Whales everywhere!! We left eartly this morning around 05:00 from the harbor at Cap-a-l'Aigle where we stayed for two nights. The trip from the harbor to Tadoussac is only forty miles but the current is a hugh factor so by leaving at 05:00 we had favorable current right up to the entrance to the Saguenay River. It's here where the river meets the St. Lawrence and tidal currents can be 6 to 7 knots against us so we had to time it correctly.

Just after getting under way I challenged Alice to see who would see the first whales. She won, two Belugas surfaced not 100 yards from us and stayed with us for a while, that was spectactular. Two white whales almost within conversation distance.

Leaving early and travelling only forty miles means we would arrive early just at slack water at the famous Prince Shoal Lighthouse. Here we started seeing whales and seals everywhere. Seals withing 30 feet of the boat and whales both sides a couple of hundred yards away. This is one of the most popular whale watching areas and there are exchursion boats up the gazzo! As we approached Tadoussac we saw a whale blow and then surface and within a couple of minutes there were six or seven exchursion boats, full of people, chasing the whale. We expect that on our sail down the St. Lawrence from tadoussac we will see whales quite often.

We've finally hit salt water and that will be it for the fresh water of the Great Lakes. Quite a trip from Chicago to here. After leaving Quebec City the Laurentian Mountains come right down to the river and there are ski areas right on the river. Kind of neat to be sailing along looking up at ski slopes, must be beautiful in the winter. We took abunch of pictures that I'll upload after checking out Tadoussac and learning its history. Again this is whale country.