We left the Longuiel Marina (across the river from Montreal) at 6:30am. The sun was rising beautifully and the weather forecast for the day was great. Once we were in the main channel we started to pick up speed, hitching a “free ride” on the St. Lawrence River’s downstream current. Our normal motoring speed (with no sails up) is about 7.5 – 8.0 knots. With the current’s help we were easily hitting 9.5-10.5 knots, sometimes as much as 12 knots.
The current is also quite turbulent in this part of the river so we are not able to use the autopilot because it spends too much time trying to correct our course heading. With the current constantly pushing us off course, the autopilot tries to compensate and the steering becomes an ever-deteriorating cycle of turns to port and starboard—at this point Ananda begins to look like a drunk staggering down the street, so we turn it off and steer by hand.
We traveled for about 1 hour past the shipping port of Montreal which is on our port (left) side. All kinds of cargo and container ships are tied up on the docks and we also encounter several freighters approaching the city to offload their cargo or to pick one up. Its pretty amazing the amount of North American and ocean freight that goes through this port. Seeing this gives us a deeper appreciation of how important the river is to the economy in all of the cities and towns in Canada and the USA that are ports on the river.
We are making really great time and at the rate we are moving we could easily get to Quebec City (about 130 miles downstream) in 1 day. Problem is about ¾ of the way we would begin to encounter a strong incoming tide which would slow our progress considerably. We would arrive in Quebec City about midnight and none of us were interested in that. As a result we decided to stop short of Quebec City and seek a safe anchorage or marina. Our preference is to find an anchorage because that is free, but we will go in to a marina if we cannot find a suitable place to anchor for the night. We check out a couple of potential anchorages around Trois-Rivieres but are not confident with what we see—the (side) channels are too shallow and narrow and do not provide enough shelter from the wind if a storm blows in.
We continue on to a small community called Portneuf, Quebec on the north shore of the river and arrive there about 3:30 in the afternoon. Portneuf has a very nice marina which is well surrounded by a massive breakwater constructed out of blasted rock. The entrance to the marina is marked by a statue of a mermaid holding a white light (compliments to Statue of Liberty) and a she has a leaping dolphin beside her.
Portneuf is a pretty little town but we decide not to walk in because it is about a mile away from the marina and we have boat chores to do before supper. This marina also marks our first overnight encounter with tides and salt water. The tides rise and fall about 7 feet in Portneuf. As a result, all of the docks in the marina are floating and have pretty substantial rigging and apparatus to hold the docks to the shore and to rise and fall smoothly with the tide.
