[Paddlewise] Paddling in Tadoussac

I tried sending this from my Blackberry on Sunday, but it got bounced even
though it "appears" to use my normal email address. My wife and I just got
back from an absolutely wonderful paddling trip in Tadoussac, Quebec,
Canada. Last year while doing a paddling trip in Vancouver, we met a couple
from Massachusetts that we hit it off with. Bob and Carol told us of a trip
they had done a few years before to whale watch in Tadoussac soon we were
all talking about doing the trip together.

 

So a week ago last Saturday, we all met at a fantastic B&B called "Un Pause
du Temps". This was a beautiful, exceptionally clean B&B with private
bathrooms and a deck to watch the whales in the river from.

 

Somehow my internet research was wrong and I expected the water temperatures
to be about 60 deg F. I was not going to bring a wetsuit until Bob emailed
and said that even though the water wasn't going to be THAT cold, he was
brining one. So I packed a wet suit together with a skirt, PFD, 2 piece GP
for travel, and a neat inflatable car rack to carry our rented boats on our
rental car. My wife also brought a wet suit, paddle, pfd, and skirt. Thank
goodness we had made our air reservations before they changed the luggage
policy at Air Canada and we didn't have to pay any excess baggage charges.

 

Our first day of paddling was on the St. Lawrence at Les Bergeron. There I
found that the water temp was actually 3 deg C or 37 deg F. Brrr. My hands
were numb by the end of the day because I don't usually wear gloves - and a
GP doesn't have drip rings. At one point Bob and I were about 50 yards
behind the girls with a good 20 knot tail wind and some small following seas
that we were having a lot of fun surfing. Bob commented on how much fun the
girls were having which was a surprise because his wife doesn't really like
following seas. When we caught up to them, we found that the laughing we
were hearing was actually his wife complaining about the following seas. My
wife said she just got very quiet and tried her best to keep from broaching
(which she did). We saw bunches of minke, fin, and beluga whales.

 

The next day, we decided to paddle Saguenay Fjord. After we checked the tide
tables, marine forecast, and spoke with some locals, we found that the tides
(7 knots at maximum flow) and the winds (forecasted at 20 knots, gusts to
30), would all be against us. We decided to give it a try and just hug the
shore line to catch the eddys. This worked great until we came to the ferry
crossing. On the way out, we timed things beautifully and didn't even have
to wait. On the return trip, we found the winds had picked up and we were
taking a short break behind every headland we could. As we got to the ferry
crossing, we had to wait. My wife spied a minke whale in the center of the
river and started to paddle towards it. This was the time of maximum tide
flow. When she noticed nobody was going with her she wisely decided to stop
before she hit the main current.

 

At this time, I noticed one ferry had just about  landed and the other was
still loading. I figured if we paddled fast, we could get around them
without any danger and we wouldn't have to wait another 30 minutes while two
more played in our way. I shouted "let's go" and started paddling. My wife
yelled "no", but changed her mind when she saw everybody paddling as fast as
they could. We cut behind the ferry that was landing and the other was still
loading so we managed to get by very nicely. I then looked for a beach to
land on so we could catch our breath before continuing. Unfortunately, what
looked like sand was actually big steep rocks that would have been difficult
to land at with our friends fg and Kevlar boats, so we slogged on. 

 

On this paddle, we saw minke, fin, beluga, and a humpback whale.

 

Words don't do justice to the magic of this place.

 

Steve Holtzman

Southern California
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