9/23/26: Bad Docking
Oct 1
2 min read
We set off from the Saguenay Fjord at dawn this morning. Chuck and Tor fly out of Quebec on the 25th and we were still 100 miles down river and downwind of the prevailing winds. Making our way out of the fjord went smoothly, the sun was just casting long shadows on the cliff faces as we made our way back onto the St. Lawrence. The wind was light, but the current was 1-2 knots against us in the broader sections and 3-4 knots in the more narrow sections, making progress very slow. In our slow travels we were visited by another group of belugas and, to the excitement of no one more than myself, a dark grey beluga shaped creature that we thought was the Saguenay narwhal but that turned out to be a beluga cub.
Around noon the current switched in our favor and we started to make up lost ground. By 5:00 p.m. we spotted our stopping point; a small marina cocooned inside a breakwater. Still riding the high of yesterday we decided it would be a good time for one more bucket list item: beach the boat. The tides were perfect and there was what looked like a good beach right next to the marina. Before just diving in we slowed the boat down and discussed the cleverness of our plan. After all arriving at the same conclusion, there was none at all, we headed in. The important things for spending the night on a beach are that the beach is sand, not rock, and that the grade isn't too steep. As we got closer to the beach it became evident that it was steeper than it looked from afar but not so steep as too THUD. We could have made the steepness of the beach work, but not the rockiness. On our way back towards the marina I told Chuck and Tor about my fear of having to back the boat into a slip, to which Tor smiled, and challenged me to back onto the marina dock like it was a slip. Unable to let the challenge go unaccepted, and recognizing that I should practise, I backed the boat down to the dock just fine, but got nervous about stopping the backwards momentum and slowed the boat too early, leaving us a bit cockeyed and a solid meter too far away to jump onto the dock. Eventually, with a lot of grinding in on lines and motoring back and forth we came along side, but it was not the pretty docking I had been hoping for and the onlooking crowd of three locals solidified my embarrassment. We had an excellent pizza dinner by Katie and I called it a night.
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