We left Rimouski very early in the morning with plans for a two day passage to Riviere-au-Renard. We decided to make a big hop to make up some time, and it happened the weather looked really good for sailing it.
We motored out of our slip and through the break-wall, and immediately put up full sails and we were on our way. Winds ended up being very consistent and directly behind us. The consistent winds were good, but being well behind us means much back and forth as our boat doesn't go downwind directly. But we do get nice sail angles and quick running with these winds, so it went pretty well. There wasn't too much traffic, just the odd fishing boat. All the big ships are out further in the channel so we didn't bump into any of them. It was interesting how much the waves would change closer to shore and then further out. Especially further along they were quite a bit larger further out from shore. The current also plays a small factor out here, and at times we'd be running with it, and times against it. But overall it was light and not a big factor.
Just near the last leg of the trip the wind started to run out. I attempted to put up the spinnaker, but the waves were still large and this proved to be an exercise in frustration with the sail flopping about madly. We quickly abandoned that plan and put on the motor for the last hour of the trip to get into port before dark. But other than that, we were able to sail the entire way which was really nice. Also very consistent winds all overnight, which was quite nice for this passage.
In total we sailed 210 nautical miles. Raymarine doesn't log time in it's GPX tracks (which I find weird), so I don't have accurate time stamps or speed data in that case, but we left around 7am on Aug 7th, and arrived at around 7:50pm on Aug 8th. That is ~37 hours with an average speed of 5.68 knots. We are pretty happy with that on this boat...
Our GPX track from Rimouski to Riviere-au-Renard
We got into port finally, and put the anchor down in the protected bay here. Beautiful spot, and we are looking forward to spending some time ashore.
