Portneuf, Quebec
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Fri 27 Jul 2007 04:51
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46:40.196N 71:50.245W
We had another fast motor yesterday (Tuesday, 7/24)
from Champlain to Portneuf (again no wind, but nice and sunny). Again
going downstream (yes Dad, downstream even though the map makes the
northern direction we are traveling in look like it should be upstream :
) ) with the current as high as 4 knots. We almost beat the
speed record we set when leaving Montreal at 11.2 knots (which is a little over
13 mph for you non-boaters - I know it doesn't sound like much, but we usually
only sail or motor between 5 and 7 knots, 8 if we are lucky).
Attached is a picture of one of the buoys that mark
the shipping channel in the river. This is my attempt to give you some idea of
how swift the current was at this point. If you look really close,
you can kind of, sort of, maybe a little bit, tell that the water is
rushing past the buoy.
The second picture shows what the south bank of the
river typically looks like in this area. There are lots of cliffs and it's
quite pretty. A funny thing happened as we were passing by some cliff
areas in the fast current. We heard loud music, and at first thought it
was coming from the marine radio. It wasn't. Something caught Don's eye up
on the riverbank cliff where the music seemed to be coming from a clearing with
a flag pole in the center of it. The American flag was flying at the top
of the pole with the Canadian and Quebec flags flying below. And the
music? They were blasting the American national anthem. Once the
anthem finished, they topped it off with a John Phillips Sousa march (Harry
Jamesson would have loved it). Apparently they were putting on this show
just for us. Once we got beyond hearing distance, they promptly took down
the American flag and replaced it at the top with the Canadian flag. How
funny is it that such a show was put on for the benefit of us English speaking
Americans here in Quebec? We felt truly welcome after that
display.
Anne
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