I checked our elevation in Montreal and it was 80 feet. We are getting closer to the sea. Beginning at our next destination we will experience tides. Quebec City has tides of nearly 5.5 meters between high and low and that's meaningful for two reasons. Number #1 it makes anchoring or shallow water navigation interesting if what was 25 feet of water 6 hours ago is 7 feet of water when you pass. Second with a mix of tidal Ebb (tide going out) or Flood (tide coming in) and the normal flow of river water downstream it makes for some epic currents in the river.
Thankfully our guide gives us reference times to high or low water to take advantage of the tide/current or to make our departures and arrivals safer. The only thing we had to do was get some tide books and a little gem called the atlas that combines the river flow and tides to give you an idea of how to arrive at your destination with a reasonable current as long as the winds don't stack up the water with adverse direction. We found both resources in a combination of nautical bookstores between Toronto and Montreal.
First stop is Trois Rivers that has only .5 meter tide and so lesser effect of the tides and current combination. We did estimate an arrival time of 1 hour after low tide at Quebec City at Trois Rivers and came pretty close on way from Montreal. The first few miles were white knuckled as we backtracked over the high current waters of 5+ kts at Montreal. We topped 11kts and settled in for the 68 nm trip that would take us 6.5 hours. It's hard to say you ever get used to sharing space with the behemoth container ships but they have become less shocking to pass or be passed by. We arrived at the marina and had a moderate 2 kt current being diminished from the normal 3 kt current by the slight tidal influence. The risk is that you arrive at your destination with the normal current plus the high influence of the tide and you can't turn into your marina or once you go by, it's a battle to come back upstream to your intended destination. For instance the entry to our nights destination in Trois Rivers has only an upstream approach so having arrived with only 2 kts net current it was a breeze to make it up the marked channel.
The following day's directions said to plan to leave 6 hours ahead of low water in Quebec City and that the ideal time was to arrive one hour after low tide. It gave the recommendation based upon a boats travel speed of between 8-10kts. We normally cruise just under 8 when motoring and given our first day 'playing the current' we would choose to motor the entire day. There was one section of the trip, the
riechiliu rapids that narrowed to .25 nm for width of the channel and the current plus tide can range from 5 kts against to 6+ kts downstream. If timed incorrectly you could find yourself motoring against a 5kt upstream current! When we arrived it was blazing downstream and we did 11+ kts but the real fun was the curve in the river just below the rapids where the eddies formed as big as our boat and wanted to turn our boat upstream when I didn't follow the mini cruise ship that passed us to the outside of the curve to avoid the eddies and to take advantage of the downstream flow.
As we got closer and closer to QC and as the ebb tide intensified going to low the current picked up to 5 + kts. About an hour out from QC our ETA was 1800 and low tide was 1730 so we began to take a little off of our speed to delay our arrival to 1830. That was pretty much an idle for the last 45 mins as the rain began to come down. When we passed the last corner and could see our destination the AIS alarms began to go off, 1 for each boat that had AIS within our 'danger zone' set on the chartplotter. As you might imagine with ferries, cruise ships, tugs, tour boats, container ships and as we began to notice ALL of the bigger sailboats our alarm was pretty much going off every few seconds. Once dismissed it won't sound again but you have to dismiss an alarm for each one once.
We heard about The Port of Quebec's Louise Basin from the old salt we locked through the Beauharnois locks that he recommended as it uses a lock of its own to maintain the water level and so creates a non tidal basin surrounded by a tidal basin that is inside a breakwall off the river. We arrived around 1825 so right when we wanted to. There was maybe 1-2 kts flowing by the entry and we split it three ways as there were two sail boats exiting from the marina lock and we had a green light for the lock entry - perfect timing.
I radioed the lock keeper for directions and he just said tie up on starboard side. Pamela raced around setting lines and bumpers before we entered the lock. A gentile sailer after probably overhearing me saying to the lock keeper on VHF we've never been through this lock and what directions did he have, grabbed our bow line while we jumped out onto the floating dock that you tied off to while the lock adjusted the height of the water to the inner harbor. Pretty much a piece of cake. The gates opened to an expansive harbor that the marina took up maybe half of that is right in the old port of Quebec City. The fairways were huge, docks wide and tightly boarded with recycled plastic decking and our slot was right up close to the dock exit for the common areas for showers, grill, pool, etc. The picture on the post is us in upper part of the old city on a street that perfectly lines up with the marina that had Big Frisky pointed out.
Points East and North of us in the Charlevoix area of Quebec that we will travel through next promise more of the same tidal fun so we'll be experts at 'playing the current' by the time we reach the Atlantic in a few short weeks.