Saturday, July 20th.

We left at 8am as planned and had a nice sail past Isle d’Orleans where we had a great view of Montmorency Falls.  The timing of the currents worked out pretty well as we turned around the tip of the island and started to tack to Havre de Berthier-surMer, 46 56.01N 070 44.13W.  The winds obviously thought that we’d had too easy a time of it, so they freshened and gave us a lumpy 20 knot wind over tide accompanied by several heavy showers to  finish the day.  This, of course, in the narrowest part of the channel with shallows and rocks abound.  We made it in good time to enter the harbor before low water and Ron made his first VHF radio call in French to get a berth allocation.  Fortunately, the response was simple – le Quai de Service - the Service dock.  We located the dock and debated which side of it to use.  We chose the inner side where all the other boats were.  We had been warned that Quinita would dry out here at low tide, and it was interesting to watch the tide recede leaving Quinita about 10 feet from the grass that was now exposed.  We also realized that we had made a lucky decision in choosing which side of the dock to use.  At low water, we could see massive steel piles on the other side holding the docks in place.  When we entered they would have been just below the surface and would have made a nasty mess had we hit one.  We went for a bike ride around the very pretty town, and were drenched again by another heavy shower. 

Ship’s Log: 2821.0nm, Today's log: 29.5nm, Season total: 367.1nm.