rain were forecasted for the next day so we selected this anchorage to provide good shelter through the storm. Protected slightly but not enough as we rock and rolled all night with the swells.

July 1^st – Happy Canada Day! A rainy windy day in a rolling anchorage in the SE winds but we stayed put. We barely ventured on deck (never left the boat) but made lentil soup and had a Fruits de Mer pie from the Poissonerie in Havre St.Pierre. A well fed crew is a happy crew. One lonely seal came to check us out. The coast here is low lying rock and trees – beautiful Canadian Shield

July 2^nd – Driving to Labrador?

Well actually Otto (“Auto”-pilot) does most of the driving with us standing watch, but it still feels like the drive from Winnipeg to Regina.  You may ask why we don’t just motor through the night to get ahead, if motoring all day is painfully boring, motoring through the night is nails-on-chalkboard awful.

The weather has been astoundingly bad for sailing east this summer.  By rough count, we have already faced more days of east wind this trip than we did all of last summer ( not including the full storms) , which leaves us two choices…. wait for the wind to shift (A) or motor into the wind (B).

We set out from Baie Jolobert under more grey skies to continue East as the winds were light and we could motor the 56nm to our target Bay. With the prior nights SE winds, the Gulf was filled with rolling wave slop, so we bobbled and rolled our way along. 

This stretch of coastline (the north shore of Quebec, right around to Labrador) is very sparsely populated, poorly charted, and basically one continuous “rock garden”, above and below the surface. Even the sailing guidebooks note that here “you are on your own” through this stretch.  As such we tend to motor/sail a little further offshore (4 to 5 miles) and watch the depth gauge carefully.  This unfortunately means that we don’t see much of the coastline /wildlife while underway. Whales don’t seem to be here either.

We were looking to shelter from SW winds (and slop) so elected to head deep (3nm) up to the head of the Baie Washicoutai. The anchorage was stunning, with shelter from all directions and good holding in a mud bottom.  Took our first drone shot! It was a quiet, peaceful night, no rocking at all.

July 3^rd

Yuck… more rain, light east winds. We decided on option B (keep motoring), and pulled up anchor around 6:20am. After maneuvering out of the ‘rock garden’, we turned east aiming to round the corner of this coast and head north (before the forecast north winds came in).

Maybe it’s this Super El Nino that is disturbing the usual weather patterns… but weather in the Gulf of St Lawernce has been one consistently disturbed system. Rather than the usual pattern of dominant westerlies, with a couple of days of East/Northeast winds, with a storm every 3 or 4 weeks, the warm highs blanketing the central continent seem to be pushing up again a series of rolling low pressure zones rolling up the east coast.  With this, no steady weather pattern gets established and we end up with these weak, sloppy Easterlies under grey skies and rain.

Last year we sailed by this coast from Quebec City making  a series of longer overnight, or multi-night sails stops (QC, Tadoussac, Sept Isles, Havre St Pierre, Port Aux Choix, Nfld). This year we are little over halfway to Nfld and have made landfall 9 times, waiting out adverse winds twice.  We are about 300 nm behind where we thought we would be.

We had 2 hitchhikers – 2 warblers. They had no problem settling in, hunting for bugs in the sheltered cockpit and hopping all around us!

We Checked out 3 anchorages before we found swing room and muddy bottom in Baie de L’Ouest (Lat 50.22.2, Long 59.52.8). We are in a cloud bank, but saw 2 small Minke whales – only sighting for 3 days.

Heading north – long 62nm day tomorrow to La Rigolette; guide says its not to be missed. Praying for clear skies. We will make the best of it and explore the northern PQ coast – just a little more than we intended!