David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Location: Tadoussac, Quebec, Canada
Coordinates: 48° 08.314′ N  69° 42.933′ W

We took a side trip from Tadoussac up the Saguenay River yesterday. This river is a Fjord, which means it was carved out of the granite by glaciers. It also means the mountains on each side are shear granite walls, and the river is really, really deep. We were pulling into Baie Eternite last night when Ayla said, “Hey Dad, what’s wrong with our depth sounder? It says it’s 800 feet deep here?” She was surprised to hear that there was nothing wrong with the sounder — it really was 800 feet deep even though we were within a 1/4 mile of shore!

On the way up the river we saw about a dozen pure white beluga whales. They would surface briefly to breathe, and then dive again. Each sighting was about 3-5 seconds long, which made it almost impossible to photograph or film them, so we’ll have to enjoy them only in our memory. As an embarrassing side note, when Ayla was a baby/toddler, we often sang Raffi’s “Baby Beluga” song to her; Kathryn and I reprised the performance yesterday while cruising up on the fly bridge, much to Ayla’s chagrin.

We picked up a mooring ball in Baie Eternite (too deep to anchor), and we went for a hike up one of the mountains this morning. The granite mountain at the entrance to Baie Eternite looks quite a bit like El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. This prompted Kathryn to muse, “Wow! This is unbelivably beautiful. If Yosemite were a Fjord, it would look a just like this.” I think she’s probably right.

We cruised back down to Tadoussac this afternoon, and we saw another half a dozen belugas on the way down. The sun was shining and the water was calm, so you could really see them well. Then as we were turning into the bay near Tadoussac we saw a couple small black whales swimming along. We’re not sure what species they were because we only saw their dorsal fins a few times. Suffice it to say that this area is teeming with cetacean life.

We’re now looking at the weather maps, trying to figure out what to do about Hurricane Bill. He looks like he’s headed for Nova Scotia, which is where we were headed over the next few days. We’ll probably stay put for awhile to let him get out of our way. What are the chances of encountering a hurricane on the Down East circle cruise?! Go figure.