The morning started of in perfect condition as most of our mornings have so far. Skies are blue, sun is shining, waters are calm and the winds are fair. Our friends Sabrina and Stephan have driven all the way from Montreal to spend the weekend with us on this special leg of our journey going up the Saguenay river and experience some special encounters with our ancient yet so magnificent beings, lovingly called ‘gentle giants’, the whales.

Just as we slip out of our marina in Tadoussac there they are, the beluga whales. The white coated bubbly, always smiling faces full of curiosity are in sight. As we spot them, they also spot us and gently but eagerly swim over to great and investigate us. Wow, what a delight to have them so close by our boat that we could almost touch them and they came as a family of four or more. We heard their song which gave others the ok to come to and join the crowd. Yet when we saw them depart and wanted to follow while engaging the engines they got spooked and departed for good. It was time for us to move on too and ride upstream of the beautiful Saguenay river to our next resting place L’Anse-Saint-Jean.

The ride through the fjord was simply breathtaking at every turn the river made we were in awe and to make it even more exciting there was our next encounter. This time it was a small humpback whale. It played and rolled making figure eights right in front of our boat. We were delighted and so blessed.
Than we reached the sanctuary where the belugas mate and give birth hoping to be greeted by more of these beautiful beings of ancient decent but we were not allowed to go deeper into the sanctuary with our big boat and a canoe was not available. Ah well, we had our most personal encounter earlier on for which we are very grateful nevertheless.

Than finally we reached our destination for today L’Anse Saint Jean. It is a small but nice marina with sufficient power needed and other amenities. A nice restaurant right across the street, another up street, a café with first class crepes with a Belgian crepe maker and a bakery where they make wild blueberry and raspberry pies. Than further up is a wood boat builder quite famous for his skills in this end of the woods.
As we settle in and go for some local lunch a sudden onset of weather change approaches. Sheets of rain with wind gusts up to 40 mph came rushing in. 10 minutes later it changed again to blue skies and sunrays and so on. There is an extreme tide of 15 feet and as it is falling rocks and land is getting exposed right in front of our eyes. The water surface is shrinking dramatically exposing a sailboat completely to the shore but as we later learned it was done purposely for some repair to be done while out of water.

Sabrina, Stephan and Tom went for a hike and brought some interesting pictures back from the other side of town where they encountered a covered bridge filled with old paintings and a collection of wood boats built by a local builder.