Mile 909: Grande-Revière

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Grande-Revière Current Location: Grande-Revière Fishing Harbour Date: June 24 Mile:  909 Locate: Ramble On Locate: Finnish Line 2.0 Google Photo Album

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Big swells with gusts to the 40's leaving Gaspé Bay

We left Gaspé in very windy conditions with big swells. We saw a gust of 41 at one point. The boat was covered with spray and spindrift later to become salt encrustations on everything.  No sails at this point. We motored out of Gaspé Bay until we rounded Point Saint-Pierre where the wind eased and we put up our jibs to help stabilize things.

Percé Rock comes into view

From there it was a short 6 or 7 miles to the famous Percé Rock. We had visited here the day before by car, but it was certainly more spectacular to view it from the water.

Remainder of previously
collapsed Arch (1845)

L'Obélisque

The rock was previously connected to the mainland and may have had 4 arches similar to the one remaining one.  The pillar of stone (L'Obélisque) on the east end is the remains of a collapsed arch that fell in 1845.  When Cartier passed this way in 1534, he noted 3 arches.

The Money Shot!

Our reconnaissance mission the day before had two purposes: to scope out our new port of call, and to check out Pit Caribou, a nearby microbrewery. The harbour at l'Anse-au-Beaufils was a comfortable distance from Gaspe, and would leave us in a good position to head south to Miramichi the following day.

Looking back at the town.

Once we arrived at l'Anse-au-Beaufils we determined that it was primarily a fishing port and that the visitor floating docks had not been installed yet. Staying here would require either squeezing up against a wharf among the fishing boats, or rafting from one of them. Both possible, but not our preferable option. So we determine to make the next port along the shore our destination. This was Grande-Revière, and fortunately, Peter (one of Linda's friends in Gaspé ) knew the harbourmaster and got in touch to let him know we were coming the next day.

Harbour "Dolos" at Grande-Revière,
church of L'Assomption-de-Notre-Dame
in background

Upon arrival we were greeted with a big wave upon entering the harbour and directed to a large, very new, floating dock which would normally moor a large fishing boat.

Fleet of lobster  boats. We would
see many of these tomorrow morning

Our neighbour for the night

This was a working harbour like the one in Riviere-au-Renard and similarly, had a fish shop that sold the freshest fish possible. Three freshly packed Salmon fillets were brought back to the boat for dinner, and Linda proceeded to put together the a great meal.



We put to bed early as we had more than 90 miles to cover tomorrow and would be leaving at 4am!

Bonaventure Island Gannet colony has
almost 120,000 birds